DrSE

Hey
I recently tried to use my 90K avios from the well know promotion for a Hotel booking. When I click on purchase I always recieve an error message:


Unable to process points. Please call our customer service for assistance.

I have the feeling that Iberia blocks bookings with the promotional avios to keep costs low. However when I called them they played the old game... call another number bla bla bla and in the end I was told two things:

(1) You can only do it online.... Why the website says I have to call then?
(2) We currently have a technical error. You can not use the avios and we dont know how long it will take....


Has anyone had success yet to use the avios for hotel bookings?

rmfirst

I had the same issue. Tried to book a hotel a few times last night on-line, got the message to call the call centre. Spent two hours on the phone and spoke to 3 different people. No luck in the end as apparently the system was down. This morning I lost the hotel availability online, my Iberia plus account seems to be locked again as I am not able to log in, and I have been charged 5 times on my bank account the Ł25 fee that was needed to process the booking! I am so angry right now and dreading to spend another two hours on the phone with Iberia again.

Please let me know if somebody was lucky with it!

Thanks

koosh2

I have hotel booking done on July 21, total spent 85,000 IB Avios and leaving 5,200 balance on my own account.

The property I booked has confirmed my reservation.

I heard the problem started 2 days ago. Wife's account still haven't consume, hope it just a technical glitch and they going to fix it, finger crossed.

gavman99

I got this problem 2 days ago. I emailed them and the reply I got was :

"In the terms and conditions and general information that we supplied, we stated that the avios could only be redeemable on airplane tickets (either from Iberia or Oneworld airlines) before December 1st. And that is the official information from Iberia that you could find on our website."

This is really bad news and will likely affect our USA road trip next year. We have 180k points to spend on hotels and can't do it. Not good at all.

mingzie

Where does it say that they can only be redeemed on Iberia and Oneworld flights?

gavman99

I'm more concerned where it allegedly says (or said) in their T's & C's that it had to be redeemed on flights !!

mingzie

Yeah that's what I mean - I don't remember their T&C saying this anywhere

gavman99

And to make matters worse, I can see that have still applied to my credit card for the cash amount in relation to my booking. I have 6 pending transactions for the same amount for the 6 attempts I made. I'm hoping they eventually fall off rather than having to request a refund.

Raffles

Apologies for copying this from the other thread but ....

I have been working with a major British newspaper on a story about this offer, which is due to run on Sunday (full page feature). Iberia is giving the impression that it is going to cave in (to avoid bad publicity to a few million readers of this newspaper) - in the face of written correspondence to me that transfers out of Iberia would be possible - and will begin to allow the bonus Avios to be moved to BA. This would mean you could do hotel redemptions via BA even if IB is now blocking them.

This is NOT 100% certain yet. However, don't make any redemption in the next couple of days via Iberia if you would have preferred to move them to BA and spend via BAEC instead, as it may still be possible.

brianchoi

[QUOTE=koosh2;30017588]I have hotel booking done on July 21, total spent 85,000 IB Avios and leaving 5,200 balance on my own account.<br /><br />The property I booked has confirmed my reservation.<br /><br />I heard the problem started 2 days ago. Wife's account still haven't consume, hope it just a technical glitch and they going to fix it, finger

Is that new account succeed with hotel booking ?

gavman99

Thanks, good to know ! Although I'm hoping I won't fall foul of the "you cant use combine my avios within first 3 months of account opening" rule because thats the error I currently get when I try and use it. We only opened our IB Plus accounts in June to take advantage of the 9k promotion.

Schwann

Yes, I've booked 5 nights worth of hotels so far and still have 10,000 Avios left from the promotion. I've contacted each hotel and had them add the bookings to my loyalty accounts so I've been able to confirm they're real and confirmed bookings.


That's always been the case here though, the T&Cs of the original promotion never said new accounts would be able to move Avios early as a result of the promotion.

mingzie

So has anyone had success booking hotels in the past week?

gavman99

I haven't tried again. Going to wait until my Iberia Plus account is 3 months old then use Combine My Avios to get all the points into my single BA HHA to allow me to get it even cheaper.

Jetstreamer

Made a hotel booking 10 minutes ago and it went through fine ^