thijsseh

For anyone with a Voyager CC:

By accident I ended up in the depths of Nedbank website and discovered that:

The 'spend' requirement for the Companion tickets has changed, it is now (for the 'Premium card' R60000 for a domestic ticket and R160000 for an International ticket!

The 'spend' requirement to keep your miles for an extra 12 months has increased from R40000 to R60000

The maximum validity for the travel insurance has decreased from 90 days to 30 days.


Does anyone know if this is only for newly issued cards or also for 'old' cards? If the latter, should they not have informed us?

Is this the start of a serious deterioration of the Voyager CC and time to start looking for alternatives?

SAWorldVoyager

Confirmed New AND existing card holders

For the gold card R80000 for domestic and R180000 for international.

I would gladly accept this if they changed the rule from one per year, to one per each R180 000.00 spent in a calender year.

Some of us cant afford to go longer than 30days so no issue to me personally, but hate the fact they spring this with no warning.

thijsseh

Somewhere (but I can't remember where), I read that at least the increase in minimum spend to preserve miles was for new cards only, so I was hoping the other changes would be as well.

The increase for International companion tickets annoys me: I used to spend the amount required by the middle of Feb and then had my companion ticket available for our June / July 'pilgrimage' to Europe. Now I am retired, so I spend less on the card and that, combined with the increase in required spend, means that I will only get the companion ticket available (much) later in the year. That retirement also enables us to stay away longer, hence my annoyance about the change in insurance

All in all, a serious degradation of this card to me and I must see what I'll do. I could justify the high annual cost through the insurance benefit but that now does not apply anymore. I also have a Standard Bank CC, so I could start using that and move to BA (al least they also still fly CPT - DUR). Some research is required.
BTW, SAWorldVoyager, how did you get your info? Phoned the helpdesk?

SAWorldVoyager

I guess its about A) communication B)reasonable behaviour. 10 or 20% justified.

250% not.

Cheetah_SA

I've been telling my boss for years he must get a Voyager cc and last week he tells me he finally went to the site to sign up and found these new limits. I forgot to follow up until I saw this thread. This is bad news and even worse form from SA.

Either they had no idea how cunningly we would use our companion tickets and are trying to rein in the benefit or they have seen the pathetic new BA/Comair cc offering* and used it as a benchmark.

* Interesting that BA/Comair offer only flights on Comair (so longest flight is a return to MRU) whereas in the UK the BA Amex gets you a ticket anywhere on BA metal - at a lower spend threshhold!

thijsseh

Agree completely, SAWorldVoyager, both on your A) and your B).

When I investigated the benefits on the Standard Bank BAEC linked card (I have a SB plat card which is 'dormant' as I tend to use the Voyager one), I noticed hat they require R200K spend for a companion ticket and thus I thought the change in the Voyager card conditions was because of a realisation that they were way more 'generous' than the competition. But now Cheetah_SA reports that this is limited to the local franchise holder (which is not reflected on the SB website). So apart from being angry with Voyager, I am confused about SB. Not a happy state to be in.

Cheetah_SA

In fairness I should point out that you also get a free upgrade voucher for 2 with the SB card.

However, it is also only valid for domestic or regional use. (These are the T&C's as per the BA web site.)

On the other hand the Voyager card fees are way higher than the BA ones.

thijsseh

Can you maybe PM me the link to that information, Cheetah_SA? I cant find it on the BA site .

Assuming I can link my existing SB plat card to BA, it wold be free, except for what they call the 'loyalty fee' which used to be R150 per annum (which is a lot cheaper than R1650 or something like that per year for the Voyager ).

Cheetah_SA

No problem. The link is on the ba.com site's SA splash page.

I realise this is getting OT but this discussion has persuaded me that I should apply for the BA credit card. Not because I want the regional companion ticket or the u/g voucher - but 20k BA miles for less than ZAR400 is terrific value. I will probably ditch the card before renewal.

ahrobert

I agree that SAA communication is hopeless and the increased Companion Ticket spend levels suck. However with Platinum/ Gold you get 1 mile for R6.0/ R6.5 spend whereas Standard Bank it is 1 mile per some R10 spend. Diners is another option at 1 mile per R7,5 spend.
SaFlyer

Seshman

Standard Bank/BA CC is 1 mile /R7.50 spend. I know this because I just signed up, and received my card about 3 weeks ago. Dumped Voyager 2 years ago, and even domestically I do BA/Comair. IMHO BA has a far superior product than SAA, however, I will admit that SAA's domestic airbuses are in better nic than BA's domestic boeings.

SAWorldVoyager

on standard card yes, on Diners Prive its 1 mile per R6 spend.

Cheetah_SA

Mmm... what's Diners Prive? And more importantly what is the annual fee?

I'm thinking of giving up my DC card as I seldom use it anymore. (And when I was using it they drove me crazy with their credit limits that they would alter "according to your spending patterns" - another unannounced change to T&C: what happened to "the card with no limit".) Anyhow, I now pretty much only use it on rare occasions for lounge access. So rarely that the fee would almost certainly be more than just paying for lounge access.

thijsseh

The 'normal' DC is free if you are a Standard Bank private banking client and spend at least R40K per annum on the card.
I dropped the DC when I got my Voyager card a few years ago as I was not going to spend R40K on it any more. The SB platinum card is free (or rather, 'included') with the Private banking package, so I still have that one (dormant). So what I think I'll do is get a DC card again (via SB), move to BA and use Diners where accepted and SB (Master Charge) where Diners is not taken (similar to how I use the Voyager AMEX / Visa now). Use up the Voyager miles (and the one companion ticket I still have) and start collecting BAEC miles. Saves R1650 in card fees. Can use more lounges on DC than on Voyager. Seems a no brainer now! Pity, because I have always enjoyed the Business class product on the SA longhauls. But this devaluation in conditions is too much. Add to that that you can have a BAEC household account (which I have had for some time).

Wonder how many customers SA is going to loose by the change in conditions on the card. BTW, there is now a message on the latest statement to say that the conditions for (amongst others) companion tickets have changed (they refer you to flysaa.com for the details, which are very difficult to find...) and the reassure you with the statement that 'your card remains best-in-class'.

SAWorldVoyager

Its 3 or 4k per annum, but includes SA Voyager Platinum status, so well worth it.