[Anonymous]

[Binman62]

Have just made a booking on BA.com and was surprised to be hit by a £9 charge for 2 tickets on a single booking. Worse still was that the card I used was a BA Amex card. The charge wiped out the small saving made via shareholder discount which was only gained by going through the hoops of the bashareholder web site.
I had though the charge was £4.50 per booking but clearly not.
I am irritated that BA feel they have to do and to those who fork out for £150 credit cards. You would think that shareholders and or BA amex card holders could have the annoying charge waived. It is afterall disproportionate to their transaction costs.
Would have gone elsewhere but BA only airline on the route.

[NTarrant]

The only time you don’t get charged with a BA Amex card is when you pay the charges when booking using miles and a companion voucher.

I don’t agree with any charges for credit cards no matter what card it is or whatever airline. Most customers pay by plastic and mainly credit cards. I always feel that the price should reflect the main method of payment which is credit card, if there it is cheaper to use a debit card then a reduction should be given, it looks much better.

But I do agree that there should be no charge for BA Amex users on BA bookings

[Daniel9]

It is utterly ridiculous, and fundamentally flies in the face of the principle of loyalty.
I like BA, I use BA regularly, so getting a BA Amex card (as opposed to the other myriad rewarding credit cards out there) seemed a sensible thing to do. Brand loyalty has its benefits.
But not here. Ridiculous. Charge for credit cards if you must, but encourage me to keep my BA Amex by waving the charge for the use of the card – which I believe BMI do with their Amex.
Times are tough, so don’t make shortcuts, reward loyalty – these charges will never add up to the cost of passengers just choosing to use a different airline.
Poor customer sense from the world’s favourite airline.

[GoonerLondon]

However, you do get twice as many miles on BA spend than you do on any other.

BMI dont charge if you pay with their Amex card, but you don’t get double miles.

What would you prefer? (Im not sure the answer can be both)

[LondonAndy70]

I believe that BMI now do charge for using their AmEx card to book flights through their site…. it currently says that the BMI AmEx and Mastercard are each £4.50. What I’ve done is got a paypal Electron card, loaded it up using my BA Amex and use that to pay for flights (it’s free to use on BMI for example).

[Binman62]

GoonerLondon. Point taken and understood and no I don’t expect both, however as a premium card holder I have already paid £150 for the card. BA/Amex can’t have it both ways either if they wish to retain loyalty

[GoonerLondon]

So what would you choose?

[Bunnahabhain]

LondonAndy does loading up your PayPal Electron card from your BA Amex one count as a cash advance, or otherwise incur a handling charge and / or interest? Sounds a bit too good to be true to get round the ever increasing charges by airlines and now some budget hotel chains for credit card payments (easyJet now a ridiculous £8) and accrue BA miles by using Electron (mainly still free) but in turn fuelled by the BA Amex, including cash bookings on BA itself – fortunately not redemptions (yet!) as mentioned earlier.

Couldn’t you also stick £10k on your Paypal card using the Amex one if you had that amount available to do so, and claim your BA Amex companion reward voucher immediately, instead of having to spend that amount within the year? It does say cash advance etc transactions don’t qualify for the £10k annual spend to get the voucher, again would be interesting to know. Hope that hasn’t let Tiddles out!

[GoonerLondon]

One thing to be mindful of: Electron does not provide any protection in case of provider failure. In recent airline insolvency cases, only those who paid with a full credit card got their money back.

Unlikely in the case of BMI / BA perhaps.

[Bunnahabhain]

Good point, and I think you also qualify for some degree of travel insurance by paying with Amex directly.

But for domestic and short haul flights on easyJet etc it sounds useful.

[LondonAndy70]

I’ve had the Paypal card for a few months now, and the points worth bearing in mind (from my point of view) are:

There is an initial charge of £4.95 (this gives you the card for 2 years).

There are limits to the amount you can load onto the card: £1000 per Account per week ( i.e.: seven consecutive days); £2000 per Account per calendar month; and £10,000 per Account per calendar year. I understand from the Flyertalk forum on this that occasionally questions can be asked re money laundering if you load the maximum very quickly, but I haven’t had

It isn’t treated as a cash advance and I haven’t (yet!) been charged any interest by AmEx – I guess AmEx treat it as if it is a Paypal purchase.

I’m not absolutely certain what sort of card it is!! They call it a “reloadable prepaid card” and with BMI they count it as an Electron card (so no charge) whilst Ryanair said it was a debit card and therefore there was a charge. I haven’t tried Easyjet yet so don’t know what they think it is!

Personally I have another travel insurance policy through my Black Card which doesn’t require me to use any particular card to be covered, so this isn’t an issue for me but I can appreciate it can be for some.

All in all I’ve been able to spend about £750 per month on the card on things I couldn’t use my AmEx for (including Council Tax bills) and, if this continues, this gives me 13,500 BA Miles per year for a £2.50 outlay – not bad!

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