Earlier this year, Iberia brought out a promotion where you could load up on a tonne of Avios for flights you never had to fly. Most people who took advantage of the promotion went ahead to maximise the promotion and got themselves Iberia 90000 Avios.
These Avios came with special Terms & Conditions. The terms were that the Avios needed to be used by December 1, 2018. Otherwise, they would be clawed back from the accounts. There were many hiccups for many people in getting these Avios in the first place, which almost lead me to believe that Iberia was trying to back off. In reality, they were perhaps just as confused it seems about what hit them. We did post a couple of reminders as well about the use of the Avios as well.
Anyhow, I managed to use most of those Avios, and eventually, I was left with 11,000 Avios in my account. More on how I used them later. I tried a few segments to work from India, but it did not happen. Also, I haven’t started planning a lot of travel for the next year. So there was no place for me to fit in these 11,000 Avios, and the hotel booking options from these were all coming to be not useful as well. I tried transferring to British Airways Executive Club but given I have a family account running; I was not going to be able to do that. That was this morning India time.
Eventually, I guessed that Iberia would perhaps not do anything on this end and was just bluffing so that everyone would rush up their Avios. But I just logged in to check again, and it seems they were able to build IT which clawed back those Avios just fine.
I heard people who were able to transfer their Avios to British Airways did just fine with a 90,000 negative hit on their Iberia accounts.
What happened with your Iberia 90,000 Avios? Used them or lost them?
Iberia website kept crashing and not processing booking yesterday so I wasn’t able to use all the Avios – anyone else have same experience?
I booked slightly after 6pm eastern (12Midnight in Spain) on Nov 30th. (I had only 4,100 miles left from my earlier booking so I booked a one way to use up the balance.) The miles were still in my account at that time and Iberia confirmed my booking; debiting the miles for the flight and leaving a 100 miles from the promotion left in my account.
I checked my account this morning, and see that I now have a negative balance. Seems Iberia tried to “expire” the miles after the fact even though they accepted my booking and applied the miles I still had. They charged my credit card for taxes and 500 mile shortage at the time of booking and let me make my seat selection today as well.
Used them all but spent a lot of time yesterday figuring out how to burn remaining 34.5k I had, and 17.5k spouse had. God forbid I leave anything on the table. Iberia site was wonky, every time I changed pages I had to do a capta or what that thing is called. In the end wound up with 1o/w LAX-LIS (sis loved the flight), 2 o/w business BOS-MAD for next Nov, and 2 r/t AA BOS-RSW (coach down/business back) for Feb. Moved total of 18k from Chase to make it work. After the first LAX-LIS business I was ahead of the game. Without this promo I’d have used 3 x 57.5k Aeroplan to get overseas. Great savings. What a great hobby we have!