If you have an Avios credit card coming up for renewal, check your British Airways / Aer Lingus / Iberia activity as you might see 10,000 bonus Avios in your account.
Reader Carlyle reached out to let us know that his British Airways Avios credit card came up for renewal recently. He’d been weighing up whether or not to keep the card, checked his Avios balance and noticed something unexpected – 10,000 bonus Avios.
The 10,000 Avios were posted with a line entry of ‘Renewal bonus’ despite him not having called for a retention offer. If you have an Avios credit card coming up for renewal, it’s therefore worth checking to see if you’ve been targeted for a bonus such as this.
If you happen to also see 10,000 bonus points for renewing but haven’t actually renewed your card yet, you could presumably cancel your card if you didn’t want to keep it due to the annual fee and keep those bonus Avios seeing as they’ve already posted to your account.
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Yep-Got 10K added to account
Received the bonus in September.
Thanks for the heads up, just looked and I got the same.
An email was sent out in January of this year notifying Avios cardholders of this bonus, and it includes terms stating the points can be clawed back if you cancel within 12 months from your anniversary date.
@ Kent – my AF posted 1.1.21, but the 10,000 Avios only just posted. Do the T&Cs posted above mean I have to keep my account open another 12 months from my point-posting date of 12.14.21 or only from my 12.31.20 anniversary date when the promo became active? Or from my next anniversary date of 12.31.21? Thanks
AF posting date isn’t the same as card anniversary date. My guess is the AF that posted 1.1.21 applied to a card anniversary in Dec. 2020. You just hit your 2021 anniversary, so you’re seeing the 10k now – so yes, you’d have to keep the card open another year to avoid a clawback.
Of course – just BA said the AF had to be paid & was wondering if they meant 2021 before the Avios posted or 2022 after & AF’s are paid in advance for the following year. Thanks for getting back
Do you have the date that email from BA/Chase was sent?
Jan. 5th, 2021 and another one in early May. Both had the subject line “(name), it’s a new year with new travel possibilities”. The 10k bonus is kind of an afterthought to the main subjects of the email which are saving 10% on flights and earning 5x on flights, 3x on hotels through the year.
Great, thanks so much