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It’s now been 10+ days since Iberia launched its amazing/crazy bonus Avios promotion – and that means, according to the terms, Avios should be winging their way into Iberia Plus accounts any time now…
“Special offer of an extra 9,000 Avios for each ticket purchased between 21 and 24 June 2018 (maximum of 90,000 promotional Avios per member) on iberia.com for a flight operated by Iberia, Iberia Express or Air Nostrum. The Avios will be added within 10 days of the purchase to the Iberia Plus account of all customers identified as members of the Iberia Plus programme during the purchase process.”
I bought some tickets on Thursday 21st June in the evening, so it’s now been more or less 11 days by my reckoning – and there are no bonus Avios in my account. Yet.
Am I annoyed?
Nope – this is Iberia Plus! Given the fact that their IT is so bad I can’t usually even login to my account from Google Chrome, I never thought that a promotion like this would run entirely smoothly.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they end up having to credit the Avios manually, and given the (naively unanticipated) demand, that could take a while.
Am I worried?
I can understand people beginning to get a bit twitchy at this point, but my general advice for now is to relax.
If Iberia didn’t intend to honour the promotion, it had ample opportunity to pull the plug early on when the promotion had just started to be written about. Instead, the exact opposite happened – Iberia directly briefed blogs about the promo, confirming it was as good as it looked. Iberia’s social media feeds publically, repeatedly, stated the same.
The promotion ran its full course, and there hasn’t been any comment suggesting it won’t be honoured in the week since it ended either. The promotion page (with terms) is still available on the Iberia site here.
If Iberia doesn’t intend to honour it, why set itself up for a world of pain (and expense), rather than just stopping it after a day or so.
Caveat
There are a couple of potential reasons for concern in particular cases. Reports on Flyertalk suggest that people who opened up new accounts specifically for the promotion are currently having trouble logging in and there have also been issues with the Iberia Plus number disappearing from the bookings of people with new accounts.
If you are in this situation, I think you’ll very probably be able to get it sorted eventually, but the combination of Iberia IT and customer service may make it unreasonably challenging.
Bottom line
I’ve got ‘skin in the game’ here, so sincerely hope it works out. I may therefore be biased and looking at the situation too rosily, but I’m not worried yet.
What do you think?
I can’t be bothered to choose where I want to go and look for redemption seats, its too hot and sunny !
First World Problems !!
Have you thought about business days? that’s the case. THeyll anytime soon in your account.
Patience…. that’s Avios surname.
Aye – looks like it, though of course the standard way of drafting terms if you mean business days is to write “business days” rather than “days” 🙂 . It’s Iberia though so, as you say, patience is probably the best policy for now.
I bought mine and wife’s on the 21st too. They should have posted by now and I’m not going to make excuses for them. This ‘let em wait’ is typical Iberia and unprofessional to say the least.
Oh I agree – but from a practical point of view, you’d have more fun howling at the moon than demanding Avios immediately from Iberia.
Ha Ha…with Iberia I’m surprised if I can log in first time let alone anything technical. Truth is I think they’re committed to stumping the points now and it’s still a very generous offer when all is said and done.
True – as long as the Avios do turn up eventually I’ll be happy.
Seems Iberia are cancelling new accounts that tried to take advantage of the promo
https://loyaltylobby.com/2018/07/02/iberia-plus-limiting-canceling-new-accounts-that-purchased-promo-tickets/?omhide=true
To the best of my knowledge, what they are actually doing is seeking to validate those new accounts – so if someone signed themselves up there shouldn’t be a problem (if prepared to send whatever info Iberia say they require), but if they signed the dog up that would be a problem. Seems fair enough.
Yes, that’s what I meant – sorry, I wasn’t clear!
I reckon the main worry is that they delay the posting of the Avios until after your phantom flights, and then refuse to credit the Avios because you didn’t actually take the flights. It would be grossly unfair of course, because they’re benefiting from their own rules breach, but I wouldn’t rule it out.
Not impossible for some maybe, but remember the Avios are due to expire at the end of this year and you could book flights for next year, so I doubt it.
Received 520 points this morning, hmm hardly 9000 per booking (and i have few bookings) … lets see if more will come through ..)
I must admit that I am enjoying watching some bloggers and Flyertalk participants massively overreact to these bonus Avios supposedly being delayed (welcome to Iberia!) or accounts being shut down.
Phase 2 – assuming the bonus Avios arrive – will be massive overreactions to the difficulty of dealing with Iberia over the phone and the quirks of booking partner rewards.
Haha, oh dear me – phase 2 is going to be quite a sight…
This gentleman is wildly jumping the gun already:
https://livefromalounge.boardingarea.com/2018/07/03/iberia-90000-avios-promotion-dishonoured/
Yes, I saw that… absolutely awful headline.
An excellent example of hysterical blogger syndrome.
Sounds an awful lot like the burglers who sue a homeowner for injuring themselves during a robbery…