Early last weekend (Friday night to be exact), people started sharing a transfer bonus to British Airways Avios. The offer said that if you transferred Chase Ultimate Rewards in by March 31st, you’d get a 20% transfer bonus. The page looked like this
Over the next few days this got shared around the Internet but I never sent out a Transfer Bonus Alert for it.
Why not?
From the bazillion years (OK, about 21 years) that I’ve been doing this, I could tell something was off. What exactly?
- There was nothing on the Chase Ultimate Rewards page about the bonus offer. Now that alone doesn’t make it not real. Qatar, Cathay Pacific, and a few other programs have done bonuses on “their side” before. Thing is, BA had never done that.
- There were no terms listed. Programs are generally very good about Terms and Conditions links. This said “Terms Apply” with absolutely no link to Terms. They are extra relevant when it’s sponsored by the frequent flyer program because you need to know when the bonus miles will arrive. We have seen bonuses where the bonus miles (looking at you Cathay!) wouldn’t arrive until weeks after the promotion ended. So you couldn’t use the bonus to make an instant booking, defeating the purpose since I rarely engage in speculative transfers.
- The above made it feel to me like Marketing launched the page update before IT. My best guess was that the offer would launch yesterday. On the MilesTalk Facebook Group I recommended waiting. We even had someone do a test transfer Saturday AM and by Sunday PM – no bonus Avios! I was basically saying “Will it kill you to wait two days and make sure this thing is real?”
- The transfer bonus was flying all around groups and blogs, but still nobody had any Terms and Conditions. It was pure groupthink. Now, I don’t fault anyone for sharing. By all accounts it looked valid. I think that because of our Transfer Bonus Alerts service – where I can’t take it back! – I needed a bit more assurance it wasn’t a mistake.
- I also reached out to my contacts at Chase to see what was up. I knew I wouldn’t hear until at least Monday (I got definitive word today, though the page was pulled yesterday).
As it turned out, the bonus was NOT intended to be posted and in fact the bonus will not launch until March 1st.
As confirmed to be directly by Chase: “While this offer is currently not available to cardmembers, we can confirm that cardmembers will have access to a British Airways bonus offer running March 1-31, 2025.”
For those that transferred, I would imagine all you can do is open a customer support ticket with a screenshot of the offer (you can use the one above!) and ask for either the 20% bonus or a return of your Ultimate Rewards points. You acted in good faith after all.
But Chase never promoted this offer on their end, so it’s really 100% on BA to make right.
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