Avianca "Lifemiles" - Questions and Discussion

[luxury-lizard]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

Just saw on the morning news that the budget will introduce GST on online shopping - assuming this will/may impact buy miles - if you're thinking of taking advantage of this latest promo - act now.

 

[LittleFokker]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

Just saw on the morning news that the budget will introduce GST on online shopping - assuming this will/may impact buy miles - if you're thinking of taking advantage of this latest promo - act now.

I wonder how is that going to work with, say, Avianca? Unless the tax office looks at my credit card statement and bills me or cuts a deal with the overseas supplier to charge Aus residents GST at source.

?

 

[d.diddy_13]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

New to LM, have been using US now AA for awhile just after a quick 'low down'

Home town is MEL looking for award bookings mainly to Asia and are a family of four.

How is award availability on TG four 4 seats
Email bookings of screen shots, is this an ongoing issue, not worried if I have to do it this way (actually happy saves calling)
Best to setup an account for all family members for the bonus promos
Do the points exp

Any other info you see as important

 

[FreddyFattler]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

International travel is gst free is it not?

Domestic travel has GST unless its booked as part of an itinerery to position yourself for the international departure.

The only way i could see them charging for this under the above circumstances is at time of booking by adding a GST charge..but how theyd work that out god only knows...i hope they wouldnt be relying on Avianca to implement it into their website, thatd be an absolute disaster going off the recent "update" they made

 

[MEL_Traveller]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

New to LM, have been using US now AA for awhile just after a quick 'low down'

Home town is MEL looking for award bookings mainly to Asia and are a family of four.

How is award availability on TG four 4 seats
Email bookings of screen shots, is this an ongoing issue, not worried if I have to do it this way (actually happy saves calling)
Best to setup an account for all family members for the bonus promos
Do the points exp

Any other info you see as important

the screen shot method is not as straightforward as that unfortunately... it requires a call from Avianca in Columbia to finalise payment... which may come during reasonable office hours, or may come at 1am in the morning! THen there's the issues with accepting credit cards (they don't always go through), and then the issue of waiting for another call. And hoping they do all of that before the ticketing deadline!

If you want to check for award availability (and number of seats) on Thai, you can use the United.com booking tool. No membership to United is required, just select 'award travel' on the main page after you have entered in your origin and destination.

Thai used to display 2 seats at a time, and release another 2 seats immediately until such time as the total award allocation for a particular flight was taken. In general they were pretty liberal with seats.

However - I'm not sure how well that is working now that they are cutting flights on some of the popular routes from 2 daily to just once daily, or otherwise reducing frequency.

With LM you generally need to be a member at the time the promotion is announced, otherwise you have to wait for the next one. You'll need to read the terms and conditions for this specific offer.

 

[boomy]

Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

the screen shot method is not as straightforward as that unfortunately... it requires a call from Avianca in Columbia to finalise payment... which may come during reasonable office hours, or may come at 1am in the morning! THen there's the issues with accepting credit cards (they don't always go through), and then the issue of waiting for another call. And hoping they do all of that before the ticketing deadline!

A good way to avoid this hassle is calling the Bogota number, provide the booking reference and ask to pay the taxes. Waiting time is minimal and they will make conference call with the payment department. In case the CC is declined they will stay on the line to try another one.

 

[luxury-lizard]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

A good way to avoid this hassle is calling the Bogota number, provide the booking reference and ask to pay the taxes. Waiting time is minimal and they will make conference call with the payment department. In case the CC is declined they will stay on the line to try another one.

what number is that (Bogota)? I usually call the US number - does the Bogota number have an English option?

Note - recently I have found customer support to be very helpful when these web errors occur - as soon as you mention that you got an error - they don't even want the details - they just pull up the booking (you must have the PNR or they can't seem to find it) and they walk through completing the transaction. They are clearly aware of their web site issues and are well prepared to deal with them over the phone.

I have not (yet) had to resort to screen shots to get a booking but with some of the upthread tips on SQ I may do so in the future. Also, as you all know some itineraries with valid connections are not being displayed even when the individual segments show as available (seems to be TG in particular). So screenshots in the case work as well with customer support.

 

[boomy]

Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

what number is that (Bogota)? I usually call the US number - does the Bogota number have an English option?

+57-44443434 press 2 for English.

 

[VAG newbie]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

Note - recently I have found customer support to be very helpful when these web errors occur - as soon as you mention that you got an error - they don't even want the details - they just pull up the booking (you must have the PNR or they can't seem to find it) and they walk through completing the transaction. They are clearly aware of their web site issues and are well prepared to deal with them over the phone.

Not all of them. Still a matter of HUACA. I had agents simply says "I'll transfer you to the right department", and after looped for 5 people, it usually end up "hola!", someone that doesn't speak English. So if they start transferring your call, my advice is HUACA.

Yes, they are aware of the IT issue but I suspect they don;t want to change. It somehow eliminated all the hidden city trick. So they would rather confirm the itinerary requested before deciding whether to ticket it or not.

 

[burmans]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

International travel is gst free is it not?

Domestic travel has GST unless its booked as part of an itinerery to position yourself for the international departure.

The only way i could see them charging for this under the above circumstances is at time of booking by adding a GST charge..but how theyd work that out god only knows...i hope they wouldnt be relying on Avianca to implement it into their website, thatd be an absolute disaster going off the recent "update" they made

This is the sort of question that is going to be very hard to work out and implement. Its one thing to say GST must be charged but one suspects in reality its going to very hard for the ATO to force overseas supliers to comply.

In this case though, how do they know what the points are being bought for (in many cases the buyer does not know at time of purchase) to determine if it is GSTable or not?

 

[drron]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

Can you use LM miles for any domestic travel?
Mine are certainly going to be used for international travel which doesn't attract GST.
Also we are hardly importing the miles-they sit on our LM accounts which are domiciled in South America.

 

[noviceFF]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

First time user of LM so apologise in advance for any stupid questions (I've attempted to read as many of this thread to get up to speed but 4000+ posts is hard to digest)
To the wise heads here, I'm about to take the plunge and buy miles to use for 2xJ for SYD-ICN via Asiana.
1) I can see availability on award search on LM website so is it as easy as buy miles and then redeem? Everyone seems to be talking about "screenshots" here, does this apply to me? I don't really understand this.
2) The max miles that can be purchased(via LM rules) incl bonus is 150K but I seem to be able to get 154K (with bonus) with a dummy run, does that mean if I put this through it might not work? I could do without the hassle of chasing them up or my credit card company...
Thx in advance.

 

[FreddyFattler]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

In this case though, how do they know what the points are being bought for (in many cases the buyer does not know at time of purchase) to determine if it is GSTable or not?

Thats why i doubt they will charge on the purchase of the miles. A very high percentage would be used for international travel thus no gst...unless they go down the route of gst refunds which would be an absolute pain in the butt.

If the airlines cooperated and charged gst whilst using the miles to book a domestic flight how would they determine the value of the miles considering one could be using several batches purchased at different prices.

It should go in the too hard basket.

 

[hossein_au]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

Also we are hardly importing the miles-they sit on our LM accounts which are domiciled in South America.

I think it is more to do with where "services" rendered rather than where various components in preparation of the service are stored. I am not a lawyer, but I presume "service" of an international travel is not provided/consumed domestically and therefore not subject to domestic taxation laws (even though the aircraft, for example, might be registered in Australia).

 

[Alanslegal]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

First time user of LM so apologise in advance for any stupid questions (I've attempted to read as many of this thread to get up to speed but 4000+ posts is hard to digest)
To the wise heads here, I'm about to take the plunge and buy miles to use for 2xJ for SYD-ICN via Asiana.
1) I can see availability on award search on LM website so is it as easy as buy miles and then redeem? Everyone seems to be talking about "screenshots" here, does this apply to me? I don't really understand this.
2) The max miles that can be purchased(via LM rules) incl bonus is 150K but I seem to be able to get 154K (with bonus) with a dummy run, does that mean if I put this through it might not work? I could do without the hassle of chasing them up or my credit card company...
Thx in advance.

1) If you can see it online you can book it, this is commonly for single segment awards so SYD-ICN should be bookable online. However multi-segment awards which include Australia such as SYD-ICN-LAX then you would have take screen shots of every sector and email LM to book it for you. There are multi-segment awards that you can book online if they don't go near Australia eg. CDG-BKK-HKG.

2) To be safe, I would just buy 68K and get the bonus to bring it up to 149,xx_. The good thing with LM is there is a sliding scale when you book so you can end up paying a larger cash component and less miles and vice versa, depending on how many points you have and also factoring in which ratio of cashoints that you find worthwhile.

 

[VAG newbie]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

First time user of LM so apologise in advance for any stupid questions (I've attempted to read as many of this thread to get up to speed but 4000+ posts is hard to digest)
To the wise heads here, I'm about to take the plunge and buy miles to use for 2xJ for SYD-ICN via Asiana.
1) I can see availability on award search on LM website so is it as easy as buy miles and then redeem? Everyone seems to be talking about "screenshots" here, does this apply to me? I don't really understand this.
2) The max miles that can be purchased(via LM rules) incl bonus is 150K but I seem to be able to get 154K (with bonus) with a dummy run, does that mean if I put this through it might not work? I could do without the hassle of chasing them up or my credit card company...
Thx in advance.

Screenshot doesn't apply to you. Whatever you can see online you can just go ahead and book it. If you wanna know the details of screenshot, go back to the posts in Dec 2014, that's when LM started its IT glitch where a lot of available spaces have disappeared overnight despite those spaces are still available.

In regards to your maximum miles purchase, I think you can still buy over 150K except you may be charged at a full rate. Double check the amount you are paying and make sure you are only paying 1.5 cents per mile. LM doesn't really enforce the 150K mile rule. I maxed out last May, but when promo came again in Dec, I was able to purchase extra 66000 miles during the cyber Monday promo (which AKA "black Monday", after that day, that's when IT glitch started)

However, there is no need to buy the full amount, just about 45-50% of the miles needed and you can still top up with cash at a rate of 1.5 cents each.

 

[VAG newbie]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

1) If you can see it online you can book it, this is commonly for single segment awards so SYD-ICN should be bookable online. However multi-segment awards which include Australia such as SYD-ICN-LAX then you would have take screen shots of every sector and email LM to book it for you. There are multi-segment awards that you can book online if they don't go near Australia eg. CDG-BKK-HKG.

SYD-ICN-LAX has no problem, no need of screenshot. Only those require transiting in SE Asia, in most cases, BKK with TG. But that's not always the case, we have discovered AUS-BKK-Scandinavia no problem, as well as AUS-BKK-CTS. Transiting in North Asia has no issue most of the time. other than SYD-ICN-LAX on OZ, SYD-PEK-LAX also no problem, but SYD-PEK-JFK needs screenshot.

There are really no rules saying what would show online and what wouldn't. I just discovered the other day, SIN-NRT-SFO on NH F, it shows availability online on Tues, Wed and Fri only, but I need to fly on Thurs. So I searched on Thurs, SIN-NRT, there is availability on NH F. Then NRT-SFO, there is also availability on NH F, at the same timing and flight number as those that shows on all other days, but when I searched SIN-SFO forcing ANA, still the same, nothing on Thurs but available on all other days! It doesn't make sense! But this is LM, it never make sense! This is when I would need to use screenshots.

So to make it simple, here are the steps.
1. Search your desired award in UA. If you can see the same itinerary online in LM, you got lucky, go ahead and book.
2. If not, then search segment by segment in LM. They should show (sometimes may need to force select the airline) in LM. Take screen shot of each.
3. If they are within LM rules, ie. < 8 hours layover, no mixed cabin, screenshot should work, provide the itinerary is not to complicated. But I guess anything is worth a shot.

 

[Alanslegal]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

Yes you're correct VAG newbie - my bad. I was keyboard happy in my posts and not quite accurate in my posts.

 

[VAG newbie]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

Yes you're correct VAG newbie - my bad. I was keyboard happy in my posts and not quite accurate in my posts.

No worries. I knew it was just a typo. I was trying to help noviceFF.

But this is what makes AFF forum fun. Apparently we are the bunch that came up with this screenshot technic and we might have dug a hidden treasure. Reading some of the expert frequent flyers blogs in US, it looks like Americans are not aware of such technic (they don't need to) and they simply advised "whatever you can see online is whatever you can book. If you can't see online, you can't book it".

If anyone is heading to JFK and is willing to try out Air China, I would be interested to know if anyone is successful in booking SYD-PEK-JFK using screenshots. The connection is less than 8 hours so I don't see how it can be a problem. The CA flight bound for LAX leaves PEK at about the same time and LM allow it to be booked online, so obviously it's not against their routing rules. If it is possible, then we can easily go SYD-JFK on RT for 160K LM, (CA out bound and OZ inbound, both have wide open availability) and start exploring other possibilities with screenshot technics.

 

[noviceFF]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

Thanks everyone for your speedy and helpful advice.