Aer Card - My experience

skillbane_

As some of you may have seen BOI and Aer Lingus have joined up to make the Aer credit card for which you pay €7.99 a month, you get 2 lounge passes, 2 PriorityBoarding passes, you collect Avios air miles, and get 2 free* flights to anywhere in Europe.

On the face of this I signed up. I have had a bit of a negative experience so I just wanted to air some of them in the interest of advising prospective users,


First, the air miles (avios). The rate for standard purchases is 1 avios per 4euro spent. This is well below the average that other avios cards accumulate (usually 1 to 1) and I'm talking about cards in other countries that have no monthly fee. I can't complain too much about this as I knew this before signing up. What I didn't realise however is just how many avios points are required to get money off flights. I saw a possibility of using 18000 avios for 40euro off a flight for example, whereas on British Airways I used 11000 avios to get 120euro off a flight, on the same week.

Secondly, and in my opinion most importantly, the free* flights. It's well signposted that these exclude taxes and charges but the real issue is that when booking these flights the taxes and charges are pretty enormous. For example, a flight to Vienna that was on the website was around 140euro, and for the free flights I was offered these for 105eur, a decent saving but I found the same route with another airline for 75eur, hardly something Aer Lingus can be faulted for but goes to show how unlikely it is that ill use these 2 free flights at any point. Another user on this site has has similar experience, and it would appear that the fare offered for free flights usually comes in at just a little below the base fare. I work in the industry and know exactly how much charges are at each airport and how much a base taxes and charges fee would bee for each route, and I can only surmise that the charges they are applying are not only the necessary charges such as airport charges etc. IMHO these charges should be transparent.

Thirdly, I've had issues such as not being able to login to my account, free flights not showing up after I've spent the required 5k, avios slow to transfer to my Aer club account. In fairness every time I've emailed Aer Lingus Aer Card support they have been very helpful and quick in response.

Lastly, the family travel insurance included is advertised at costing just under 150eur, but even family plans on other providers typically cost a lot less, and it's far less useful for a single person like myself.

So to summarise I'm pretty disappointed with the card, and I'm very unlikely to renew it next year. Had the free flights been heavily discounted I probably would have seen it worth the money but seeing as I'm highly unlikely to use them I'll probably take a hit money wise given the monthly fee. Hopefully I'll get a chance to use the lounge passes and priority boarding but it could be that I'll end up giving these away.

For high spenders who enjoy earning airmiles it might be a better option, but personally it's not for me. Any questions feel free to ask

L1011

Since the interchange fee cut there are very few cards anywhere in Europe paying out a decent rate of points/cashback at all and those that exist are slowly closing down or getting worse. The rest of the benefits are relatively poor but as I put over 40 grand over my personal card a year (primarily work expenses including some purchasing - I'm not that rich!) it's worth it for the Avios alone.

The travel insurance is far from great and has too high an excess to even bother with many of the day to day claims I would have done with Mapfre policies in the past as it happens. Direct family are covered if you pay for the travel on your card. I had nearly 200 in expenses from delayed bags bit was going to get less than 50 even if they accepted everything so I didn't even bother! 75 excess per person for that type of claim

endofrainbow

Aer Club is by far the worst of the airline loyalty programmes.

L1011

endofrainbow wrote: »

Aer Club is by far the worst of the airline loyalty programmes.

Believe me, there's worse out there - but its ridiculously bare bones. No direct hotel partner, just Avios eStores is the biggest clanger; and only one car hire and finance partner etc.

However, unless you're willing to transfer to get everywhere (and go for Flying Blue) or specifically go to London (and go for BA) or North America (and go for AAdvantage/SkyMiles/MileagePlus) you're quite stuck. I have to go to London and near Europe for work primarily as well as European leisure travel so nothing else makes any sense - I could go KLM for the European stuff but to have any chance of status I need to be on one programme only.

This year I haven't managed to get over the line on Aerclub but I have managed to get status with *two* hotel chains from the same amount of travel!