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East Coast Rewards offering special 2nd birthday deals

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East Coast Rewards is my preferred train travel reward scheme. As per this old article, I believe that it offers genuinely good value for money. You only need to spend £300 on First Class tickets to get a free First Class return ticket on their network, and there are plenty of smaller rewards as well.

East Coast Rewards is running special deals until the 11th August to celebrate its 2nd birthday.

Here are the deals:

First Class redemptions (one way) reduced from 450 points to 360 points

Standard Class redemptions (one way) reduced from 250 points to 200 points

20% bonus when you redeem points for e-vouchers valid on any train

There are also two small ‘free money’ deals.

If you join East Coast Rewards this week, you get 100 points (worth £1) as a bonus.

The first 20,000 people to add their birthday to their profile will also receive 50p of points.

Links for both of these are here. Obviously £1.50 of free money is not desperately exciting, but East Coast Rewards IS a good rewards scheme.

PS. If you’ve got kids over 5 (younger kids don’t need a ticket anyway), there is an extra benefit with East Coast Rewards. Instead of redeeming points for them, you pay a small amount of cash – just £10 for a one way in First Class.

PPS. You can get access to the First Class Lounge at Kings Cross and selected other East Coast stations for just 50 East Coast Rewards points (this week, 40 points).  Join now and add your birthday and the 150 points you would earn is good for 3 visits.

Interestingly, the rules do not even insist that you must be travelling on East Coast to get in with this voucher.  Another quirk is – if you are doing a day trip between 2 stations which both have lounges – you can access both on the same pass without buying another one.

Comments (9)

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  • Scott says:

    I had a look at that yesterday and used the reward finder to see when these £0 fares (redemption) were available. Tried a few different stations down to Kings Cross and nothing.
    The e-vouchers are only £1 per 100 points so probably not worth it unless you’ve 1000s of points you want to get rid of.

  • Scott says:

    Added: Found quite a few fares now so they may have been loaded since I tried yesterday. Nothing on the exact day I want but that’s pretty much at the limit of the booking period.

    • Rob says:

      Oddly, I booked 2 F redemptions on East Coast last night to Doncaster (long story). East Midlands Trains wanted £170 for 2 one-way F tickets for me and my daughter, but I got it for 350 points plus £10 for the child ticket plus £20 for a taxi from Doncaster to Sheffield. Very surprised to find availability on Friday night 5pm trains out of London.

  • Scott says:

    Only goes up to the 25th Oct at present so going to have to wait until next week to see what’s available for the date I want.
    Some trains have up to 9+ seats for First and Standard all through the day whereas other days may have a couple of trains before 9am (Doncast to Kings Cross).

  • Dean says:

    Don’t forget that you can redeem now (at the lower promo rates) and then you still have 6 months to make the bookings. If you redeem for 4x2nd class tickets at the same time you get extra discount which means you get all four for 720 points.

  • Scott says:

    I only had 207 points so limited in my redemptions 😉
    Tend to drive down to London more as I catch early flights and the first trains don’t get me to LHR/LGW until 9:30-10am at the earliest unless I stay overnight.
    Quite often fares from my town to KX can be £12 or less so not really worth wasting a voucher on that. Will try and grab some peak time £85 single to get my money’s worth!
    Sometimes East Midlands do those £10 off vouchers that bring the cost of a ticket from Sheffield to St Pancras down to £12-20 in First (like now I think).

  • Joel says:

    I’d always redeemed points for 2nd class tickets previously (I travel Newcastle to Kings X and back). However I had enough points to buy 4 1st class reward tickets this time round by combining the 20% off with the special offer on 4 tickets purchased at the same time. As Raffles mentioned, I was (pleasantly) surprised by the significantly greater availability of 1st class reward seats than standard class – often on the early morning commuter trains as well as peak afternoon (when standard class reward seats are normally not available, even 12 weeks ahead).

  • Andrew M says:

    Do you earn points by booking tickets through them regardless of the network you travel on? Or do you only earn points for parts of the journey on East Coast “metal”?

    I live in Chester and usually take the train into Euston, so spend most my time on Virgin trains.

    • Alan says:

      You earn through any tickets booked through them, higher earning rate for first class.

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