Is the Tesco ‘Avios conversion’ competition worth it?

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• richie says:

  6 Aug6 August 09:49

  if you are sitting on a lage amount of clubcard points (spit between 2 accouts, although linked in baec in a household.) of say £700 it can mean the difference between 170k avios and 250k. with the latter being a double business return to hkg.
  my long term plan is to not use any avios for redemption this year as im flying a lot and will achieve silver . (all eco class) so next year i will reap the free lounge access . and then the year after i will hopefully have 500k of avios to use. im thinking round the world via berlin , abu dhabi, phuket, hong kong, sydney, brazil, new york london.
  im guessing they dont expire … or do they?

  • Rob says:

    6 Aug6 August 10:23

    They expire if you don’t earn or spend any for 3 years

  • Alex says:

    6 Aug6 August 10:25

    Your Avios expire after 36 months of total inactivity. So if you collect a single avios point every 36 months your account will stay open.

    • squillion says:

      6 Aug6 August 10:34

      Indefensible to let any expire these days – just buy something through the BA Store.

      I see John Lewis is offering 4 Avios per £1 at the mo.

• squillion says:

  6 Aug6 August 10:40

  Raffles: could I get your help on something, please? Remember our exchange where we concluded it was impossible to change Virgin Airmiles into Avios? (Which I accept is probably right.)

  Could you maybe do a post where you throw down the challenge of converting Virgin Airmiles into Avios or some more useful currency? You now have a pretty healthy readership 😉 and maybe some bright spark will come up with the goods.

  If you remember, I have about 100K Virgin Airmiles which I’ve kept alive for about 15 years but I really only want Avios for European flights (ie not hotel nights or wine etc).

  I’m hoping I won’t have to wait another 15 years before I can use them! 😉

  • Rob says:

    6 Aug6 August 12:02

    1. Send them over to Hilton HHonors and use them for hotels. You get 200,000 Hilton points. If used wisely, even after the Hilton devaluation, you will get as much £ value from them as you would from 100,000 Flying Club miles.

    2. Send them over to Hilton and convert to Avios. You would only get 20,000 Avios though.

    3. Send them over to IHG Rewards Club and convert to Avios. 100k VS = 100k IHG (2 nights in InterCon Times Square for eg, although in general this is a bad exchange rate) gets you, again, 20,000 Avios.

    4. Find someone and negotiate a trade. You book them a 100k Upper Class redemption, they book you 100k of Avios flights in return. This would be fiddly if you wanted 11 9k RFS Avios redemptions spread out over a year, though.

  • nux says:

    6 Aug6 August 12:13

    There are limited ways ‘out’ of Virgin. The best is to convert to Hilton (1:2) which will give you 200k HHonors points. HHonors to Avios is 10:1, so you will end up with 20,000 avios from your 100,000 Virgin miles.
    http://www.webflyer.com/programs/mileage_converter/

    • squillion says:

      6 Aug6 August 13:19

      Cheers Raffles & Nux – that’s a great link, Nux.

      I think I’ll hang on a bit as you never know what’s around the corner with affiliations I guess.

      My own kids will be old enough to fly off on hols to USA etc in 10 years’ time – or maybe Virgin/ Virgin Red will set up some European partnership.

• Trevor says:

  6 Aug6 August 12:46

  I agree this comp isn’t worth the worry. Between myself, Mrs and Miss, I run 3 Clubcard/Avios accounts. If I were to enter the comp with all 3 accounts to increase my chances of winning, when comparing to a 50% conversion bonus, I am losing “£36”, and since the T&Cs say each household account or address can only win once, at most I’d get back “£100”, but this is only a net “£64”, so not worth it at all.

  Another way of looking at it is also to consider that it’s costing you £12 to enter – you may as well visit a casino if you are willing to pay for such bad odds.

• Rob says:

  17 Aug17 August 13:58

  Nothing is ever ‘instant’ in the transfers world (except in the US, where Amex transfers to airlines ARE instant!) but 24 hours is usually enough.

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