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New Avios wine deal with Laithwaites launched

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Wine retailer Laithwaites, the UK’s largest mail-order wine retailer (it runs The Sunday Times Wine Club as well as pretty much every other branded mail-order operation) has been a BAEC partner for many years via The British Airways Wine Club.

It has also offered deals to avios.com members since the Air Miles relaunch in 2011.

Laithwaites

Via avios.com, you are usually offered 1,000 Avios for your first order of a 12-bottle case of wine, with a paltry 250 Avios for subsequent orders. Cases are priced from £80 plus postage.

There is no obligation to make further purchases after your first case, but you need to proactively cancel.

However, at present they are now offering this deal:

A 12-bottle case for as little as £51

FREE delivery

1,000 Avios

A free bottle of prosecco

You are getting tied into something. Every 12 weeks, Laithwaites will contact you with details of a new case. If you do not specifically say that you do not want to receive it, either online or by phone, it will be sent to you and charged to the credit card you used for your initial order.  The small print can be found here.

So, in return for the cash saving on your first case, you are going to have to deal with some admin from Laithwaites going forward. Once you have got your 1,000 Avios banked you can quit the Wine Plan, but this may take a month or so.

Whether you want to go for this depends on how well organised you are. Overall, to be honest, it is a pretty good deal – 12 bottles of wine at a bargain price, 1000 Avios and some prosecco thrown in.  I doubt the wine will be too bad, given that they want to encourage you to buy more.

Remember that this is an avios.com offer, not a British Airways promotion, and that you will need to give an avios.com account number.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Comments (19)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Fido says:

    Bear in mind their s genes are such that you can pull out at any time. So get your case, phone up and say you don’t want anymore and you don’t get anymore. I’ve done this on a few occasions.

  • Kay says:

    > I doubt the wine will be too bad, given that they want to encourage you to buy more.

    The wine -is- bad.. I’ve had two introductory cases and they were both very average. Lower-tier producers and it’s mostly (all?) made for Laithwaites so shipped over by the tanker and good luck trying to find a review of a bottle. I’d value them at no more than £3/bottle, so your introductory Avios are 1000 for £13 plus mucking around to get the monthly plan cancelled and potentially having to chase up the Avios.

    BTW – might want to fix the page title (“1000 Avios from Laithwines…”).

    • Rob says:

      Bah! I can’t fix that or the link on the Twitter etc feed will break.

  • Fido says:

    Oops – read schemes instead of s genes!

  • Ceeps says:

    Oh I’ve just tried to sign up for this and it says the offer has expired! 🙁

    • Rob says:

      Offer expires 30 September 2014 as per the rules! They only launched this two weeks ago.

  • Ceeps says:

    Yes I read that. It took me all the way to the payment page, looked like it was all going through OK BUT then took me to an ‘offer expired’ page. I’ve not had any emails from them to confirm payment, so I’ll try again now. If not successful I’ll give them a ring when they open.

  • Tim says:

    There are three initial cases (reds, whites and mixed) all at the same price of £57.48, not £51. This yields per bottle price of £4.79 or £4.42 if the ‘free’ bottle of bubbly is included. There are always reasonable bottles of wine available for £4 or less so I view this as a premium of £5.48, and all the associated admin, for £4.16 worth in Tesco vouchers converted to Avios. No deal.

  • Ryan says:

    My experience of this was:
    – I had no issues with the quality of the wine (but I don’t know anything about wine)
    – I received 250 avios for my first order not 1000
    – Chase up of a single web message sorted this with no bother.
    – Stopping future deliveries was another single web message.
    Thought it was an OK offer on the whole.

    • Erico1875 says:

      You don’t need to know anything about wine.
      Its simple. You either like it or you don’t. I shared a nice bottle of ALDI CAVA last night and it was under a fiver.

  • squills says:

    No complaints about the wine either, very fair quality for the price when I did this x2.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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