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Bits: £59 Amazon Prime, 1000 Clubcard points on Fuji cameras, American scraps First to Heathrow

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News in brief:

Amazon Prime reduced from £79 to £59 for 48 hours

Some HfP readers received a targetted offer from American Express recently for £10 cashback on a £35 purchase in July.  If you have not yet redeemed that, here is an interesting idea.

Until midnight on Wednesday, Amazon has reduced the cost of Amazon Prime to £59.  See here.  This is a £20 saving.  You would also get an additional £10 back via the Amex promotion if you were targetted.

Prime will get you free next-day delivery for a year plus, perhaps more importantly, a year of Amazon Instant Video.  On July 15th, Amazon will be running ‘Prime Day’ which will feature exclusive offers just for Amazon Prime subscribers, so you will be well placed for that.  You can sign up for your £59 Prime membership here.

1,000 Clubcard points (2,400 Avios) on Fuji cameras

Until 2nd August, Tesco is offering 1,000 bonus Clubcard points on selected Fuji cameras.  That means 2,400 bonus Avios or 2,500 Virgin Flying Club miles.

The cheapest is £59 so it is not a bad rebate if you are looking for something as a gift or for yourself.  You may even be able to resell them on eBay although they would not be cheap to post.  More details here.

1,000 Clubcard points (2,400 Avios) on Lego

Tesco has also brought back another favourite.  Until July 12th, you will receive 1,000 bonus Clubcard points when you spend £60 on Lego.

Lego tends to be well priced at Tesco anyway, so this is a very good deal.  You can see the selection here.  Remember that you can collect your order in-store to avoid postage charges or bashed boxes.

American Boeing 777 200 business class seat

American Airlines drops First Class on New York to Heathrow services

Finally, American Airlines is dropping the First Class cabin from a second of its three Heathrow to New York services from December 17th.  American is moving the aircraft (a Boeing 777-300ER, which is wasted on a short hop like Heathrow) to its new Los Angeles to Sydney route.

This will leave just one AA service per day with First Class.  It will put additional pressure on First Class Avios availability on British Airways, although the levy of a fuel surcharge tends to put off a lot of American Airlines frequent flyers from redeeming on BA.  If you have miles in AA, you pay around £350 less in taxes between Heathrow and New York if you choose an AA service because of the lack of surcharges.

Note that, if you use Avios to book onto American Airlines you WILL pay a fuel surcharge.  Where does that money go?  BA keeps it.

The good news is that the Boeing 777-200 which will replace the Boeing 777-300ER has the new American Airlines business class seat, pictured above.  Many people would find it preferable to the British Airways Club World seat.

Comments (26)

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

  • James67 says:

    For those who are not interested in a years prime it might be worth taking a30 day free trial this month to access the prime day sales.

  • Idrive says:

    The problem is that the Amazon offer is only for new prime customers! I finally signed up for a trial last month and it won’t let me take advantage of it. I wonder if i can use it if i cancel now and subsribe with the offer?

    • czechoslovakia says:

      New account with new email address, no problem

    • james Bond says:

      Yes you can,, just use a different email address and credit card

  • Will says:

    Rob are you 100% that the retrofitted 777-200s will replace the 777-300 on the second LHR-JFK. Only reason I ask is that all research I have done on FT shows that the aircraft are currently flying only to Rio and Madrid from DFW and MIA.

    • Raffles says:

      AA is advertising on the tube an all flat bed NYC service and it would be very unlikely Heathrow would not see the best product.

    • Adam says:

      I have been rebooked in the 777-200 for a flight in February. Can confirm that it’s the retrofitted version (at least the seat assignments shows as so). Also, for reference, I flew the retrofitted 777 from Madrid to Miami back in March. Pretty sure it’s a regular route but ready to be corrected…..

    • John G says:

      They are still busy refurbishing the aircraft. By the end of the year I think they will all be done or almost done.

      • James says:

        Not even close. Currently 4 are done and 3 more are in refit. It will be end 2017 before they are all done due to delays with the zodiac seats. Buyer beware, they do not have enough planes for all the routes they want to use them on.

  • Evan says:

    I’ve taken the AA50/51 flights from DFW-LHR a few times on AA’s 77W, and the seat is one of the best business class seats in the skies. Below Oman Air, but certainly on par with Qatar and CX. Obviously the service isn’t even close, but the seat itself is basically the same. Actual Bose QC3 headphones make a huge difference as well!

  • CV3V says:

    Just realised from looking at the picture that the AA seat isn’t the same as on CX, AA have squeezed more seats on by having both forward and reverse facing seats. All CX seats face forward.

    • Evan says:

      Yes on the refit 772 they are front and back, but 77W all face front.

      • CV3V says:

        thanks, useful to know.

        • James67 says:

          If you ever decide to use AY for your flights east, I believe their a350s being fitted with latest version of CX seat. All forward facing in 1-2-1 configuration. I like the look of Vietnam Airways J cabin on a350. Will explore pricing option on my return home but not expecting much as they have no direct flight competition.

  • Paul Irving says:

    AA Lax to Sydney- how many miles for this route?

    • xcalx says:

      Economy 37500 Business 62500 First 72500 one way

      • James67 says:

        Did you have any joy booking your Etihad partner redemptions last week?

  • Blackberryaddict says:

    I used to have Amazon Prime, and used Amazon as the default for buying stuff online, as it had free and fast shipping. Then Amazon bundled Prime with the instant video service, which I have no interest in whatsoever, and hiked the price substantially. I have since not renewed Prime, and are now checking other sites first to buy online. I won’t cut off my nose to spite my face – if Amazon is cheaper I will go with them, but find myself using other sites more than before.

    • Fenny says:

      Whereas I find £79 a year to watch endless box sets a steal. Plus, I get free delivery on most of my Amazon purchases. As do my neighbours!

  • Alan says:

    An even better discount on Amazon Prime is available if you have a UK educational institution email address – Amazon Student gives you six months of free one day delivery and then 50% off standard Prime membership rates, valid for 3 years IIRC.

    The other handy benefit of Prime is unlimited cloud storage for photos, including RAW DSLR files. Google Photos is excellent (free for high quality JPGs) but for backup it’s great being able to store full resolution images plus RAW.

    • Jeff says:

      Hi Alan,
      How well does Amazon Cloud (Photos) work with iOS and OS X? (iPhone and Mac)
      Will it upload photos directly from the iPhone to free up local iPhone storage and provide a backup accordingly?
      Many thanks!

      • Alan says:

        Hi Jeff – sorry, I use Windows and Android so don’t know about the iOS side of things. Personally I’m using Google Photos for everything (phone and DSLR photos) as it has a great interface (it’s available for iOS too and has a decent web interface). By comparison the Amazon Cloud interface and app is fairly basic, however for backup purposes the unlimited storage for JPG and RAW images is difficult to beat! I keep local copies on an external HDD, but nice to have Cloud storage too.

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

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