Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

New non-travel Tesco Clubcard redemption ideas which are worth a look

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The Tesco Clubcard coverage on Head for Points is, obviously, focussed towards Avios and Virgin Flying Club redemptions.

I am certainly not blinded into thinking that those are the best ways to redeem your Clubcard vouchers, however.

I wrote this long article last November looking at the other travel deals offered.

More recently, I wrote about how to book UK and Ireland Hilton family hotels using Clubcard.

Double your vouchers at Tesco Direct

Travel redemptions are not the ‘be all and end all’.

Tesco is currently running an excellent redemption deal with Tesco Direct.

As you can see here, you can currently redeem your Clubcard vouchers for double their face value for ANY purchase at Tesco Direct.

EVERYTHING on Tesco Direct, except products sold by 3rd party partners and mobile phone credit, is available.

Want an iPad?  You can effectively get one for half price.  Playstation 4?  Check.  Pretty much everything else you’d find in your typical Argos catalogue?  Check.

If you have £20 of Clubcard vouchers, you could order £40 of goods from Tesco Direct or swap them for 4,800 Avios points.   On the basis that there would definitely be something at Tesco Direct you wanted, you would by ‘paying’ 0.83p per Avios point.

This isn’t a bad deal, of course, but I look to pick them up for 0.75p or less.  Using your vouchers in the Tesco Direct promotion may make sense.

All of the rules can be found on this Tesco Direct page.

The offer ends on September 13th.

An interesting Telegraph deal

If you are a Daily Telegraph reader, you might be interested to know that Tesco now offers digital subscription packs for Clubcard vouchers.

As per this page, you will receive a full 7-day digital sub to the Daily and Sunday Telegraph for just £20 of Clubcard vouchers.  This is an attractive deal in my view.


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 (32)

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

  • Dom says:

    I always ring fence what I need in points for family days out (e.g. Longleat etc), where you can get 3 to 4 times value. Anything left convert to avios.

    Try to avoid Tesco direct double ups as i’ll just end up convincing myself I need things that I won’t use.

    • M says:

      A genuinely good advice. Another one would be to ban myself from HUKD 😉

  • Froggitt says:

    Make sure the Telegraph offer includes the iPad app, not just access to the website.

  • Chris says:

    I actually clicked the email link to come check out the comments because I was thinking £20 CC for 7 days seemed incredibly steep to me. Much more palatable for 365 days!

  • Koshka says:

    We’ve had good use out of the 4x offers on holidays in York and Scotland over the past couple of years. Camera Obscura in Edinburgh was good and we’ve got the Chatham Historic Dockyard lined up for next week. We booked the activities too late but I think that we could have got really good value by exchanging them for National Trust of Scotland activities (we did the land rover safari in Glencoe). They also kept our costs down in Inverness where we ate in Zizzi and Pizza Express. Tesco Direct Boost sometimes provides additional opportunities e.g we exchanged some soon to expire points for Lego during the last Boost and we combined this with a 1000 points for a £60 spend offer. As a regular short haul traveller I find that the best use of Avios is to use small amounts on flights that I needed to take anyway. I was just checking prices around October half term and for flight times that I have to take, the pricing was £220 cash, RFS 14000 + £35 or just under 5000 + £110.

  • MoNkEyMaN says:

    I have recently used Tesco points at 3X value to book car hire through Affordable Car Hire. They are a broker and give the option of various hire companies, along with clear information on additional charges and terms and conditions. On comparison with other companies and brokers, their rates are competitive and gave a true three times value.

  • Roger says:

    Jonathan asked:
    ‘Does anyone have any knowledge of “Telegraph Subscriber” rewards / offers? You get access to the scheme through the subscription, no idea if it’s any good and the website doesn’t reveal much info pre-login.’

    I have a £25 digital subscription, an offer from November 2014. I find it convenient for a quick flick through news stories without the obvious pandering to print readers’ prejudices (politics treated as ‘news’, irrelevant pix of young women to illustrate stories, etc – Private Eye’s reference to the Daily Mailograph is apt. :))

    The subscriber club has been worthwhile for us. We’ve been to several film previews and can buy at Robert Dyas on Thursdays with a 15% discount (or anytime online). There’s a regular offer at WHSmugg and some others, not to forget a free tea or coffee at Debenhams on weekday afternoons (!). Sometimes cultural and travel discounts, including 2-4-1 airport lounge access mentioned elsewhere.

    I’d say for £25 or £20 in Tesco coupons, it’s a good deal, even if telegraph.co.uk can be accessed free.

    I’ve just been on to Telegraph customer services – checking that they had cancelled a continuous debit authority they had improperly set up. They told me the ‘normal’ price of a digital subscription is about to be ‘enhanced’ to £130.

    I’m inclined to use the Tesco £20 offer even though my current subscription is still live. Anybody know if I can stack it for redemption n November? There’s no info in the T+C sction of the Tesco page. I see it’s marked as a special offer, but reviews go back to at least February 2015 so it’s not particularly new.

    • mark2 says:

      I have just upgraded to Windows 10 so can read the article without all the adverts (does not work on this site Rob, it also blocks out comments).
      Maybe you can do this on other browsers too?

      • Rob says:

        The HFP ads are partly ‘pay per view’, so if you block them (and they are hardly intrusive), I don’t earn …..

        • mark2 says:

          as I said, it doesn’t work on HfP, and they are not intrusive unlike the Telegraph etc.

          • Rob says:

            I know that, I was just making a general point for the benefit of others. Ad blocking technology is not as clever as it thinks it is, because whole chunks of the web rely on advertising revenue to survive.

          • Fenny says:

            Completely agree that ads are necessary for site revenue, but I have a major problem with ads that move, flash, autoplay videos or pop up when you accidentally mouse over them. So, for that reason, I use adblockers and turn it off when I need to.

          • Rob says:

            No silly pop up ads on HFP, I am pleased to say. It is odd that I operate to higher standards than the broadsheet newspaper sites, but there you go!

  • Rob says:

    Correct. Obviously keep an eye on the expiry date, but you’d be crazy to convert until you need them. If you do ….

    a) you might miss out on an Avios conversion bonus (although not seen one for a while)
    b) you might miss out on a great deal from another Tesco partner altogether

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

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