Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Buy Avios for 1p via a French deals website

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I have covered a few of the Iberia / Groupon ‘buy Avios’ deals recently.  The French equivalent of this deal has now returned, after initially running in March.  It worked – administratively – pretty well that time.

You can find full details on the vente-privee website.

The first thing to note is that the deal is only on the French site, and the French site only operates in French.  You will therefore need to rely on Google Translate if you use Chrome, or something similar if you don’t.

You will also need to give a false five digit French postcode when you register as UK postcodes are not accepted.  It doesn’t ask for your address, only your postcode.

Here is the pricing:

2,000 Avios for €21 (0.97p)
4,000 Avios for €45 (1.04p)
8,000 Avios for €99 (1.14p)
12,000 Avios for €145 (1.12p)
20,000 Avios for €229 (1.06p)
35,000 Avios for €399 (1.06p)

What makes this deal easier to administer than the Groupon one is that Avios is providing the back-end redemption.

Once you are emailed your voucher by vente-privee, you go to a page of the Avios website (which is in English) and input your code number.

You will see that the Avios can be dropped into either a BA, Iberia, avios.com or AerClub account, although as you can move them around via ‘Combine My Avios’ it doesn’t make much difference.

You can buy up to 100,000 points.  The maximum you can buy of any particular quantity is 3, so you’d logically start with 3 x 2,000, then add 3 x 4,000, before juggling the other pricier options to get to your target.

In reality you can almost certainly buy more than 100,000.  Even if the redemption website kept track, which I doubt it would, you could send 100,000 to an Iberia account, 100,000 to a BA account etc.

Is this worth it?

Last Monday I showed you how to get 18,000 Avios for £146 via the Irish Independent newspaper.  This is 0.81p per Avios, compared to a minimum of 1p here.  If you only want a small number of points, do the Irish Independent offer first and then move on to this.

I won’t be buying via vente-privee at this price.  0.75p tends to be my floor price, as I’ve said before.  Over the last four years I’ve averaged 1.2p per Avios point redeemed so I’m not willing to pay 1.0p to buy them given that I wouldn’t be spending them for a couple of years.

That said, you may well get a higher value from your redemptions than I do.  You may also just be looking for a way of topping up your account quickly.  If you are, this may be a good way of doing it.  It is a decent price given that you don’t have to go to much effort to earn the points.


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 (70)

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

  • SH says:

    Do you know how long it takes before the voucher numbers becomes available on Vente Privee?

  • Boi says:

    I seem to be accumulating avios much more easily so much so I can’t imagine paying directly for them (I know I am technically buying the ones I accumulate). Wish there was a way I can get more FC and Hilton points

    • shd says:

      Wish there was a legit grey market to trade these points.

      We’re sitting on about 400k Hilton and 600k IHG and have no sensible way to spend them with current travel patterns.

      Always need Avios, though 🙁

      • Genghis says:

        There is a grey market I guess of making redemptions for others. I’d be willing to swap avios for Hilton in future. We’re connected on twitter I believe so let me know if interested.

      • JaLawrie says:

        Is the only other viable option for selling miles eBay? Not keen on the final selling fee though…

        • Rob says:

          Note that the programs keep an eye on this and may even bid, cancelling the final transaction once they have your details and have closed your account.

  • Boi says:

    OT: the 2 for 1 voucher- do you need to have booked or travelled before the expiry date?
    I.e. If it expires in March 2018 can I book now and travel in April 2018?

  • Roland says:

    Has anyone got their voucher from the Irish newspaper one yet? I might buy some here too but I’m a bit wary of spending money with all these companies and then waiting for them to send me a voucher…

    • the real harry1 says:

      overly cautious? both vente.privee and Irish Independent have been ‘perfect’ in the recent past in terms of honouring the points

      if there were any problems, you have chargeback or legal remedies available (nobody has needed to use those routes)

    • Rob says:

      21-28 days. Offer runs to Nov so no harm in waiting until they start to arrive.

  • Nick says:

    I know British people have a bad reputation when it comes to bothering to learn other languages, but do you really need to shout how we’ll all be ‘reliant’ on google translate? I suspect I’m not the only one here who actually speaks passable French and can work with the original!!

    • Worzel says:

      Just a typo Nick- “will”, perhaps being replaced with “may” ?

    • Rob says:

      You’re dealing with a guy who has a German wife, two half-German kids and still can’t knock up a full sentence in German!

      • Worzel says:

        Ja mon Amigo, Dziekuje Ci 🙂 .

      • RussellH says:

        That strikes me as quite an achievement TBH. (Maybe not one to be proud of, though.) And, presumably you have Anika in the office at times too?

        Maybe you could just tell them all to stop speaking English to you for a week??

      • Genghis says:

        You’re like my colleague at work who has a French Belgian mother, a French wife, lived in Monaco and Geneva for a few years and studied xxx with French at university yet struggles to string a few words together. Even I show him up conversing with French colleagues.

  • Ruth Findlay says:

    Just had a look this morning at Vente Privee but when you try to add packages to your basket it has an error message “error has occurred please try again later” .

    • Carsten says:

      I had the same, but it worked after a couple of tries. Didn’t find their website reliable. Some things to be aware of:

      – You need to be logged in
      – During check out an address needs to be provided. I went t Google Maps and entered a street within the region of the French post I entered on my profile.
      – It also asks for a phone nbr. I entered my mobile nbr starting with 0.
      – Still have to enter the voucher code on the Avios site, but it seems that the code is only shown on screen after completing the purchase or in the “Mes commandes” of my profile. It’s not mentioned in the confirmation e-mail I got.

      All in all, I find the website “odd”.

      • Carsten says:

        Just got a 2nd e-mail with the voucher details. Took them a bit to send this. Means you get 2 mails: purchase confirmation + VCH code in 2nd mail.

  • Margaret says:

    Ho quickly does the code come through? I have the Paypal confirmation and the order number, but no code.

  • Carsten says:

    You can see the code in the “Mes commandes” section of your profile. Also,they’ll send you a 2nd e-mail with details. Mine took a minute or so after purchase confirmation to arrive.

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

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