Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Get 500-1,000 bonus Avios or Amex points with £25 Amazon.co.uk gift card purchase

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A fantastic new Amazon offer has been launched by American Express.  It is available for many – but not all – British Airways American Express, Amex Gold and Amex Platinum cardholders.

You will find this offer on the ‘Offers’ tab of your British Airways American Express / Amex Gold / Amex Platinum statement page online, or in the app.

There are a few versions.  You will hopefully see some combination of:

Get 500 / 1,000 Avios / Membership Rewards points when you spend £25 at amazon.co.uk before 17th September using your BA Amex / Amex Gold / Platinum card

It isn’t clear who gets what and you may have got nothing if you are very unlucky.

It is limited to the first 30,000 people to register so I recommend you sign up immediately, although the limit does not seem to have been reached yet.  You have until 17th September to make a purchase and have it post to your Amex account.

There was some confusion over the wording of the offer.  It says “purchases made with Market Place Sellers, Amazon Prime or subscriptions to Amazon Prime” do not count.  Secondary terms and conditions also implied that gift cards would not count, even though American Express has no idea what you bought.

I did a test purchase on my own Amazon account for a £25 gift card.  I AM an Amazon Prime customer.  Within 2 minutes of making the purchase I got an email from American Express saying “Congratulations, you have earned 500 bonus Avios – if your transaction meets the offer terms”.

The 500 bonus Avios have now posted to my account.  See below (click to enlarge):

Amex Amazon screenshot

I have also repeated the process on my wife’s non-Prime account with the same result.

This means:

gift card purchases do count

even Amazon Prime customers still earn the bonus on gift cards

This offer should be a no-brainer for qualifying BA Amex / Amex Gold / Amex Platinum cardholders, especially if you have the 1,000 points version.  £25 is a ludicrously low purchase limit for earning 1,000 Avios or Membership Rewards points.

As I found, purchases of Amazon e-gift cards count.  These can be bought online via this link and added to your personal Amazon account via this page.  The balance is used automatically on your next purchase.

You obviously don’t need to purchase a gift card if you have a £25+ purchase you need to make.  However, to avoid any issues with ‘Market Place sellers’ and the like, the voucher seems the easiest way to go.

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current 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

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

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

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

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

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

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

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

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

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.

Barclaycard Select Cashback Business Credit Card

1% cashback uncapped* on all your business spending (T&C apply) Read our full review

Category

American Express Membership Rewards, British Airways and Avios

Comments (73)

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

  • Kris Schimmel says:
    4 Sep4 September 07:17

    No offer on either card for me ;(

  • Charlie says:
    4 Sep4 September 07:22

    Just confirming that this offer DOES NOT work on marketplace. I placed an order last night and it hits the statement as ‘Amazon UK Marketplace’.

    With the above article I guess the strategy is to buy a gift voucher, then use the gift voucher to pay for marketplace items.

  • TripRep says:
    4 Sep4 September 07:29

    Just a note to say thanks for the tip on copying the offer ids to redeem on another card, seemed to work a treat for this and the 500 MR for general spend at Post Office & Shell, etc.. I might also get to use the 3000 MR Hilton offer too. 😀

    • the real harry1 says:
      4 Sep4 September 07:46

      what exactly do you have to do? I’m assuming open 2 different Amex a/cs in different browsers, navigate to reward offers then copy the URL over from the existing one to the ’empty offer’ a/c?

    • Ian says:
      4 Sep4 September 09:14

      How do you this to use it on a different card?

      Thanks.

    • KevMc says:
      4 Sep4 September 11:51

      Does anyone have the offerID’s for 500MR Amazon and/or the 3000MR Hilton?

  • Anthony says:
    4 Sep4 September 07:52

    The Amazon offer to receive £15 off a £25 spend if you part pay with Amex MR is still active until the end of Oct. Though it can’t be used for gift cards. Offer code is AMEX16SWP.

    • Ian says:
      4 Sep4 September 09:27

      I’ve tried using that code, but it says it “can’t be used with this order”.

      • the real harry1 says:
        4 Sep4 September 10:37

        must be Amazon-supplied item/ you must part pay at least 1p with MR points

        • Ian says:
          4 Sep4 September 18:35

          Nope. Still not working, even though I have enrolled the card and have an Amazon item on the basket.

          • the real harry1 says:
            4 Sep4 September 18:47

            is it a newish a/c?

            istr we used it pre-Xmas 2016 (offer has been around a while!) and Amazon prevented new a/cs after then to be opened to take advantage

    • Ian says:
      5 Sep5 September 09:11

      @the real harry1 No, it’s an old account. Maybe I’ve used this before a while ago..

  • Ross says:
    4 Sep4 September 07:53

    Having not had this offer, or the shell/whsmiths/post office offer (or Airbnb and trainline) I called the BA Amex customer service team to enquirer why. They are apparently going to look into it, but the representative believes I wouldn’t be negatively selected (or not selected) for offers.

    It seems odd that I have not got any of these, but my spending is of a decent level (more than enough for the 241 voucher each year – I know I should look at alternative cards). I believe my spending is high and therefore there is no need for Amex to give me money back when they don’t need to incentivise me.

    If I hear back, which is unlikely, I’ll share my findings.

    • Kinkell says:
      4 Sep4 September 09:28

      I didn’t have any of the offers currently that most other folk seem to have on any of our cards. Phone CS to be told I was a ‘high spender’ with Amex ( ha ha! Just make the 10k annually and move on) and the offers were to ‘incentivise others. I suspect we are no where near the spend of some HfP ers. Look forward to your findings @Ross

      • Ross says:
        4 Sep4 September 12:56

        I am a heavy user. I made the £20k of purchases on the free BA Amex in 8 months with work expenses alone… I said the the CS rep what you were told – why would Amex incentivise me, they know I’m good for the spend…

    • barnaby100 says:
      4 Sep4 September 14:11

      We also didn’t get this on any of our 6 amex cards. I think we would be high spending so not sure if that is why

    • the_real_a says:
      4 Sep4 September 18:50

      If you have used your card in these places previously then you are unlikely to get the offer. Just like cards previously registered on Amazon didn’t get the £5 offer from a couple of months ago.

  • Heather says:
    4 Sep4 September 08:03

    In regards to the hilton offer, get 3000 MR if I pay and stay by a certain date, will Amex actually have any idea when I stay? For example would I be likely to get the points if I pay upfront for a stat early next year?

    • Cate says:
      4 Sep4 September 08:11

      I paid upfront for two nights over the bank holiday weekend and didn’t get the 3000 MR. I think they are sticking to the pay at checkout wording.

      • Alan says:
        5 Sep5 September 00:09

        Has the charge hit your card yet though? Lots of hotels don’t charge until near checkin (or even checkout). Worth calling them and asking them to charge your card.

        • Cate says:
          5 Sep5 September 09:44

          Hi Alan – yes it has. Of course there’s always the chance that there’s been a mistake somewhere.

  • Danksy says:
    4 Sep4 September 08:36

    I didn’t get this offer but this looked like a good deal!

    THAI AIRWAYS – Spend £1,000 or more, get £100 back

  • Rob says:
    4 Sep4 September 08:47

    We’re still trying to test this but Anika can’t find a PayPoint with a modern scanner that can handle the bar code ….

    • Ian says:
      4 Sep4 September 09:23

      Doesn’t it not work on the co-op?

    • Nick M says:
      4 Sep4 September 09:41

      My local Co-Op was fine…the cashier just used the regular scanner. It didn’t work initially, but after folding the paper in half/catching at the right angle it all went through.

      May be best to print on thicker paper/download the barcode to a phone to make sure it can be read easily?

      The £5 is credited as a voucher that can only be used against Amazon purchases, can’t remember the expiry date but maybe October/November?

      • Ian says:
        4 Sep4 September 09:45

        Amazon sends you a SMS with a link to the barcode. That’s what I’ve done.

        The promotional credit expires at 11:59 pm (GMT) November 30, 2017.

        In time for black friday/monday…

        • the real harry1 says:
          4 Sep4 September 10:35

          just worked fine x4 – paper printout scanned perfick 🙂

          code sitting there – dummy buy = Promotion Applied: -£5.00

    • Crafty says:
      4 Sep4 September 17:53

      I’ve done it fine at my local off licence.

    • the_real_a says:
      4 Sep4 September 18:46

      I used this at the weekend and the top-up and £5 credit was available instantly.

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