This is not as easy an answer as you might think. Whilst there are the BA and Lloyds TSB cards which issue Avios miles directly, there are other cards which offer points which can be converted into Avios points. If you are intent on squeezing out every free Avios that you possibly can, you might want to get these cards as well!

If you applied for every single credit card which offers Avios points or points which could be converted to Avios, you would earn a whopping 146,400 Avios!

(You could add another 35,000 to that if you used the sign-up bonus on the American Airlines card to book British Airways flights!)

But which of these is the best credit card for Avios?  Today I am focussing purely on sign-up bonuses. Tomorrow I will compare the same cards in terms of their day-to-day earning capacity.

Some of these cards offer a higher bonus if you are referred or offer Quidco or TopCashBack cashback when you apply.  You can find full details of these in the relevant entry on our ‘Credit Cards Update‘ page.

The best Avios-earning personal credit cards:

Listed in order of highest sign-up bonus (click the links for my full review of each card):

30,000 Avios – American Express Platinum Charge Card

30,000 Membership Rewards points convert into 30,000 Avios. £450 annual fee, refunded pro-rata on cancellation. Issuer: Amex. Spend £2,000 in 3 months to trigger bonus.

25,000 Avios – Starwood Preferred Guest American Express Card

20,000 Starwood points convert into 25,000 Avios. £75 annual fee, refunded pro-rata on cancellation. Issuer: Amex. Spend £1,000 in 3 months to trigger bonus. See here for my post on the current 20,000 point SPG offer.

20,000 Avios – American Express Preferred Rewards Gold Charge Card

22,000 Membership Rewards points convert into 22,000 Avios. No annual fee for the first year. Issuer: Amex. Spend £2,000 in 3 months to trigger bonus.

20,000 Avios – Lloyds TSB Premier Duo Avios American Express and MasterCards

£50 annual fee, non-refundable. Issuer: Lloyds TSB. Spend £500 on the Amex card in each of the first three months to trigger bonus. Cannot hold both these cards and the Lloyds TSB Duo cards.

18,000 Avios – British Airways American Express Premium Plus Card

£150 annual fee, refunded pro-rate when you cancel. Issuer: Amex. Spend £3,000 within 3 months to trigger bonus. Cannot hold both this card and the BA Amex.

15,000 Avios – Lloyds TSB Duo Avios American Express and MasterCards

No annual fee. Issuer: Lloyds TSB. Spend £500 on the Amex card in each of the first three months to trigger bonus. Cannot hold both these cards and the Lloyds TSB Premier Duo cards.

8,000 Avios – Priority Club Rewards Black Visa Card

40,000 Priority Club points convert into 8,000 Avios. £99 annual fee, non-refundable. Issuer: Barclaycard. Bonus is triggered with your first purchase.

3,000 Avios – British Airways American Express Card

No annual fee. Issuer: Amex. Spend £500 in 3 months to trigger bonus. Cannot hold both this card and the BA Premium Plus Amex together.

3,000 Avios – Priority Club Rewards Visa Card

15,000 Priority Club points convert into 3,000 Avios (although you need to convert in 10,000 point chunks). No annual fee. Issuer: Barclaycard. Bonus is triggered with your first purchase.

0 Avios (2,400 if referred) - Tesco Clubcard MasterCard

1,000 Clubcard points convert into 2,400 Avios. No annual fee. Issuer: Tesco Bank. Bonus is triggered when you submit the referral form after receiving your card.

2,000 Avios – Marriott Rewards MasterCard

10,000 Marriott Rewards points convert to 2,000 Avios. No annual fee. Issuer: Creation. Spend £200 in 6 months to trigger bonus.

Plus, an honorary mention:

35,000 American Airlines miles – American Airlines AAdvantage American Express and Visa Cards

AA miles can be redeemed for BA flights, but you cannot add them directly to your Avios collection. No annual fee. Issuer: MBNA. Spend to trigger bonus: £5,000 in 180 days. See here for my post on this special promotion.

Tomorrow, I will look at the earning rate on all of these cards.

Since most Head for Points readers convert to BA, this promotion was not hugely useful.

A second version has now appeared, though.

Avios.com is also offering 1,000 bonus Avios if you convert £5 or more of Tesco vouchers to avios.com before 30th June and you have not done a similar conversion since 29th April 2012.

If you usually convert your Clubcard vouchers to ba.com, you may want to have second thoughts this quarter.  Why not send them to avios.com instead?  You will need to open an account at avios.com if you don’t already have one, but this can be done very quickly.  As soon as your Avios have posted, you can move them to British Airways via ‘Combine My Avios’.

Full details can be found here.

When you look to book a hotel at hotels.com, certain properties will show as participating in the M&S promotion. Book one of these and you will receive M&S vouchers after your stay is completed. The value will be:

£25 for a £250-£499 stay, excluding ‘taxes and fees’ (does this mean excluding VAT?)

£50 for a £500-£999 stay

£100 for a £1,000+ stay

The rules are here. You must book by May 30th for stays before August 12th.

The key thing to note is that you can ‘double dip’ with this promotion:

hotels.com has a decent loyalty programme called ‘Welcome Rewards’ which gets you a free night for every 10 nights you book. (One day, I will do a proper post on Welcome Rewards.) These stays will also count towards the free night, and effectively get you another 10% back on your average spendhotels.com currently offers 10.1% cashback via TopCashBack. This cashback will stay pay out on top.

What does NOT seem possible is to ‘triple dip’ – but you should try.

hotels.com pays out 10.1% cashback on TopCashBack and 8% on Quidco.  However, in some tests I did – but not all – the M&S offer appears to disappear if you go via a cashback site.

Here is a screenshot done in Google Chrome going direct to hotels.com – there is a banner under each hotel offering the M&S vouchers (difficult to read, I know, but as least you can see where it should be!):

However, I did a similar search in Internet Explorer, linking through from TopCashBack, and the M&S offer did NOT appear.  However, yesterday I did get it to show at one point after linking through from Quidco.  ‘Keep trying’ is my best advice, using different browsers if necessary.

You need to remember that some chain hotels will not give points or status benefits on rooms booked via hotels.com. If this is not a problem, though, this promotion is worth a look.

(Thanks to Continental Club)

You can even get something potentially more valuable for your £8.74, like a £20 Waitrose voucher.

(EDIT:  It seems that moneysavingexpert.com has made this the lead story in their weekly email today.  I therefore recommend acting sooner rather than later if you want to take part.)

Let me explain the deal

Mighty Deals is a daily deals site run by www.moneyexpert.com.  Money Expert is a price comparison website which owns Simply Switch amongst other things.

Until Monday, they are promoting this offer:

The headline is misleading.

It looks like you are paying £10 for a £20 Shell fuel voucher.  However, when you read the small print, you are not.  You are paying £10 for a Shell Drivers Club membership card which comes pre-loaded with 4,000 points.

Now, you can – if you want – redeem those 4,000 Shell Drivers Club points for a £20 fuel voucher.  However, you can also redeem them for:

2,000 Avios points

£20 Waitrose voucher (note: Waitrose only, not John Lewis)

£20 to exchange for gift cards at your local Shell garage

How do I order?

Mighty Deals is available on Quidco (10%) and TopCashBack (15%).  I used TopCashBack and it tracked at £1.26 (15% of the ex-VAT price) so your net cost is (£10 – £1.26 =) £8.74.  Remember that you can now transfer TopCashBack money to Tesco Clubcard, so that £1.26 gets you 126 Clubcard points which gets you an extra 300 Avios.

(If you are not a TopCashBack member, this link allows you to sign up under me for their ‘refer a friend’ promotion, for which I am grateful).

(If you can’t be bothered to create an account at Quidco or TopCashBack, then this link takes you to Mighty Deals via a TopCashBack landing page and pays your £1.26 to Head for Points instead!  It’s better than letting Mighty Deals keep the money ……!)

You will need to create an account at Mighty Deals before you can order.  They accept Visa or MasterCard but not Amex or PayPal.

Once you order, you receive an email saying that you will receive your Shell Drivers Club card in the next 10 days.

Once you have registered your Shell Drivers Club card and set your earnings preference to Avios, your 4,000 points should transfer across at the end of the next quarter, which is 30th June.

If you select the Waitrose vouchers instead, you will also have to wait until 30th June for those to be issued.

What if I already have a Shell Drivers Club card?

I don’t know, to be honest.  Frankly, the Shell Drivers Club website is antiquated and is unlikely to spot or block duplicate accounts.  I have gone ahead and ordered with no worries.

The deadline for ordering this deal is Bank Holiday Monday.

PS.  Mighty Deals has, looking online, had issues in the past because it sold deals offered by merchants who were ‘dubious’.  You should bear this in mind, but also remember that Money Expert (the parent) is a respectable business.  Shell is also clearly a respectable partner.   Bearing this in mind, I still feel happy to promote this deal.

(Thanks to Simon)

I won’t go into the details of the two cards again, as I wrote about them two weeks ago as part of the ‘Credit Card Reviews’ series. You can read my Virgin Atlantic White review here and my Virgin Atlantic Black review here.

If you let me refer you for the cards, you will receive an additional bonus of 3,000 Virgin Flying Club miles.

This bonus is on top of the standard bonus:

For the White cards, you will receive a total of 6,000 miles for signing up. This is the usual 3,000 miles plus a further 3,000 miles for being referred.

For the Black cards, you will receive a total of 12,000 miles for signing up. This is the usual 9,000 miles plus a further 3,000 miles for being referred.

I also receive 3,000 Flying Club miles for referring you.

If you are planning to apply for either of the Flying Club cards, and want to receive the additional 3,000 miles, please e-mail me at raffles [at] headforpoints.co.uk for a referral. I will email you a special link which you should use to apply.

They are, to put it mildly, not exactly risking the company on this one. The service will initially run just once a week, on Saturday. The outbound will leave Heathrow at 10.10am with the return departing at 3.20pm.

At the time of writing, Avios redemption availability does not appear to have been loaded into the booking system, with the only options I can see routing via Madrid or Barcelona. (Or BA has decided not to offer any ……!)

The airport code for Gran Canaria is LPA, to save you time when fiddling with ba.com ….
 

The first thing to note is that the cards look very pretty!

The earnings rate is pretty decent as well.

As is becoming the norm, the cards come as a double pack of an American Express and a Visa. This is the same structure as the Virgin Flying Club, Miles & More and American Airlines cards from MBNA, and indeed the Lloyds TSB Duo Avios cards.

The Amex earns 1.5 Etihad Guest miles per £1

The Visa earns 0.75 Etihad Guest miles per £1

The cards have no annual fee.

But what’s the sign-up bonus?

Well, it’s OK but not a game changer. Sign up today and you will receive 5,000 Etihad Guest miles. You only need to spend £250 in 90 days to trigger the bonus.

That is not a bad deal for a free credit card, to be honest. However, I believe that you will see that figure creeping up from time to time. MBNA recently offered 15,000 miles in a targeted deal for the Miles & More card, for example, despite only offering 1,500 miles usually. And, of course, the free MBNA American Airlines cards are currently offering an exceptional 35,000 AAdvantage miles.

The bottom line is that, if you don’t already collect Etihad Guest miles, this card is not a good enough reason to start. For comparison, you would need (according to their calculator) 87,951 Etihad Guest miles for a return Business Class flight to Abu Dhabi and 110,450 for First Class. Ironically, redemption rates are cheaper when you use American Airlines miles to redeem on Etihad than using Etihad miles directly.

If you a serious collector of Etihad Guest miles, I would recommend that you focus in the short term on the Starwood Amex instead. As per this post, you currently get 20,000 Starwood points for signing up, and these are convertible into 25,000 Etihad Guest miles (or 25,000 Avios, amongst other things).

For on-going earning with Etihad, of course, the new Etihad Guest card is better than the Starwood Amex. The Starwood card would only earn you 1 Etihad Guest mile per £1 (1.25 if you convert in 20,000 point chunks) whilst this new MBNA package gets you 1.5 Etihad Guest miles on the Amex and the flexibility of the Visa card as well.

FREE promotion to Etihad Silver status and double / triple miles

There are three interesting extra perks which come with the card:

Double miles on Business Class flights taken with 90 days of account opening

Triple miles on First Class flights taken within 90 days of account opening

Promotion to Etihad Guest Silver status after one return flight within your first year of card membership

If you are a regular Etihad flyer in premium classes, the first two benefits are substantially more valuable to you than the 5,000 mile sign-up bonus. The Silver status upgrade is a ‘nice to have’ but – as Etihad is not in a major alliance – is not much use if you are only planning one flight with them.

Interestingly, this is the first card promotion I can think of that actually gives you a bonus for flying the airline concerned instead of simply using their card.

Etihad is clearly making a big push in the UK

I doubt that Etihad was top of MBNA’s list of target airline partners, so I assume that Etihad has offered them a good deal. It is also worth noting that Etihad became an American Express Membership Rewards partner last year. The airline is clearly trying to get traction for its loyalty programme in the UK market.

If you want to know more about the Etihad card, you can find out more and apply here.

The card has been added to our ‘Credit Cards Update‘ page and I will update it with the latest sign-up bonus each month.

(Thanks to Colin and Eamonn)

Weirdly, to put it mildly, you do NOT have to have a Barclaycard to take part in these offers.  Even more weirdly, for offers which require payment, they are even accepting American Express!

Now, Head for Points is not MoneySavingExpert and so this would usually be something I’d pass on.  However, one of the deals is relevant.

Via Bespoke Offers, you can download an unlimited number of vouchers for 5p off a litre of petrol at Shell.  Each is valid for a maximum of 50 litres per visit.  The vouchers expire on 31st May.

Shell Drivers Club is an Avios partner.  You earn 10 Avios points for every 20 litres of fuel you buy, and I think they still offer a one-off 50 Avios when you register your Shell Drivers Club card and select Avios as your earning partner.

The other Bespoke Offers are less exciting.  However, the one that caught my eye was a £10 Starbucks e-gift card for £5.  If you have a plastic Starbucks Card, you can easily transfer the balance from an e-gift card to your plastic card – if not, you need to print off your e-gift voucher or load it onto your phone and scan it in-store.

There is also £10 off a £50 House of Fraser online purchase, amongst other things.

The deal is now back until 30th June.  You can see the full range of prices here.

Now, Lufthansa’s high taxes and charges – especially for European flights – mean that Miles & More is not the greatest scheme out there.  However, if you already have some miles and want to reach a specific target, then this is a decent deal.

The 20% bonus applies to even the smallest purchase of miles, which is a positive step that some other airlines (British Airways included) could learn from.

If you are flying a legacy airline then, frankly, the answer is ‘No’.

The full Government guidelines are here. They make it clear that a credit card surcharge must only cover the actual cost of the company of accepting a card. The issue, of course, is how much that cost actually is.

In reality, a large retailer like British Airways is probably paying around 1% to Visa / MasterCard and 1.5% to American Express. You can add 1% to those numbers for a medium size business and at least another 1% at least for your local corner shop.

However, a company can add “all genuine relevant costs” to the headline fee to get to the sum surcharged to customers. All other indirect and direct costs linked to accepting credit cards, such as additional website costs, can be included.

Airlines also have a specific burden to bear. The credit card companies have been burnt many times when airlines have gone bust, forcing them to issue refunds. Most will now refuse to hand over the majority of the funds for a transaction until after the flight has taken place. Pay for a BA flight in August today on your debit card, and BA gets the money today. Pay on your credit card and it won’t see most of the money until August (assuming BA has the same deal as smaller airlines). This leads to additional costs relating to lost working capital etc which could arguably also be reclaimed via the card levy.

So, where are we?

Historically, Virgin Atlantic has charged a 1.5% fee for using a credit card. This was great for cheap flights and a disaster for expensive long-haul flights. (And, of course, the more expensive the flight, the more likely you are to want the refund cover that a credit card gives you.) Virgin has not changed their model since April 6th, and doesn’t have to – 1.5% is probably not covering its full costs. However, it is a bit of a shocker to be asked for £75 to cover card payment on a £5,000 flight.

BA charges a flat £4.50 per passenger (although American Express cardholders who live in Ukraine are exempt ….). On a one-way ticket to Manchester this could represent 10% of the ticket price, but BA would argue that, for the average customer, it represents a much smaller percentage which is in line with its costs.

The real troublemaker, of course, was Ryanair. They have simply moved to a £7 per person, per sector, ‘administration fee’, which is payable by everyone, however they pay – although this is included in headline advertised prices. The additional fee for using a credit card over a debit card is only £1 per person per sector, which is bordering on reasonable. easyJet also moved to an administration fee on top of their standard credit card fee.

So, no real change. Is anyone surprised?

(If you missed the original post, you can buy two £25 3V Virtual Visa cards in Tesco for £50, earn 150 bonus Clubcard points – 360 Avios points – and then use the cards to pay off online bills where only debit cards are accepted.  My main 3V Virtual Visa post is here.)

Head for Points automatically closes posts to new comments after two weeks.  I have therefore republished the list below, with the latest additions, so that people can continue to comment.

Here is a list of places (utility companies mainly, I have ignored normal online retailers where they will always be accepted) where they definitely can and cannot be used online:

Works fine:

Amazon (Amazon sells online gift vouchers from 10p.  Ordering a voucher to be sent to yourself is a great way to empty your 3V card if you have a small balance left.  You can then add your gift voucher to your Amazon account as a credit, and it will be used next time you order.  If you use our Amazon link here, Head for Points gets a commission when you order a gift voucher.)

BT

Charles Stanley (an investment group)

Co-Operative Energy

Council tax (varies by authority, of course, but most accept debit cards these days)

EDF

E.ON

Freemans

highstreetvouchers.com (lets you use the cards for a wide range of vouchers eg John Lewis)

HMRC (treated as a debit card so no 1.4% fee to pay, maximum of 20 cards can be used per day)

Next (to pay off account balance, although you can also use Next gift cards from Tesco for this)

Npower

O2

Orange

Oyster (Tube tickets in London)

Royal Mint (see this post on buying 50p coins for 50p!)

Sky (Sky also lets you prepay online, using that balance up before recommencing your normal direct debit)

South West Water

TalkTalk

Virgin Media

With caveats:

Barclaycard (works to settle Priority Club and Hilton HHonors credit cards, does not appear to work with standard Barclaycard bills.  However, you cannot use more than two 3V cards in a day and no more than five in one month.)

First Utility (in your profile is the option to pay part of a bill, however once you have done this once the option disappears and further transactions must be done on the telephone)

Scottish Power (will take it but treat it as a credit card with a 1.4% fee)

TV Licence (cannot split payment, so would need to pay the £1.75 per card transfer fee to move £150 onto one 3V card)

Does not work:

American Express (to pay bill)

British Gas

Capital One credit cards (to pay bill)

Hargreaves Lansdown (an investment group – this was working but now seems to have been blocked)

MBNA credit cards (to pay bill)

Scottish Gas

Selftrade

T-Mobile

Tesco online shopping (surprised by this, any other reports?)

Tesco savings account (when depositing using a debit card)

Please continue to add your own experiences with utility companies, credit card companies etc.  We know that they should work as ‘normal’ with online retailers so that is less important unless there is a special tweak involved.  Other ideas apart from Amazon for cashing out very small remaining balances are also welcome.

I received an email from a reader who flies CityJet on a regular basis.  CityJet has introduced four fare classes, with CitySaver being the easyJet equivalent – no free checked baggage, no advance seat choice, non refundable and non changeable etc.

CitySaver also offers no Flying Blue miles.  More importantly, though, the reader pointed out that these fares are also not treated as ‘qualiflying’ flights with Flying Blue.

This has two impacts:

The first is that you need to fly once with a Flying Blue airline or another SkyTeam member every 20 months to stop your miles expiring.  A cheap CityJet will no longer do the trick here, so don’t waste your money.

Secondly, if you live in the UK and do mainly short-haul flights with Air France / KLM / CityJet, you will earn status more quickly based on segments (15 one-way flights for Silver) rather than miles flown.  However, CityJet CitySaver flights will not now count towards status either.

I’m not sure if this is old news or not, although it is not something I had come across before.  It is certainly something to bear in mind when booking CityJet flights.