I have finally found an official working link that offers 40,000 Priority Club points when signing up for the Priority Club Black Visa card.
The link is here. It was circulated with some Priority Club statements this month.
You still need to pay the £99 annual fee. However, remember that this card now also gets you free Priority Club Platinum status! Whilst not the most valuable hotel status ever, it may (or may not) get you an upgrade, free drink or perhaps free internet on your next Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, Indigo etc stay.
40,000 points is good for 80% of a free night at a top hotel like the InterContinental in Paris, or 4 free nights in a middle of nowhere hotel somewhere! Priority Club is relaunching their reward chart today so its difficult to be more specific than that at present.
You also get a voucher for a free night in any of their hotels when you spend £10,000. This could be worth up to £250 if used at a top-price InterContinental. If you have a lot of Visa spend via merchants who do not take American Express, then this is one of the most attractive non-Amex rewards available.
(To see our complete list of all current credit card bonuses, click here to visit our ‘Credit Cards Update’ page or use the link in the menu bar at the top of the page.)
About Head for Points
Nice one.
I’ve not really benefited from churning exercises in the past. I took up the previous offer which was fee-free for the first year (i.e. the fee was refunded) and subsequently cancelled the account. I wonder if I could apply for this offer with reasonable prospects of success.
I tried the link. It shows examples of what you can do with PC points. This was already out of date before today’s ‘enhancements’ but hey, guess what, the London Park Lane still only costs 40,000 PC points, according to barclays anyway. 😀
Would you know the answer to the following: is the £99 fee refundable pro-rata if the card is cancelled?
Would you lose the points if card is cancelled before using them.
many thanks
No pro-rata fee refund.
However, you certainly won’t lose your points once they have gone to Priority Club.
This is not a bad card for foreign spend, as the double points mean you get 2% back (assuming you spend your points wisely) – although clearly not as good as, say, the Post Office card with no 3% FX exchange fee. And the ‘free night’ voucher when you hit £10,000 of spend could be worth £250 if redeemed at a very expensive InterCon.
Another good heads-up. But how do you value these points (in fact I’ve been wanting to suggest a blog summarise relative points value for ages…)?
At a quick scan they appear to be worth about 1/5th of an Avios, ie “exchange rate” (if even possible) of about 5 PC = 1 Avios. That of course makes the offer only worth 8000 Avios which at a £99 cost gives a very high 1.25p/Avios purchase price. Guess the only real value is to use them in a cheap IHG property where you know “4 free nights in a middle of nowhere hotel somewhere!” will have saved you at least £99.
I’d be very unlikely to push £10k through for the extra free night, as I need to be churning other cards. Would the status be retained on card cancellation though?
I believe you’ve previously mentioned though that hotel points are “worth more” simply because they are more difficult to earn than Avios, for example, hence you earn them when you can.
I value PC points at 0.5p each, so the gift is worth £200 against £99 card fee. Not great in itself, but the Plat status is worth having if you do a few PC stays each year and the voucher is not a bad deal if you use it wisely.
The best deal would be to put £10k of foreign spend through the card, as you’d get 4 points per £1 on that plus trigger the voucher. All together you would have 80k points plus the free night voucher. If you bought another 20k, you’d have enough for, for eg, 3 nights at the very nice InterContinental Times Square in NYC or the IC Paris.
Thanks for your reply re value. Interesting that you give it a 0.5p value while the transfer rate to airline programs and other purchases values them at around 0.2p. Definitely best value to use within the group for rooms then.
I’m not sure that I agree with your “best deal would be…” above though. By your own figures, £10k foreign spend would be costing you £300 more than a better rate credit card that saves you 3% on forex. And by earning an extra 40k points that are only worth £200 at 0.5p value, it makes no sense to use the card at all, as you’ll be out of pocket by £100! The only worthwhile feature is that the free night is activated, which I guess overcomes the cost of use, but doesn’t place you in a very profitable position.
If that is seriously the best deal with this card (and I wouldn’t be spending £10k abroad anyway), then I’d suggest after the first transaction to activate the initial 40k sign-up bonus, the card should be locked in a drawer and only used to earn extra points when not churning other more lucrative deals.
As hotel points are harder to come by and the earning potential per £ is the same as Avios on some credit cards (2 points earned per £ on normal spending), though worse than others (I have 2 cards earning me 1.5 Avios/£), I guess it would be worth keeping for a while, and of course not being an Amex, doesn’t affect any other opportunities. Heck, when not churning other cards, some people may actually activate the free night from normal expenses without paying a heavy forex cost anyway.
Clearly if you have an FX no fee card, then that is a better thing to use than any miles card when travelling. End of discussion.
However, if you don’t, and if you want to push for the voucher for £10k spend, you might as well put through this card spend that earns double points, so foreign and PC hotel spend.
Be clear, though. If you are not going to push for the £10k voucher, then I would leave this card in a drawer (assuming you want to keep it for the Platinum status in the hotels ) or cancel it once the 40k has hit.
However, getting it just for the 40k – if you wouldn’t use the Plat status – is also marginal since the £200 value of the 40,000 points is offset by the £99.
Quick maths:
Get card and immediately cancel – you gain £100 (£200 less £99)
Get card and spend £10k in UK – you get £200 bonus, £100 of spend points and £250 voucher less £99 fee, total £450
Get card and spend £10k overseas – you get £200 bonus, £200 of spend points and £250 voucher less £99 fee, total £550
Option 3, as you say, only works if you don’t have a no fee FX card. And if you don’t hit £10k, the modest gain is not really worth it UNLESS you value the Platinum status in Priority Club.
Good summary, Raffles, thanks. As I have 2 FX cards with no fees/spread, option 2 isn’t an options. Though(if anyone is keen to travel and maximise value, what are they doing without a cheap FX credit card? Money talks, and as you so rightly say, “End of discussion” 🙂
Option 1 is ok, and most likely my stand, as unlikely to make option 2 when churning other cards. Still toying with the idea…
Thanks again for the food for thought.
For a lot of average earners, you need to put holiday spend on your BA Amex to hit the £10k for the 241. We have 2 BA cards in our house, so need £20k. Add in minimum spends on new cards we pick up, and there isn’t much scope to use an FX free card.
When you hit the compare regular card to Black, it shows that Black only entitles to 20,000. Anyone know if this just a mistake?
If you do apply, screenshot the intro page and any other than mentions the 40K benefit!
It is definitely 40k, it was advertised as such in the email statements that some people got
Where does it show you get Plat status?
It’s just showing:
40000 Priority Club bonus points* with your
first purchase within 90 days of account opening
Earn 4 Priority Club points per £1
on all spend at IHG hotels and on spending abroad
Earn 2 Priority Club points per £1
on your everyday spending
Receive a free night voucher valid at over 4,400 hotels
worldwide if you spend at least £10,000 per year
0% interest on balance transfers for 15 months from account opening (2.99% fee applies)
Easy to manage with online account services
and paperless statements
£99 annual fee
It doesn’t say. They never bothered to update the site! But you do get it.
Many thanks for the link Raffles 🙂
As a pre-existing Priority Club Visa cardholder, I’m assuming that the 40k points is unavailable to me unless I cancel and wait a while before reapplying – any tips? The Plat status is the main thing I’m after though, 40k points would be nice as well though!
Many thanks again in advance!
They seem to be offering a 20k bonus to existing cardholders to upgrade – seems targetted but if you rang they might let you have it. You are on the hook for £99 fee then, of course, but you will get Platinum as well. Cancelling would mean a 6 month wait at least to reapply and it is not clear if Barclays embrace churners as happily as Amex or MBNA.
Hi Nick. There’s a quicker, cheaper, easier way to achieve this…
If you don’t have a LeClub Accor account, get one… quick… with Platinum! status: http://loyaltylobby.com/2012/10/14/accor-a-club-le-club-accorhotels-platinum-status-for-new-accounts-and-olds-too/
If you do have one, upgrade (apparently) or open another – you just need a screen shot of your status – then dump it.
Then, email your status screen shot to Priority Club and request a status match to Platinum: http://loyaltylobby.com/2013/01/03/priority-club-platinum-status-match/
You may or may not want the credit card, and you may or may not get the 20/40k points (though it wouldn’t be all bad to have a guinea pig for Barclays card churning), but if you primarily want Platinum status, then this way you have is regardless!
Yes, this has worked for some. There is a full post on the Accor Platinum deal lined up for a day or so … so much to squeeze in at the moment!
Update: Having tried this myself following the advice and experience given in the links above, I’ve been asked to fax a statement – a screenshot seems no longer good enough! But I don’t have a statement 🙁
Is this the best value non-Amex card for times when Amex is not accepted? Please suggest alternatives (if any)
Thanks
40,000 just come through. Which seemingly triggered platinum status, which was a nice surprise.