I posted two weeks ago about the offer of 1,000 bonus Avios via British Airways Executive Club for buying £300 of currency from American Express Currency Exchange.
This is a quick heads up that the same offer has now appeared at avios.com as well.
This gives you a potential chance to get 2 x 1,000 Avios bonuses. It reads to me that you can get one bonus for crediting a transaction to avios.com and another 1,000 Avios for crediting a different transaction to BAEC.
Take a look at my original post and the 50+ comments if you want to learn more about this offer.
(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to see our latest articles on earning and spending your points and click here to see our list of current Avios promotions.)
About Head for Points
I see they explicitly EXCLUDE sterling tc’s
“You’ll not collect Avios on the purchase or sale of Sterling Travellers Cheques.”
and also looks like collection only.
This is also in the T&C’s for the BAEC offer, and is enforced.
However, if all you are bothered about is getting through the £2,000 of qualifying spend on your new Amex card to trigger the bonus, then £TC’s are the way to go. The fact that you don’t get Avios from Amex Currency Exchange is immaterial.
Not sure why you think it’s collection only:
2. To receive a bonus 1,000 Avios, you must exchange a minimum amount of £300 (GBP) with American Express Currency Exchange (including online at travelmoneynow.com/avios) or Moneycorp in the UK between 28 January 2013 and 31 March 2013. You are not eligible to receive these bonus points if you have already collected Avios with American Express or Moneycorp between 1 September 2012 and 27 January 2013.
I’m not sure you can earn the bonus a second time. See the terms and conditions:
All you have to do is enter your Avios membership number when you order your currency between 28 January 2013 and 31 March 2013 and we’ll automatically enter you into the prize draws and add 1,000 Avios if you exchange over £300 in one transaction and have not ordered currency with American Express between 1 September 2012 and 27 January 2013.
…which conflict with the terms and conditions here:
2. To receive a bonus 1,000 Avios, you must exchange a minimum amount of £300 (GBP) with American Express Currency Exchange (including online at travelmoneynow.com/avios) or Moneycorp in the UK between 28 January 2013 and 31 March 2013. You are not eligible to receive these bonus points if you have already collected Avios with American Express or Moneycorp between 1 September 2012 and 27 January 2013.
But if you collect the Avios using your Avios.com membership number then they’ll have no way of linking that to Avios collected using your BAEC number. You can then just move the Avios across from Avios.com to BAEC.
It would be best to use a different card to purchase the currency with. Amex cards earn MRs or Avios on the currency purchase, so if you have already used a Platinum Amex, you should switch to BA Amex, for example.
Exactly my thinking. They are, technically, meant to take your passport data for money laundering but I doubt they use that for the purposes of checking whether you qualify.
The rate looks a bit off, not sure if this is such a great deal, checking delivery options, on 600Euros (to take it reasonably over the £500 mark for free delivery)
via this link you pay: £527.33 with a rate of 1.1378
checking via MSE,the normal rate for ACE delvery is 1.164 thus costing you only £520.51
i accpet that the bonus avios make it slightly better depending on how much you are exchanging.
should clarify, i don;t mean your link raffles, just the difference between the “avios link” and the normal ACE rates.
Hope you guys are patient, I’m a bit of an avois noob 🙁
I’ve just signed up for Amex platinum – if I were to order £1k of US$ and £1k of EUR€, I think this will qualify me for:
2000 conditional spend, and thus 52k MR points
1000 bonus avois through Amex promotion
2000 avios (1 per £ of spend)
No cash advance or other fees (not sure about this one..)
Thanks
All correct, except that Amex is likely to throw a bit of a wobbly if your first two transactions are for currency. You are also likely to breach the daily cash limit on your card, which annoyingly Amex doesn’t tell you!
I would limit an initial purchase to £300 of each – in separate transactions, ordered on separate days, albeit you can collect them on the same day. You can try a higher number if you want although you might get knocked back.
In theory, if you order £300 against your BAEC account and £300 against your avois.com account, you may get the 1,000 Avios bonus twice. The rules are not clear.
Definitely no cash advance fees unless Amex suddenly change their policy.
Not the best rates
GBP to USD middle rate yesterday was 1-1.58 on amex official currency website exchange was 1-1.54 (not to bad ..) and same amex currency website via the BA or AVIOS link was 1-1.525 ! That’s 1% more exchange rate then going threw AMEX directly!
Looks like the offer is gone
No, still there.
Just tried ordering with my BA Amex and transaction didn’t go through because cash withdrawal isn’t activated it says. So perhaps it now counts as withdrawal, not spend?
I ordered £509 worth last Wed, collected on Friday, on a BA Amex. Hasn’t gone through yet but shows as Pending with no fee attached.
Mine was rejected outright, told me to use another card. Very surprised as I had no trouble with an SPG Amex last year.
Odd. I can confirm that the £509 I put through my BA Amex last Wednesday posted overnight as a purchase, as expected.