Big news – you can now transfer ALL TopCashback money to Avios

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• littlefish says:

  14 May14 May 13:09

  Good point … thank’s for posting. Slipped my consciousness that ‘travel’ includes Hotels (dimly registered ‘travel’ as flights). I wonder what Car hire will count as 🙂

  • Rob says:

    14 May14 May 15:09

    Due to the BA / Avis relationship, almost certainly travel.

• Mark says:

  14 May14 May 13:50

  If you look at the reviews on Tesco ‘boosts’ for hotels, you will find opinions tottally polarised. 50% say “Brilliant deal – great stay…” and the rest report no availability / dishonoured stays / etc. They look too risky to me, so I stick to RedSpottedHanky train vouchers at £2-for-1 rate which are OK for any rail tickets inc Eurostar. (After I have had my £50 of Tesco CC’s!)

  • Rob says:

    14 May14 May 15:07

    You can check Hilton availability online using a corporate code – should write a post on this to be honest

• Rob says:

  14 May14 May 15:41

  That is the way madness looms though!

  I would value F to the Caribbean ar £2500 return. BA will sell you a cash Club World ticket for £1500 in a sale and I am very generously adding £1000 for the exclusivity of F.

  Assuming £500 of tax per person and you have used 150k Avios to save £4,000. That is still not bad of course at over 2p but a far cry from 12p. Without the 241 you would have got just over 1p of value using my numbers.

  There is an easy way to work out how much you value an Avios at – if a friend had asked you to book the same ticket for them and offered to pay you a ‘fair’ price, what would you ask?

  • Mike says:

    14 May14 May 17:09

    I don’t use a sale price for comparison, it assumes that you’re able to book well in advance and not need to cancel. That’s pretty much never true for me. An Avios redemption can be far more flexible if you’re in that situation, so should be compared against a similarly flexible ticket or short notice booking.

    • Rob says:

      14 May14 May 22:20

      You should compare it against what you would otherwise be willing to pay! I have just booked a First Class ticket to New York on Lufthansa (which is a better product than BA) and in my ‘accounts’ I treat it as £3,000 of value. I consider that reasonable and I would, for a honeymoon or something, pay £3,000 for Lufty First. I would never, ever pay a five figure sum.

      Look at it another way. Let’s imagine BA tomorrow let you redeem your Avios for cash at 2p per point. Are you saying that you would not do it because you can effectively get 12p per point on your valuation of an F ticket? I promise you, I would be at the front of the queue dumping my entire Avios stash if I was offered 2p per point for them.

      Remember also that super-cheap ex-EU tickets on BA can have their dates changed for Euro 200, albeit you can’t cancel. You can get flexibility without buying a fully flex ticket!

      • Marco says:

        14 May14 May 23:06

        Dear Rob,
        Your 3:41pm and 10:20pm comments are the best summaries of “how much is an Avios worth” that I’ve ever read… deep philosophy yet common sense! You could expand this into a post!

        • Waribai says:

          15 May15 May 21:56

          Ditto!

      • Eastland says:

        15 May15 May 10:46

        I will just add that I have changed this booking twice (through Sandals being a bit annoying) and that included cancelling and re-booking to st lucia instead of barbados.
        The Key here is that anything other than fully flex (Eg if id taken the £2600 club world which was available at that time), i would have lost the lot and there would be no honeymoon. The flexibility is a big bonus. 12p I agree is stupid (that was me making a point based on what BA say the flight is worth).
        You say value them on what you would pay, but its priceless to me. I would NEVER pay for first and probably not for club either. I have a new very large mortgage and am paying for a wedding. Even £1500 each for club would be too much to justify the £1000 we could spend elsewhere (like fixing the leaking conservatory).
        Even the option to fly first class is in itself worth a fortune to me.

        I will also say 130k of the 150k needed came through credit cards bonuses and spending. They cost me only the BA PP fee and i think £35 for the SPG card.

  • Rob says:

    14 May14 May 22:22

    Look at it this way. If BA offered you an upgrade from Club World to First via Manage My Booking for £500 each way, would you take it? That is how you work out how much you really value F.

    In reality it all depends on route etc. If you are flying back overnight from New York then arguably F is a bit of a waste if you intend to board and go to sleep immediately. On a day flight outbound arguably it is worth more.

• Worzel says:

  14 May14 May 16:02

  I agree with your 3:41pm comment Raffles.

• andy stock says:

  14 May14 May 22:12

  First Utility – 4772 clubcard points – 11452 avios points.

  • John says:

    15 May15 May 05:26

    I would pay 11K avios to get away from First Utility.

    I was going to say that I would never go with them even if I had a million avios, but that’s not true. In fact I think I would be happy to use them for a year if they gave me 200K avios, as that’s about £150 an hour for 10 hours on the phone and/or writing complaint letters to the ombudsman.

• James says:

  15 May15 May 05:32

  “I only redeem for something i could not afford to pay for”

  This is an oxymoron (I think), as you are always paying for it
  BA is happy to sell you a seat in £ or in avios, and you have paid £X for the avios, whether it is cheaper with £ directly or cheaper with £ to avios first, is irrelevant to the fact that you are still paying for it

  If you can’t afford to pay the £ price, then strictly speaking you are getting £0 of value for your avios, or more precisely, you are making 0 savings by using avios

  • squills says:

    15 May15 May 07:37

    I don’t think the idea of getting extra value (and therefore being able to afford something thru Avios that you wouldn’t have had the money for) is misplaced. A lot of my Avs are effectively free or nearly free. When I use those to pay for a flight, I’m getting the plane tickets far more cheaply than if I had to pay real money for them.

    • Mike says:

      15 May15 May 15:34

      I’m not sure I agree with the value comparison against £ at all. If you redeem say 100k Avios for a flight, you aren’t getting £ in value, you’re getting 100k Avios in value. It may be that the use of the Avios currency brings the cost of a flight down to a range that’s acceptable, where use of £ only would never be acceptable. It’s true that I then couldn’t say that I’ve “saved” anything, but I could definitely say that I’ve exchanged my currency for something of value. Ultimately that’s what matters, getting real stuff that I value in exchange for my fiat money (whether that’s £, Avios or bitcoins).

• RogerWilco says:

  15 May15 May 07:39

  With two kids in the UK I’ve found the European redemptions very valuable. EDI-LHR-home flights are usually in the €400 range. Redeeming 15k Avios + 42€ taxes is a no brainer for me (0,024€/Avios). The Clubcard route is unbeatable, but I’m still undecided on the direct transfer – cash is king and I normally earn Avios for “free” (business travel)

• Rob says:

  15 May15 May 09:30

  You’re clearly not from my bit of Yorkshire (thoil?) – my bit is the bit in the play-off semi tonight!

  • Tim says:

    15 May15 May 11:48

    “Thoil” as in “I can’t thoil it” = can pay but won’t pay. Others may say “it is too expensive” or “I am not prepared to pay that much for it” without actually revealing any hint of their personal financial circumstances. In true Yorkshire tradition, “thoil” captures the sentiment more revealingly, honestly and succinctly.

    “my bit is the bit in the play-off semi tonight!”

    I am not into football but a quick check on the BBC Sport site of the Yorkshire teams in the fixtures for tonight make you either from Rotherham or one of the Ladies from Bradford or Sheffield.

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