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Get 1,200 Avios for £5 in Tesco with ‘Call of Duty’

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It’s back.  When will Tesco ever learn?  Hopefully not for a while.

On Tesco Direct, there is a very average offer for 500 bonus Clubcard points and £5 off when you pre-order a selection of new video games.  Fifa 15, Battlefield Hardline, Call of Duty – Advanced Warfare and Destiny are all included.  It’s an OK deal if you are buying it anyway, but nothing to get excited about.

However, in store, something MUCH more interesting is back.

Tesco is offering 500 bonus Clubcard points when you pre-order ‘Call of Duty : Advanced Warfare’, Destiny’ . ‘Disney Infinity 2.0’. ‘Fifa 15’ or ‘Battlefield Hardline’ for £5.  This is 1,200 Avios points or 1,250 Flying Club miles for just a fiver.

How it is meant to work is that you get a display box scanned at the check-out, pay £5, and receive a special receipt. (You don’t keep the box.)  Visit the store on the day the game is released and you are guaranteed to get a copy and you will get your £5 back as a discount.

The 500 bonus Clubcard points are credited with the pre-order payment.  You have NO obligation to actually go back to the store and buy the game on the day of release.

There is no obligation to ever buy the game when it is eventually released. This means that you can treat this as a chance to buy some Avios airmiles for 0.4p each.

You need to be very careful not to overdo this promotion. It is acceptable to buy ONE copy of each game ON EACH FORMAT per Clubcard.  For each of the five games that means you could do a pre-order for the Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox 1 versions, netting yourself 5,000 Avios points. 

There seem to be 20 different variants available – five games across four different games consoles.  This means you can earn 24,000 Avios or 25,000 Virgin Flying Club miles for £100 per Clubcard account.

The boxes tend to be on a separate stand to the usual video games. You take an empty box to the checkout, it is scanned, but you do not keep the box – it goes back on the shelf. You will only tend to find these in larger Tesco stores.

It is possible that your local store will not have the special sticker up promoting the 500 points.  However, the points WILL go on at check-out.  Note that whilst the label in the image above does not mention that ‘Fifa 15’ and ‘Battlefield Hardline’ give you a bonus, they will.

(There is also a game called ‘Alien’ which is available for pre-order.  This is not included in this promotion and does not give any bonus points.  Do not buy any of these.)

If someone can provide the barcode numbers, it will also be possible to pay for these games at a self-service check-out in ANY Tesco store (except Express, as they have a different IT system) by manually inputting the bar code.  The problem is that all of the games except for ‘Fifa 15’ are age-restricted and a check-out supervisor would be required to approve the purchase.

This will also combine with the ‘£5 cashback for spending £10 in Tesco’ American Express deal that I posted about on Tuesday.

To summarise the above, this is how it works:

Visit the video games corner in a large Tesco store

Pick out empty ‘pre-order’ cases for any of the five games listed above, across any of the four formats

Pay £5 at check-out for each empty case you hand over.  Do not take the case home!

Your till receipt should show the 500 bonus points

Do NOT buy exactly the same game twice on the same Clubcard, whether in the same transaction or in different transactions.  If you do that you have crossed the Tesco ‘bulk buying’ line.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2025)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous 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

Get 5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, and the standard card is FREE. Capital on Tap cards also have no FX fees.

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 1 Avios per £1 Read our full review

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

50,000 points when you sign-up 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

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Comments (440)

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

  • Costas says:

    has anyone received the bonus points on the pre orders, I bought 9 pre order tickets yesterday, checked my cc account and no points added, maybe tomorrow is my golden day,, this does sound a bit 2 good to be true, as did last weeks grocery order re:okra and chillies

  • Smartypants says:

    Anyone thought of generating their own bar codes and just put them through the self service checkouts?

    • idrive says:

      yes I did it yesterday but Tesco’s readers could not read them. My iphone actually managed to correctly read them with the same app I use for 3V…

  • mucky says:

    Just tried this at Tesco Brent Cross and was told they don’t do preorders I need to buy the game from Tesco direct online. Anyone else tried it here?

    • idrive says:

      yes, they are ignorant that’s it. I am going to post my experience shortly.

    • Jonny says:

      Tesco wembley, 5 mins down the north circ, has loads!

  • Trevor says:

    Well, today got the first 1k points for a test run on Thurs, and what a mission that was – no games in stock so printed bar codes and put those through, but nothing for weight at self-service, so attendant needed to verify each time as well as over 18. then queried why nothing new added to bag?! Just muttered barcode for pre-order and he was happy enough. Of course no pre-order voucher either, but ignored this.

    Back today and decided to go self-scan. Well… selected 6 of my printed barcodes (use if keen) and a few other products. Got to self scan check in and faced “random security check”. So the assistant begins rescanning everything, then wonders why all the products are there (surely better too few than too many?). I said they were pre-order games so left on shelf, but he insisted he needed to scan them. Well, since they weren’t on the shelf as Tesco Extra Sunbury only has each format of FIFA and Battlefield, I reluctantly said I had the barcodes on me. This didn’t perturb him much, but he’d already started again and tried to over-ride the system, so restarted again, and even after scanning the barcodes, went to management for advice. So another 5min and a growing queue of other customers requiring assistance, and eventually he seemed happy and I was done… except that self-scan doesn’t print the pre-order vouchers either. I went to Customer Services on the off chance I ever do get the games for family/friends, but was told there was no way that they could produce the vouchers now and I’d have to use my receipt as pre-order proof. So 2 tricky trip and not even half way through the games on the Mrs account… not sure I can be bothered with this!

  • idrive says:

    Here is my experience…

    1) On Thursday I went to Tesco Metro in Piccadilly, to customer services and told them I wanted to preorder games, they guy was at the click and collect tesco, he knew nothing, he called another one, who knew nothing and called the manager who knew nothing and let me walked away telling me they don’t do preorders and need to buy online, so listening to clients is definitely not his main skills. I should have gone to Covent Garden where last year i could buy the COD code.
    2) same day went to another Tesco Metro, tried to speak to Customer services, they repeated 20 times they knew nothing and they could not do it but at the end after i was getting exausted and they called the manager, he listened to me, followed step by step what I was saying and told the guys to follow what I was saying…i managed to buy a few titles telling them the codes one by one. the guy apologised and said he knew nothing from briefing, I sad “ok don’t worry I understand”.
    3) day after, yesterday i went again to another customer service, the young lady in her twenties knew nothing and nothing I said convinced her even to let me talk because she was so arrogant, if she only listened to me I would not have wasted time but…after that I walked to self service, and started typing in all numbers called the guy who got panicking when he saw I was putting things to make weigh, called the manager who argued this was nonsense. by the way at least he was a good client facing person who told me “teach me how to do it and we will do it on the till”, so he could recall the numbers. Also they asked me where I got the codes…and got so suspicious as I had printed my own ones…they are just numbers!!! what are you afraid of!!!

    now, at the end of the day, what they just showed was that

    1)they know nothing, and we all know this.
    2) you can easily see which employee is a good customer service agent, paramount for a client facing role like that
    3)HR should tell them that the client is almost always right but in this case they act so stupidly because if an item i buy is not being scanned, ie a pack of biscuits, they just type in the numbers. they just get confused when we are talking about paying for a future discount, they just start inventing things like “We can not to preorders because the games will not be delivered here, you need to buy online”…so i had everytime to explain that I was going to pay now for a slip garanteeing a £5 discount against a future purchase that I could exploit at any Tesco in UK from Aberdeen to Brighton…(hope there are no Scottish mates here!)

    You need to listen, there is no risk or simply you don’t wand to spend 3 minutes in listening what I am saying. You are not even worth 3 minutes of my time if you act like this!!
    why they just get so positioned in saying b++++t!?

    But I have also to thank all the good people at Tesco who do their job in an excellent way!

    by the way, i managed to get all the 18 games (missing two but leaving them)! so we can now organize a big gaming turnament! 🙂

    thanks all!

    • Jeff says:

      I don’t see why you kept going to CS – lots of people have explained how to do it on self-scan, why not use that? Repeating something to the staff ’20 times’ also doesn’t seem to be the best way to get them onside to help you! If they don’t sell them in that store then you’re making use of their IT setup, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect the staff to know about something they don’t sell.

      • idrive says:

        they do sell!!! in fact they have the Games rack just in front!! but no boxes! and i bought them there!

        i could not go to self service because I raised too much attention and the same guy was there again! there were 4 people looking at me while bagging my iphone, keys etc 🙂

    • squills says:

      God help us 😉 – I don’t think idrive lives under a bridge by the way lol.

      Idrive – you & my eldest son would get on great 😉

      Are you into Minecraft by any chance?

      • idrive says:

        aha, i don’t live under a bridge! no, i am not into Minecraft and why shall i get on well with your son?:-)

  • Louise says:

    Went back to get my last 4 from lee valley and they turned me away at the normal checkout and said I had to go back to the electrical desk. Went there and the SA put them through but a colleague came over and said they need to put a sign up for one copy only!!

  • Tom says:

    I know you can get a refund of your £5 preorder on the day of the release of the game.

    Im wondering whether they would deduct the promo cc points aswell?

    • PJK says:

      That surely would be too good to be true … or completely taking the p! $$

      Does anyone have experience of this … might be worth a try with 1 pre-order … ?!

      • squills says:

        You can certainly get a refund – (has been done) – if you’re a complete moron 😉

    • Louise says:

      Not worth the risk surely? Although some of the games are out in Sept – so surely the points will have posted and vouchers spent by then.
      But could get you banned?

    • Tom says:

      Not that i am considering doing since its a decent score with the points. But was curious since as mentioned the games wont be released for a while and the points/vouchers would be spent by then.

  • Benjamin says:

    expires on the 15th, presumably this is inclusive of tomorrow and expires at midnight? Did a first run today and will visit other large stores tomorrow

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