Virgin Flying Club increases credit card sign-up bonus to 10,000 / 25,000 Flying Club miles

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• Rob says:

  9 Jan9 January 11:00

  I am typing this in Regus as it happens! You also get two free days use of a private office when you sign up for the free Gold card via Virgin.

  • Alan says:

    9 Jan9 January 11:01

    I’ve still got my Regus Gold courtesy of UA Gold a few years ago – they don’t seem to expire 😀

    • Tariq says:

      9 Jan9 January 15:58

      Indeed, I claimed the Regus gold card from my wife’s VS black Amex a couple of years ago – cancelled the Amex card after a year but the Regus card still works very nicely… 🙂

• Taz says:

  9 Jan9 January 11:16

  Can you spend on either visa or amex to hit the bonus?

  • Colin JE says:

    9 Jan9 January 11:57

    From white card Ts and Cs: “3,000 bonus miles will be credited to your Flying Club account after your first card purchase, providing you use either of your cards within 90 days of your account opening and supply your Flying Club membership number to MBNA. A further 7,000 bonus miles will be credited to your account when you apply by 31 March 2015 and spend £1,000 on either card in the first 90 days of your account opening and supply your Flying Club membership number to MBNA.”
    From black card: “18,500 bonus miles will be credited to your Flying Club account after your first card purchase, providing you use either of your cards within 90 days of your account opening and supply your Flying Club membership number to MBNA. A further 6,500 bonus miles will be credited to your account when you apply by 31 March 2015 and spend £2,000 on either card in the first 90 days of your account opening and supply your Flying Club membership number. “

• christian says:

  9 Jan9 January 11:39

  Can you have a BA amex and a Virgin amex because this is through MBNA?

  • Alan says:

    9 Jan9 January 11:46

    Yes, no issue with this at all assuming all OK on the credit check front. If any problems with MBNA and you already have a card with them then they’ll normally let you transfer some of your credit limit across from the existing card to allow the new card to be opened.

• Trevor says:

  9 Jan9 January 12:07

  I would have thought that for £140 for the Black card, if you were to transfer to Hilton, you’d get that value back off a 37,500 point redemption. Likewise, with IHG, you could get £140 of value from a 25,000 point redemption. Far more value of course if you were lucky enough to time a redemption with PointBreaks offer, getting 5 free nights. Since at normal redemption rates it would be around a break-even, I’d be hesitant to do the offer just for that. That said, the Newport Hilton is 5,000 redemption, so if you needed a week in southern Wales, you couldn’t go wrong 7 nights with change to spare at £140 outlay. Additionally, there are other 5k redemptions elsewhere, like Egypt/Sharm etc. So on either problem you could do well out of it.

  • Rob says:

    9 Jan9 January 13:14

    You can buy 25,000 IHG points for ($7 x 25 =) $175, though, via the ‘cash and points cancellation’ trick which makes paying £140 via Virgin a bit pointless – especially as such a person would presumably not bother using the Virgin credit card because they would presumably have no interest in more Virgin miles.

• Bebbeitaliano says:

  9 Jan9 January 12:46

  Could I use the black virgin card to pay the tax bill online with the visa and earn 1 avios per pound?

  • Louie says:

    9 Jan9 January 12:50

    Depends if you are happy to swallow HMRC’s 1.4% charge.

  • BLT says:

    9 Jan9 January 12:51

    Yes but there is a 1.4% credit card charge for using it

  • Colin JE says:

    9 Jan9 January 13:20

    Bloody brilliant idea! However, I found this on the web on an HMRC payment page: ” If you pay by credit card you will have to pay a transaction fee of 1.4 per cent. HMRC does not accept American Express or Diners Club cards.” So, not worth it if you’re just looking for points but if you wanted it to hit your bonus target spend of £2,000 and this was your only way of spending maybe it’d be worth it. Paying a £2,000 tax bill by c/card would cost you £28 and get you 6,500 +2,000 points!

• Colin JE says:

  9 Jan9 January 12:47

  I applied and got my VA Black card last night when I saw this offer. I already had a VA White card. Interestingly this offer only seems to apply if you go straight to them. I sent a ‘recommend a friend’ to my wife to see if I’d get the 3000 points that VA give but when she clicked on the link sent to her it the MBNA site was showing only the standard point offer. I may have missed out but it looks like this offer is better.

  I had a webchat with Virgin today to see what class of ticket I’d need to use the companion ticket. I couldn’t see myself ever getting the spend on the white card to get one (though I will get an upgrade certificate on its anniversary) but the black seemed do-able.

  Raffles had pointed out that the companion ticket offer was poor, as you had to buy a flexible ticket. For some reason, Virgin have apparently removed the details from their website about the qualifying fares, even though their own Ts and Cs say it’s on the site. According to the Virgin rep for Upper only J class qualifies but for Premium Economy you can buy a W or S class ticket. W is available from Virgin/agents and is expensive, but S, which only Virgin sell, is OK. S is semi-flexible, allows changes of date or destination, but not cancellation. An S class ticket is about £1,400 to LON to NY return. So for about £1,750 inc taxes on the companion ticket you get two PE tickets. Not a ‘wow’ offer but passable. There is one catch, the only way to get your companion to the next class up is to upgrade with cash; you can’t use miles. Of course, you could upgrade your seat with miles but your ‘companion’ would be stuck back in the lower class! Not a great way to start a romantic holiday…

  • Charlie says:

    9 Jan9 January 13:43

    You can choose what class of ticket you want using the Virgin website, but not a lot of people know this. See link below, you will find a very useful class drop down menu!

    http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/gb/frequentflyer/spendmiles/upgradeandcompanionflights/index.jsp

• RIcatti says:

  9 Jan9 January 12:50

  I was advised that an upgrade voucher is issued at the anniversary of the card, NOT on hitting the spending threshold.

  • jonathan smy says:

    9 Jan9 January 13:09

    I can confirm this, the voucher is added upon the anniversary of the card, not once you hit the spend target. Therefore it will cost you 2x annual fee to get the reward voucher.

    • Colin JE says:

      9 Jan9 January 13:24

      Elsewhere here people have said that the second year’s charge will be refunded if you cancel the card shortly after the anniversary, provided you do not spend any more on it after the anniversary.

      • jonathan smy says:

        9 Jan9 January 13:27

        Amex offer a pro-rata refund on their cards when accounts are closed. MBNA do not offer a refund so I’m not sure about that. My experience of VirginMBNA’s customer services on the phone, I found them less than amenable and by the book.

    • Matt says:

      9 Jan9 January 14:08

      I would recommend contacting them through their electronic messaging system so it is logged in your account, the first time I enquired about this I was told:

      “Thank you for your message. I confirm if you close your account before your anniversary date, you will lose your reward upgrades on your account. The account must be open at the time of the anniversary to achieve the upgrades. You can review your monthly miles earned on your statement each month. You can view and download your statements online, just log on and go to your ‘Account Home’ page, then select the month you would like to view or download. Many thanks”

      When I complained that this was not clearly explained in their T&Cs, they replied:

      “Thank you for your message. I have reviewed your query and you must ensure your account is closed before the anniversary date if you do not want to pay the annual fee. However, we may look to refund the fee within 30 days of the it being applied, if you are closing the account. This is providing that you have not benefited from any additional miles from the last anniversary date i.e. that you have not used your card since the fee was applied. If the customer has used their card and earned miles then we may not be able to refund the annual fee. Kind regards.”

      My anniversary date is in the next few weeks so lets see what happens…

  • Charlie says:

    9 Jan9 January 13:33

    I cancelled my Virgin Credit card well before its anniversary because I was ditching Virgin to concentrate on Avios, however I still got the PE upgrade vouchers credited to my Virgin account.

• jonathan smy says:

  9 Jan9 January 12:58

  bit off topic, but when is amex rewards likely to have its next transfer bonus to virgin or ba?

  • Charlie says:

    9 Jan9 January 13:31

    I reckon there’ll be one in the next month or two for Virgin … my reasoning is it is just before year end, and there was one last year. Fingers crossed.

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