Buying points: 25% Avios bonus, 20% Virgin Flying Club bonus, 40% Hyatt bonus

There are a number of bonus offers available at the moment for buying points.  In general, this is never a great idea unless you only need a small number to top off your account or you need the miles at short notice.  Over the longer term, you will definitely be able to pick up miles more cheaply by other methods in most cases.

There are times when it makes sense though.  Take the Hyatt offer below.  Hyatt Gold Passport offers ‘last room availability’ – if there is a standard room available for cash, you can have it for points.  On peak dates, when room rates are looking very scary, buying the necessary number of points could save you money over paying cash.

The Avios deal

Until May 21st, avios.com is offering a bonus for buying points:

• Get a 15% bonus when you buy 5,000 – 26,000 Avios
• Get a 25% bonus when you 27,000 – 35,000 Avios

These are not great deals, especially when you remember that there were 50% bonuses running in the lead up to the devaluation.  However, if you need to buy some points then it is obviously worth having.  The link is here.

At the time of writing, the deal is only available via avios.com and NOT ba.com, although this may change.  You would need to use ‘Combine My Avios’ to move the points across from avios.com to ba.com if necessary.

The Virgin deal

I mentioned this yesterday so I won’t dwell on it again.  Until June 3rd, you will receive a 20% bonus when you buy Virgin Flying Club miles.  The link is here although you don’t see the offer until you click through to the next page.

The Hyatt deal

Hyatt Gold Passport is offering a bonus of 40% when you buy 10,000 or more points by May 31st.  The link is here.  The maximum you can buy per calendar year, excluding the bonus, is 55,000 points.

The American deal

Finally, American Airlines is running another 35% discount until May 11th.  I discussed the pros and cons of buying and using AA miles in this article from the last time I wrote about such an offer.  The link to buy is here.