20% bonus on Tesco Clubcard conversions to Avios!

Love Clubcard, don’t collect Avios?  You should be reading our sister site, Shopper Points (www.shopperpoints.co.uk), which covers the latest Clubcard and Nectar offers without any distracting frequent flyer talk!  Why not check it out now?

British Airways Executive Club has announced the first “open to all” transfer bonus from Tesco Clubcard to Avios since, I think, July 2012!

From 1st November – so DO NOT CONVERT TODAY – until 30th November, you will receive a 20% transfer bonus on conversions from Tesco Clubcard into British Airways Executive Club.

Auto-convert members are OK as transfers which were made after 20th October will also receive the bonus.

There is a cap of £100 on the amount of Tesco vouchers that can be transferred.  You cannot get around this by sending £100 to BA and £100 to avios.com, because avios.com is not participating in this offer.

Full details can be found on the Clubcard website here.

Note that the wording between the site and the rules is not exactly the same.  The site says that you must convert in multiples of £10 to get the bonus.  The small print simply says that you must convert a minimum of £10 – and that once you are above that, you get the bonus on whatever amount you send over up to £100.

This bonus is not entirely unexpected.  I know that the Avios devaluation has impacted the willingness of some people to collect Avios from third parties.  This is purely common sense – if you believe that an Avios point is worth less than it was, other Clubcard redemption options or credit cards begin to look more attractive.

Avios, on the other hand, relies on income from third party issuers of Avios points.  The points issued from British Airways flights are a cost whilst the points issued via third parties are a revenue stream.

The only way to overcome this impact is to offer a transfer bonus which lessens the devaluation.  Where BA has gone wrong here is in capping the transfer at £100 – it was Club World redemption pricing which took the biggest hit, and only being able to transfer £100 of vouchers (28,800 Avios) is not going to make much impact.

Remember that Virgin Atlantic is also offering a 15% conversion bonus.  This is the first time in a long, long time that Virgin has had a poorer offer than BA!

The other thing to bear in mind is that Clubcard Boost returns on Monday, allowing you to get double the face value of your vouchers at Tesco Direct or for certain products in-store.  You should consider if this is a better deal or not.  Avios probably win out – a £10 Clubcard voucher would be worth £20 in Tesco Direct or 2,880 Avios points so you are effectively ‘buying’ Avios at 0.69p which is a good deal.

Love Clubcard, don’t collect Avios?  You should be reading our sister site, Shopper Points (www.shopperpoints.co.uk), which covers the latest Clubcard and Nectar offers without any distracting frequent flyer talk!  Why not check it out now?