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FLASH SALE: 40% bonus when you buy Avios – but cheaper via Iberia and a bad deal anyway

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British Airways launched a three day ‘buy Avios’ flash sale yesterday, offering a bonus of 40% for purchases made by the end of Friday.  The page to buy Avios points is here.

I received more emails, tweets and Facebook notifications from HFP readers about this deal than any other offer this year so, even though it is 2.30am here in Abu Dhabi, I thought I would give you my views!

If you want to see some pictures from yesterday of the Etihad A380 First Class Apartment and the Plaza Premium lounge in Terminal 4, take a look at our Instagram feed.

Avios wing 14

Frankly, this is not an impressive deal.

For a start, you need to buy at least 10,000 Avios for the bonus to kick in.  This means that the only people I would recommend jump in – people who only need a small number of Avios points to reach a redemption target – can’t take part.

BA has reset the annual purchase limits for this offer.  However many points you may have already bought this year, you can buy another 35,000 + 40% via this offer.

At the top end, you will be spending £575 to receive 35,000 + 14,000 bonus Avios.  This works out at 1.17p per point.  I am not a buyer at this price.

I have a spreadsheet which shows every redemption I have made across our family accounts in the last two years.  It comes to 2.6 million Avios points.  Using a realistic value of what I would have been prepared to pay for the same flights, I get to 0.96p of value.  I am certainly not a buyer at 1.17p.

My 0.96p is low because I booked a lot of ‘double Avios’ Gold Priority Rewards in order to open up seats on key school holiday dates.  As you can’t use a British Airways American Express 2-4-1 voucher here and are using double points, you soon start dragging down the value you get.

You probably get better value than I do.  This article shows, post the April devaluation, how I would value an Avios point in a number of different scenario.  It was easy to find scenarios where you could get 1.5p per point or more and, under these scenarios, paying 1.17p may make some sense.

You then need to ask yourself, however, whether you could be paying less.  If you aren’t planning to book a flight until next year, you have plenty of time to pick up some points via another credit card sign-up bonus or a Tesco deal.  Tesco was basically ‘selling’ Avios for well under 1p last weekend and you got a free colour printer thrown in!

If you are going to buy, buy via Iberia Plus instead

Iberia Plus has launched its own ‘buy Avios with a 40% bonus’ promotion, see here for further details. 

Note that you need to log-in to see details of the bonus offer. Without logging in, the page just shows the standard pricing.

The Iberia offer has a couple of key differences:

It only runs until the end of today (Thursday) whilst the BA offer runs until Friday

You can buy a maximum of 100,000 Avios + 40,000 bonus Avios with Iberia

ALL purchases receive the 40% bonus – there is no minimum

At the top end, you will be paying €1,800 for 140,000 Avios.  That works out cheaper than the ba.com deal at 0.91p per Avios, based on £1,267.  You would need to add a 3% foreign exchange fee to this price if your credit card has one.

If we compare like with like, ie a purchase of 35,000 + 14,000 bonus, you are still ahead.  You are paying €665 (£468) which is 0.96p per Avios.

In order to buy Avios via Iberia, you must have been an Iberia Plus member for 90 days and have earned at least 1 Avios point.  This is why I always suggest that HfP readers should open an Iberia Plus Avios account and put a transaction through it (an Amex Membership Rewards transfer, a flight, a hotel stay, a car rental etc) so that the account is active and ready for when an offer like this comes along.

Conclusion

Don’t get caught up in the flash sale excitement.  I don’t think 1.17p is a great deal and I am pretty sure that I can find you some good offers via Head for Points in the next few months which will allow you to pick up points for a lot less.  If you really need to do it, go via the Iberia route if you can and save some money.

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

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

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

25,000 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 – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a 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, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

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

40,000 points sign-up bonus 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.

Category

British Airways and Avios, Iberia and Iberia Plus

Comments (69)

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

  • harry says:
    3 Dec3 December 14:45

    The odd referral always helps

  • James67 says:
    3 Dec3 December 14:55

    Harry keeps his local tesco in business and a couple of hundred employees in their jobs single handed I think!

    • Brian says:
      3 Dec3 December 17:17

      And his local Morrisons!

      • harry says:
        3 Dec3 December 20:26

        I can’t get near 2.6M but not far off the million zillion squillion number after converting everything this month & the Iberia buy a few weeks ago. We burn about 250K a year flying out to holiday place (5 of us x4-5 times pa, sometimes cash though), so if you added in previous years, when my earning was lower, I might get near 1.75M grand total last 5 years. Which I guess quite a few other people here with business expenses etc can beat.

  • matt says:
    3 Dec3 December 15:05

    How do you work out how much value you got out of an avios redemption?

    • James67 says:
      3 Dec3 December 15:39

      By comparing the number of avios redeemed to actual or perceived cost of revenue flights you might otherwise have taken. You also need to factor in the the taxes and fees on the redemption. Ultimately thd value you reach will be dependent on many factors, e,g. when you book, whether you base value on revenue price of airline redeemed or cheapest acceptable alternative etc. Thus, values are very inividual and not directly comparable. It is worth trying to figure one out for yourself though based on your redemption history as it guides you in setting a realistic price you should be prepared to pay per avios either directly or indirectly.

    • mark2 says:
      3 Dec3 December 18:39

      That is very subjective and difficult to calculate.
      It is the only way that I can travel long haul in Club or First, so Avios are very valuable to me. Others with a high income (I had one when I was working) may value them less since they can pay for the current low price cash fares.
      Another complication is that when you collect you may not know what the redemption terms will be when you redeem.

      • Kathy says:
        3 Dec3 December 21:09

        Yes, in the past I have only got 0.5 ppa, but since I didn’t have the cash to spend on a holiday at that time that represented good value for me.

        • Erico1875 says:
          3 Dec3 December 22:13

          Quite often that has been my case too. Cash poor but Avios rich, so 15K Avios and £35 to Malaga RTN in July was a good deal especially when we got the free connections.
          My Avios cost overall has been under 0.3p so TBH even hotels offer a bit of value.

          • harry says:
            3 Dec3 December 22:46

            Good to realise that even if you get them for 0.3p (or free), buying 100K more for 0.9p might still be an excellent choice.

      • James67 says:
        4 Dec4 December 00:29

        That it is subjective was exactly my point Mark. It becomes even more complicated if, like me, you value the flexibility of a BA reward seat. Factoring that in requies c9mparison to a very expensive fully flexible revenue fare so I can easily justify a huge value per avios, vut not really because I would never pay that fare anyway. .

  • Andrew says:
    3 Dec3 December 15:32

    How did you stake more than you deposited?

  • CV3V says:
    3 Dec3 December 16:35

    I know the exclusion you mean, and have seen it in the conditions before with various wordings, but no such mention with Netbet. I have done a few of these gambling websites this year (blame Harry), and all have tracked ok.

    • harry says:
      3 Dec3 December 18:29

      We’re moving house next year, opens up a whole new world of opportunities 🙂

  • Danksy says:
    3 Dec3 December 17:06

    Just watch out with some of these sites as they offer additional ‘signup’ bonuses which then require the initial bet to be wagered up to 300x to get the deposit match!! Also credit cards sometimes treat these as cash withdrawals!

  • Rob says:
    3 Dec3 December 17:54

    I got 1m just from the Lloyds Avios credit card deal, where they gave you 25 points per £1 on FX spend. Booked lots of prepaid hotel rooms and then refunded them later …

    You need to remember that the Revenue used to charge just 0.7% for tax payments so anyone with a BMI MasterCard at 2.5 Avios per £1 could easily rack it up. As a Partner in a major City firm I was technically self-employed so paid my own tax.

    • Andrew says:
      4 Dec4 December 10:15

      As in booked room, got points, cancelled booking, kept points?

      Don’t they claim back the points when the refund comes through?

      Am I missing something obvious?

  • Kathy says:
    4 Dec4 December 10:21

    I had a go on NetBet last night too.

    Deposited £20, played through my £20 minimum on roulette, was left with £16. Tried to withdraw, but couldn’t, as minimum withdrawal is £20.

    Returned to roulette, tried for a few minutes to get above £20, kept losing again what I’d just won, got down to £12. Got fed up and headed to the slot machines to blow through the rest. Won twice within about 6 spins, ended up with £26, said thank-you very much NetBet and withdrew it.

    They should have let me cash out with that £16!

    • harry says:
      4 Dec4 December 10:31

      That’s why people sometimes deposit more than the minimum, though check the rules. Some dastardly site I went on had a rule that you have to bet through all deposits before withdrawal allowed.

      Most are more honest. So you read what the minimum withdrawal amount is, deposit required bet-through amount + min withdrawal amount, bet through JUST the minimum requirement, then withdraw everything left.

      • Kathy says:
        4 Dec4 December 13:16

        Some of them are sneaky buggers! I’ve been caught out by a bonus being added my my account without me realising it, which meant I couldn’t withdraw unless I played through a few hundred quid. The American sites seem to be especially bad at that sort of thing.

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

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