News in brief:
Did you win our IHG Rewards Club competition?
Thank you to everyone who entered our IHG Rewards Club competition last week. There was a fantastic response and IHG was very impressed by the level of interest.
The winner was Jean H. Well done Jean! I have the codes you need to add the 50,000 points to your IHG account and I will be emailing them to you later.
Don’t forget that the IHG Winter Sale continues until 7th February.
You can save up to 30% on stays at 600 InterContinental, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza and Hotel Indigo hotels across Europe. The sale rates are valid for sale until 29th February 2016 and full details of the IHG Winter Sale can be found at this special website.
Marks & Spencer leave Gate 365 and the Avios e-store
M&S is no longer available on the British Airways shopping portal, Gate 365, or the Avios e-store. This means that you can no longer earn Avios points for starting your M&S shopping at one of those site.
Oddly, M&S is still available on TopCashback albeit with a minimum non-food spend of £100. Remember that TopCashback is still offering a bonus of 500 Avios if you sign up this week. Thanks to Helen.
£20 cashback when you spend £100 at Harvey Nichols with your Amex
Finally, Harvey Nichols is offering £20 cashback on a £100 American Express spend.
You need to go into the ‘Offers’ tab of your online Amex statement to register, where it should hopefully be showing. It is NOT on the cardmemberoffers.co.uk site yet so you cannot register via that route.
Lloyds, MBNA, TSB and Barclays Amex cardholders can register via the Amex Connect site.
The offer runs until 6th March and is restricted to the first 15,000 to sign up.
A less glamorous but more practical offer for ASK pizza restaurants is also available to most people!
About Head for Points
Any sign of the QR A380 F trip report? Or did I miss it?
Sorry ….. Still in process. I got massively backlogged over Christmas and tax and VAT returns are not helping! However, I need to do it in the next week or it will cross with my Turkish business class review flights!
We await with eager expectation! Enjoy the Turkish lounge, it’s a great place.
I had several thousand paid out then removed as I used the M&S 20% discount code !
Well done jean !
I’m sure most of you know this but you can now buy M&S giftcards in Tescos with 150 Tesco CC points per £50 so there is still a way to collect some Avios.
Old news. circa nov 15. keep up !
Well done to the winner.
(Ungrits teeth)
Well done Jean H. Thank you for the chance Rob and IHG !
OT as I tried to post a a comment on this post: https://www.headforpoints.com/2015/02/16/hilton-credit-card-free-night/ but it does not allow me.
Is the free night certificate meant to be posted or emailed to you or just show up in account? Hit the spend months ago but not sure where the certificate is meant to show?
Also, what exactly is the procedure to use it? Can I book any hotel night that is available through points, but by calling Hilton?
Managed to do the stay 4 times, get gold too around the same time as got the card and silver, but not managed to stay any nights (had to cancel a Frankfurt night)
Will I still be able to sign up to this promo again?
Sorry for all the questions. Thanks in advance
You get an email. You can ONLY book by telephone. It requires a standard reward room to be available for points.
How long does the email normally take to come through – I am holding back my spend on this card as I want to be able to use it in Chicago on 21/8 – and is it still definitely only valid for 6 months? Is it dated from the day you trigger the £750 spend or from the date the certificate is actually issued?
Hi Liz – the cert is valid for six months from when issued. I found it can take a few weeks after hitting the spend target before the voucher is triggered. I’ve churned this card a few times and found I also don’t always receive an email! If it’s been a few weeks you can call HHonors and see if they can see the certificate sitting in your account. If not there then worth contacting Barclaycard – you can try the phone or just email them at their Web relations address (wr at Barclaycard dot Co dot uk)
Thanks Alan – don’t want to hit the spend too early – Sod’s law the certificate would come through early and I couldn’t use it on 21/8 !
Haha yep – that would be VERY annoying! I’ve had to do the same with my Lloyds Avios card but almost left it too late as I’d left it in the drawer! Thank goodness for a last minute cancellable Expedia booking 😉
I like your Route 66 logo – we are going to drive it next year – got all the travel books and maps – just got to start planning it – hoping to take 3-4 wks doing it plus a fair bit away from the road as well!
Route 66 is fantastic, really enjoyed it. We only had about 10 days to do it which meant some long driving days, 3-4 weeks sounds fantastic. I did a bit of a Hilton run along the way (in a lot of small towns a Hampton Inn is a decent option anyway) and got plenty of points although learnt the hard way about the cut off times for changing points vs miles earning preferences!
Feel free to drop Rob an email to forward on to me and I can send you our itinerary.
They are batched, can be 2 weeks, can be 4 weeks. 6 months runs from the date of issue.
Definitely hold back your spend, there is no point putting anything at risk.
OT but related to the Amex offers:
My £50 rebate did not trigger as my 4 flights (total £400) was split by Amex Travel into 4 transactions!
Did this happen to anyone else?…
That happens with BA. I think you have grounds for claiming the £50 as you just made 1 transaction & complied with the offer.
A phone call should do it, honestly their Customer Services are excellent.
They made good about £80 for me on Shop Small where they let me down.
Email Amex, they will give you the credit.
Thanks Harry & Rob,
You were right! They gave it to me straight away. Excellent customer service. No comparison with any other card provider.
Congrats, Jean. How about a HfP party at your local HIX? 😉
Don’t suck it up like a silly poodle – get on the phone & reverse it 🙂
This morning I have had a small amount of avios from a pre-xmas M&S purchase approved. They may well still be honouring old transactions.
No – unless gift vouchers sales are dealt with by a 3rd party. Debenhams gift cards worked this way, but that was clearly flagged because you were taken off the Debenhams website to a parallel site to make the purchase.
Thanks. It certainly looks like Harvey Nicks handle their own gift vouchers from the website. Going to wait till my new year starts on my BA Amex in a couple of weeks time before ordering a few (for use in the Oxo Tower restaurant over the next couple of years!)
Not sure where all the Amex offers go to, but over the past couple of months, I’ve looked constantly but for some reason I don’t seem to get targeted with any of the ones that are mentioned on HFP.
I do already have a high spend across all my Amex products so wondering if maybe offers are only made where they want to encourage more spend.
Anyone else had similar experiences?
turn on all the marketing options