Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Bits: Tesco scrapping Avios on gift cards, Flying Blue Shop&Earn, 1000 instant IHG points

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News in brief:

Tesco stopping its offer of 150 Clubcard points (360 Avios) on gift cards

According to an announcement on the Tesco website, you will soon no longer be able to earn 150 Clubcard points (360 Avios) when you spend £50 on gift cards at Tesco.

I was never a major buyer of these because my local Tesco had a poor selection but I know some people were spending many thousands of pounds this way.

Flying Blue’s UK shopping portal

I cover Flying Blue, the Air France / KLM scheme, less than I should.  This is probably why I didn’t realise until last week that Flying Blue has a miles-earning UK shopping portal.

Shop&Earn is the equivalent of BA’s Gate 365 or Virgin Atlantic Shops Away.  You earn miles by clicking through from Shop&Earn when you shop online.

Mr Porter, for example, gets you 5 Flying Blue miles for every £1 you spend.  Reiss is 3 miles per £1.  John Lewis is 3 miles per £1.

The Shop&Earn home page is here.

IHG Rewards Club

Earn 1,000 IHG Rewards Club points with Opinion Check-In

You may have received an email from IHG Rewards Club in late August inviting you to register with their new online survey partner Opinion Check-In.

You will receive 1,000 IHG Rewards Club points for completing your first survey.

I decided to give it a try.  To be honest, it was a lot of trouble and took me 20 minutes to register, complete my details and complete one survey (on hotels).

The process was fairly painful.  Despite saying I was an ‘Entrepreneur / Small Business Owner’ I was forced to answer numerous irrelevant questions over my job title, whether or not I employ 100,000+ people on the same site and what purchasing responsibilities I have (answer = everything).

After filling all this in, I was thrown out of my first survey after four questions when they found out I lived in London, which they already knew.  This was probably good as the completion time was estimated at 23 minutes. I was given 5 points for my trouble which I would value at 2.5p! 

A 2nd survey, on hotels, had a 12 minutes estimated completion time.  I was able to answer this all the way through and received my 1,000 points.

Impressively, these posted instantly.  However they did NOT count towards elite status.

If you have 15-20 minutes to pass, it is arguably worth doing in order to pick up £5-worth of IHG Rewards Club points.  Two reasons to bother are:

they post instantly and

you can immediately resign from Opinion Check-In via their dashboard – you won’t be plagued with unwanted email for the rest of time


IHG One Rewards update – April 2024:

Get bonus points: IHG One Rewards is offering 2,000 bonus points for every two cash nights you stay (not necessarily consecutive) between 1st April and 31st May 2024. You can read our full article here and you can register here.

New to IHG One Rewards?  Read our overview of IHG One Rewards here and our article on points expiry rules here. Our article on ‘What are IHG One Rewards points worth?’ is here.

Buy points: If you need additional IHG One Rewards points, you can buy them here.

Want to earn more hotel points?  Click here to see our complete list of promotions from IHG and the other major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.

Comments (77)

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  • xcalx says:

    Sorry for the early OT. One for the virgin east coast travellers.
    I have to be in London tomorrow and am booking Virgin train east coast business ticket that includes parking and zone 1/2 tube ticket. Not up on train travel bookings and wondered if any collecting opportunities are available. Finally would I need to book a seat on the 6am from Leeds to guarantee travelling on that particular timed service.

    Thanks

    • xcalx says:

      Yeah, If I were paying that would be the way to go. I am being recompensed the £390 plus a few food vouchers to spend in the bar on way back tomorrow evening. Not used to someone else paying for my travel, kind of takes the fun out of finding that great deal. I also have a good quantity of RSH credits but not sure if these show on ticket if used against the fare.

    • xcalx says:

      Thanks, that’s what I went for in the end, picked Virgin points on the Virgin east coast site.

  • Cate says:

    Slightly OT but still on vouchers. Does anyone know if buying a k3 gift card card from John Lewis is acceptable to trigger the k3 first 3 month spend on BAPC? Thanks

  • Waribai says:

    Is the devaluation of gift cards at Tesco connected to the fraud charges against two former Senior Execs?
    I remember Raffles suggesting that gift cards was one of the areas being investigated in the inflated profits valuations or something like that!

  • Moktar says:

    OT: Anyone still waiting for Moneycorp’s free £20? Btw, I received the 4500 avios from times travel magazine last week 🙂
    No luck on VT promo miles and Payqwiq

  • Brian says:

    Also OT – I’m sure Rob will have an article in due course, but Accor has brought back its 10000 bonus points promotion. That’s 200 euros of points for four stays. Definitely worth registering asap – don’t want people saying ‘Oh, I’ve just booked x number of stays’ when Rob’s article appears, as I think you probably need to be registered before booking just to be safe.

    • mikee says:

      Do you have a link Brian? Had a quick Google search and couldn’t find anything.

  • Ian says:

    Soon Avios will be no more Tesco – enjoy it whilst you can 🙂

  • Adrian says:

    OK, really basic question but I can’t remember how many club card points you need to then convert to avios/virgin miles, thanks guys

  • Nick Burch says:

    OT, but anyone who collects Nectar points on train tickets booked via GWR might want to check their Nectar account. Mine is showing and apparently free fiver’s worth of points!

    1,000 bonus points as a gift to celebrate your GWR anniversary.

    Click ‘Load to card’
    Points will be automatically added to your account within 28 days

    Expires 05 Oct 2016

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