How to earn 7 Avios per £1 shopping at Waitrose, John Lewis and Amazon

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• Talay says:

  3 Oct3 October 08:29

  Or 4 Avios per £1 on avios.com (sometimes 2, often 4 per £1)

  • Phillip says:

    3 Oct3 October 08:42

    They were doing 6 Avios per £1 in July!

• flavio says:

  3 Oct3 October 09:02

  You can get ‘double’ points with Boots gift cards: 75 Clubcard points when buying the £25 gift card, and 4 Boots points per £1 when you spend the card in Boots.

  • sprout7 says:

    3 Oct3 October 10:06

    Anyone know if it’s possible to buy gospendits in store in Boots with a Boots gift card? And if it is do you still get Boots points on purchasing gift cards?
    Thx

    • mark2 says:

      3 Oct3 October 15:12

      A year ago Boots did not give points on gift cards, so probably not now either.

• Ro says:

  3 Oct3 October 09:11

  I dont really ever use giftcards so excuse my ignorance…. but waitrose is my closest supermarket so im seriously considering this. But i tend to shop a small amount as and when I need to.

  Say i got £200 on a gift card i assume i can just slowly chip away at it over a long time but how long do they tend to be valid for?

  What happens if you lost the gift card? Is there a way to register it online or an app so that the balance is tracked?

  Thanks

  • mark2 says:

    3 Oct3 October 09:32

    That is exactly what I do.
    Lloyds Avios card sometimes has 5% cash back on Waitrose purchases so I buy gift cards for several hundred pounds which I then spend at JL and Waitrose as required. I have established myself at my small local Waitrose as ‘the man who does strange things’ and ‘the man who buys lots of reduced items’.
    Previously we had to buy 3V cards from Tesco and use them to buy paper vouchers from Love2Shop, so this is much better but ironically for only 14 days!
    If you lose any gift card it is like losing cash (most warn on the card).

    • Brian says:

      3 Oct3 October 11:03

      Presumably, your Lloyds offer won’t stack with the Tesco giftcard one, though!

      • mark2 says:

        3 Oct3 October 15:09

        True, you have to use a LLoyds card; I was using it illustrate that you can use a Waitrose gift card in small slices.

        • mark2 says:

          3 Oct3 October 15:10

          and will still work when the Tesco offer ends 16th Oct.

    • Frenske says:

      3 Oct3 October 11:42

      Additionally Santander Offers has momentary (and reoccurring) 5% off at Waitrose.

      • mark2 says:

        3 Oct3 October 15:11

        how do you catch it if its momentary?

  • Brian says:

    3 Oct3 October 09:33

    Yes, you can chip away at the amount on your card. As far as I am aware, there is no way to register and thus safeguard your card’s balance. If you only buy small amounts, there is little point in having a large denomination gift card – and they are only available as £25 or £50 anyway. So just buy a few £25 ones, get the bonus points and keep using them. They are valid for 2 years from the last date of use, so little chance of them expiring.

    • Brighton Belle says:

      3 Oct3 October 11:28

      To stop cards expiring you login to the gift card check balance section of John Lewis website. When you check a balance it resets the expiry. Don’t bother asking in store. They don’t know how it works. I had several cards nearing expiry.

  • Ro says:

    3 Oct3 October 09:38

    Thanks for the advice. 2 years is a good amount that should be fine then. Why are we so slow at adopting technology here?

    In australia all the giftcards can be loaded onto your phone app and the qr code is scanned at the till. Dont have to carry an extra card in the wallet and no risk of losing the git card. Even if you lost your phone its all stored on your account. Just makes everything so much easier and its hardly ground breaking technology these days!

    • Dean says:

      3 Oct3 October 16:50

      Yeah I really hate carrying cards. For my tesco giftcard & clubcard, as they’re both barcoded I just carry a photo of both in my phone. When I get to the self-service checkout, I just scan the picture, and if the screen brightness is high enough it normally scans fine.

      At tills they may not accept this method however. I had a cashier refuse to scan it, and the manager also refused my request.

      • Mr Dee says:

        3 Oct3 October 16:52

        There is an iphone app called stocard where you can add cards but Tesco have the same thing on their app for the clubcard

• rams1981 says:

  3 Oct3 October 09:29

  i bought £1000 of JL yesterday. Didn’t go through at first so the cashier called her supervisor who said to put it through in batches of £200.

  odd as I bought £500 without issue on Friday.

  • CV3V says:

    3 Oct3 October 09:41

    did you ask the operator to sub total after each gift card? Reminds me of the old days with 3V cards when i used to tell the till operator what to do!

    • rams1981 says:

      3 Oct3 October 09:54

      not quite that level lol
      quite a few cards didn’t go through and it only highlights it at the end when you go to pay, so doing it in smaller transactions is no bad thing

• Mycity says:

  3 Oct3 October 10:05

  With the old JL paper vouchers you got cash back if you didn’t spend the full amount. Has this now stopped with the plastic gift cards?

  • Stevie G says:

    3 Oct3 October 10:19

    The gift card balance just reduces. So if you pay with a £25 GC for something costing £23.99 then your CS balance reduces to £1.01. No need for cash refunds any more.

• Doug says:

  3 Oct3 October 10:07

  Can you pay a transaction in tesco which involves a gift card with a Tesco gift card?

  • Rob says:

    3 Oct3 October 10:24

    Depends on the cashier, some get a bit fussy. I don’t think Tesco like you doing this.

    • Boris says:

      3 Oct3 October 11:29

      DId one yesterday.

  • mark2 says:

    3 Oct3 October 10:25

    yes

    • Brian says:

      3 Oct3 October 11:07

      As ever with these things, where there is an element of cashier input, like with the money-off coupons, it’s best to combine normal groceries with gift cards. More likely to be successful that way. It’s similar to WHSmith, where I buy mobile top-up using gift cards from Tesco – if I simply buy mobile top-up, I’ve had the gift card refused – if I add a paper or stamps that I would need anyway, there is never a problem.

      • mark2 says:

        3 Oct3 October 11:52

        A slight variation suggestion.
        From my and others’ experience, if you start off with about £20 of groceries as a separate transaction sometimes (and there does not seem to be a pattern) the till decides to encourage you to buy more by printing out a coupon for £9/10/13 off when you spend £80/90/100. Last week I noticed that all the people in the queue in front of me got a coupon. This coupon can be used for gift cards (with the right cashier).

• Scott says:

  3 Oct3 October 10:42

  Website says it’s for a £15 OFF voucher, not flights for £15.

  • Third Passport says:

    3 Oct3 October 11:26

    Oops, fingers not typing what was in my head! Apologies.

• Brian says:

  3 Oct3 October 11:05

  Yes, Rob covered it about a week ago, I think. Oddly, I tried applying it to a one-way flight to Munich and only got £11 off. Nothing in the terms and conditions to say why that should be the case.

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