Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

It’s back – buy up to 100,000 cheap Avios, from 0.81p, via Groupon

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It’s back.  Fortunately, or unfortunately (it depends how much trouble you had getting the Avios to post when this deal ran last year) you can yet again buy cheap Avios points simply by heading over to Groupon.

The fall in the Euro in recent days means that this deal is not as good as it was last year, where you were paying as little as 0.7p per Avios.  It is still worth a look though.

This is an Iberia Plus deal.  This means that there are two hurdles to jump:

You need an Iberia Plus Avios account (easily fixed by going to iberia.com if you don’t have one)

Your Iberia account will need to be 90 days old before you are allowed to use ‘Combine My Avios’ and send your points across to your British Airways Executive Club or avios.com account

Start by visiting the Iberia home page here.

Iberia has its own online shopping portal.  However, it is not meant to be offered to UK residents.  You must change the site language (top left) to Spain – English.  It will not work if you are set to United Kingdom – English.

Click on ‘Iberia Plus’ in the top menu and you will see a link for Iberia PluStore.  Go there.  Search for Groupon and click through.  You will earn an extra 10 Avios per €1 for your purchase in the IberiaPluStore – if it tracks.

Once you have clicked through to Groupon and got the relevant cookie on your computer, click here for the Avios page you need on the Spanish Groupon site.

It is best to use Google Chrome to open it.  Chrome should offer to translate the text.  If it doesn’t, right click on your mouse and a translation option will appear.

There are five price levels- the 2,000 Avios deal is the cheapest:

2,000 Avios = €19 (£16.19) = 0.81p (excluding the PluStore Avios)

4,000 Avios = €59 (£50.28) = 1.25p (excluding the PluStore Avios)

8,000 Avios = €99 (£84.37) = 1.05p (excluding the PluStore Avios)

15,000 Avios = €189 (£161.07) = 1.07p (excluding the PluStore Avios)

20,000 Avios = €249 (£212.21) = 1.06p (excluding the PluStore Avios)

34,000 Avios = €429 (£365.61) = 1.07p (excluding the PluStore Avios)

However, if you do not use an existing groupon.es account and open a new one, it appears that you can use code CUPON20 to save 20% (capped at €20).  

You can buy a maximum of five packages per Iberia account.  However, you are restricted to just one of the ‘2,000 Avios’ packs and three of the ‘34,000 Avios’ packs.  The maximum number of Avios you can buy is therefore 3 x 34 + 2 x 20 = 142,000 Avios for €1,785, less €20 if the coupon code works.

You can pay by PayPal which may be easier – I did during the previous promotion – although you get legged over on the exchange rate.  All other credit cards are accepted including American Express.  If you do not use a 0% payment card, remember to factor in the 3% FX fee to the prices shown above.

About 30 minutes later you will receive an emailed voucher.  If you don’t, the voucher will also be showing in your account on the Spanish Groupon site.  There is a link in the voucher to a page on the Groupon site where you need to input the codes.

You are told that your Avios will take 30 days to appear but, in reality, they have historically turned up quicker.

The big question ….. is it worth it?

This isn’t the most straightforward promotion ever.  The exchange rate is moving around daily and you can’t be 100% certain that you PluStore purchase will track.  I am least more confident these days that you will get your Avios without huge amounts of trouble.  Buying 2,000 at 0.8p is a decent deal but the time required may be too much of a faff to justify it.


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.

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.

Comments (83)

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

  • rrgg says:

    Warning, when I tried paypal, the paypal site timed out and was never reached. Then I tried again and Groupon thinks I already hit my limit of 1 x 2000 Avios, even though nothing was purchased.

    • the real harry1 says:

      check your PayPal a/c – maybe you did actually buy

      • rrgg says:

        No. The PayPal purchase didn’t go through. I created another Groupon though and it worked. Another funny thing is which Iberia number to use when redeeming. Sometimes Iberia shows it as IB123456789 and sometimes without the IB. Thanks for all the help!

        • Chris says:

          Speaking with Ibera customer support last night, they said it would be the number part only. This morning, I got an email saying I had spend €19 at Groupon and that this had tracked through as 190 avios.

          Although I have redeemed my voucher (using only the numeric part of my Iberia Plus card account), and I have the email from Groupon saying it will be credited in 15 days, nothing else has arrived.

  • Ben says:

    The Iberia PluStore website says the offer is only for users in Spain and Groupon.es keeps asking for a Spanish billing address? How did everyone get around this?

    • Chris says:

      I used the Facebook login option to avoid entering a Spanish address.

    • Jana says:

      Use a fake adddres in Spain. It’s not checked against the billing address of the credit card or payment method.

  • Bigglesgirl says:

    My purchase went amazingly well yesterday got all the vouchers and redeemed successfully; it even tracked through the Iberia Store!
    However just received a refund from PayPal for the full amount! Is this because they’re now limiting it to Spanish residents only and have given me my money back?

    • James Harland says:

      I had a similar thing happen to me on Groupon UK for something else, I purchased 4 of the same voucher (one each time for friends) and got them all refunded.

      I spoke to Groupon support and they told me it was for security reasons because it looked “suspicious”. To re-enable my account they required me to scan a proof of ID and a picture of the card I used to pay with all but the last 4 digits hidden.

      They then re-instated my account, but still told me I had to buy the Groupons again!

  • Vincent says:

    it seems the code doesn’t work

  • RogerWIlco says:

    Transaction seems to have gone through at first try and got an email from Iberiastore, too, so it tracked there as well (190Avios for the 19€ spend)
    BTW 19€ were £16,99 from the PayPal account

  • dej says:

    hi all, I ordered 3 vouchers in the same transaction. I successfully redeemed one voucher , but when I try to redeem the other two it states the voucher has already been used. did anyone have a similar issue?

  • Cal says:

    Does the 20% off still work? It won’t work on my end

  • Nicholas Lavender says:

    How long till they show in Iberia guys? Been 10 days and zilch so far.

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

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