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Bits: 2400 Avios with a £40 Nerf gun, Nutmeg ISA Avios update

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News in brief:

2,400 Avios with £40 of Nerf guns

Tesco Direct is continuing to roll out bonus Clubcard points, which convert to Avios or Virgin Flying Club miles, on toys.

Until tomorrow you will receive 1,000 Clubcard points (2,400 Avios or 2,500 Virgin miles) when you spend £40 on Nerf guns.  In reality you need to spend at least £44.95 as there is no combination of Nerf to get you to £40.

Full details are in this Shopper Points article.  The Nerf guns included are here.

Update on the Nutmeg ISA bonus Avios deal

Today is the last day of the 2016/17 tax year.  As Nutmeg is running its ‘bonus Avios for opening an ISA or Sipp’ offer for another few days, I wanted to clarify how this offer works given the tax year change.  You earn 1 Avios point for every £1 you invest.

If you open a Nutmeg ISA today, it will count as your 2016/17 ISA.  You can only open it if you haven’t opened another ISA during this tax year.  You will receive 1 Avios point per £1 you invest.  The maximum investment is £15,240.

If you open a Nutmeg ISA tomorrow (6th), it will count as your 2017/18 ISA.  Irrespective of whether you opened an ISA in the 2016/17 tax year, you can still open a Nutmeg one for the new tax year.  You need to act by 9th April to earn Avios.  This ISA limit increases to £20,000 for the 2017/18 tax year.

Important:  you will NOT earn Avios on your 2017/18 ISA if you already have a Nutmeg ISA for 2016/17 or any other Nutmeg product.  Avios can only be earned by new customers.

This article tells you more about the Nutmeg / Avios offer.  Remember that your capital is at risk here and you should take professional advice if necessary.  You can apply here.

how to earn avios from credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (June 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards:

British Airways American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and a companion voucher for spending £20,000 Read our full review

BA Premium Plus American Express card BAPP

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

Nectar American Express

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

American Express Platinum card Amex

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

We also recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card:

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company 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.

(Want to earn more Avios?  Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)

Category

British Airways and Avios, Tesco Clubcard, Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club

Comments (33)

  • Von Schmallhausen says:
    5 Apr5 April 06:54

    You can get the Nerf guns Tesco are selling for £44.95 for only £19.95 at Toys r Us – so don’t buy those!

  • Julian says:
    5 Apr5 April 06:57

    Rob,

    You seem to miss the point that the only way to actually earn the maximum 50,000 Avios Nutmeg bonus is to transfer in £50,000 worth of ISA money from an existing ISA with another ISA provider. Nutmeg will then treat the whole of the £50,000 ISA transferred in as being new money with them from a new investor and hence the 50,000 Avios bonus will be earned. Or if you don’t have this much in an ISA elsewhere then you could invest the maximum ISA amount for a new ISA plan in either 2016/2016 or 2017/2018 and then transfer in the balance to get you up to £50,000 from an existing ISA currently held elsewhere outside Nutmeg (the other ISA will be from earlier ISA plan years).

    This still doesn’t however completely resolve the underlying question of whether or not Nutmeg is a good way to be investing substantial amounts of money in stockmarket risk affected equity based investments.

  • Smid says:
    5 Apr5 April 08:22

    I went and reviewed my Stocks and shares ISA I’ve had for just over 2 years from Nutmeg. It will have earned me roughly 1.5% per year on a medium risk investment. I then didn’t bother put any more into stocks and shares ISAs, because half a percent more than savings isn’t worth the risk of losing like 10-20% of your money in a worst case scenario.

    • Genghis says:
      5 Apr5 April 08:45

      If you’d had an ETF you’d have earned back of a fag packet 2.5%.

      • AndyR says:
        5 Apr5 April 09:35

        Nutmeg use ETF’s though.

        • Genghis says:
          5 Apr5 April 09:46

          So what’s the value of ETFs on Nutmeg vs a cheaper platform such as Vanguard?

          • AndyR says:
            5 Apr5 April 10:07

            AFAIK you don’t actually pick the funds yourself with Nutmeg. They build a portfolio for you based on your goals and tolerance to risk. So Nutmeg decide what ETF’s to invest in (could be in Vanguard). If they have only made 1.5% on a medium risk portfolio over the last 2 years something is seriously wrong.

            Better off with a Vanguard Lifestrategy fund and save on fees.

          • Nick says:
            5 Apr5 April 11:43

            Maybe the medium risk portfolio is too-heavily weighted in terms of fixed-income products, like bonds and short on equity allocation. I know that the higher risk portfolios that they offer have a heavier equity allocation, so that could be why the return in this case has been so low.

    • Nick M says:
      5 Apr5 April 09:05

      Really? Only 1.5%pa over the last couple of years?
      I have client with a low-medium ATR that invested in March 2015 and is up circa 10% (and that includes my initial and ongoing advice fees too…) Obviously can’t provide any guarantees but I’m surprised how quickly they seem to be growing if returns from their model portfolios are at that level

    • AndyR says:
      5 Apr5 April 09:29

      1.5%! That is shocking. You should have made a massive return over the last 12 months. Simple passive funds tracking the FTSE All World are up 30% over the last year!

    • Rob (not that one) says:
      5 Apr5 April 14:06

      By comparison my two Nutmeg pots (at risk level 7 and 8) have risen 8% and 9.5% respectively in the last 12 months.

  • Crafty says:
    5 Apr5 April 08:25

    Surely if you opened a Nutmeg ISA today and paid in, and also continued your monthly payments, then it would count as your ISA permitted for BOTH years?

  • Liz says:
    5 Apr5 April 08:51

    OT: But speaking of Tesco. I contacted Tesco recently again about the fact I never receive any marketing emails or offers from them on our main CC account. @Alan has this issue too. I finally received a phone call from them last night to discuss the problem and was awarded 2000 pts as some compensation as I am a loyal customer. I was also told that there are big changes going to happen this summer to Clubcard – more earning opportunities and, it looks like moving to being able to access your points at any time rather than at quarterly intervals, which I believe was rumoured last year. I said some of us with large balances are worried about the security implications of this and she took note of that. She also didn’t think there would be an Avios bonus in May but she didn’t really know for sure. In my emails and discussion I said that I was disappointed that so many points earning opportunities had disappeared such as the 150 pts for gift cards, Tesco Living magazine points, Orchard, quarterly coupons etc. It will be a case of wait and see what develops….

    • dezeeko says:
      5 Apr5 April 09:11

      Also OT but on the subject of Tesco. I found that Tesco are actually the most economical provider of home and contents insurance (well for me anyway), but the 3,000-4,000 clubcard bonus for shifting to them has obviously expired. Was there any hint that this might reappear..preferably within the next 2 weeks? Another question OT is… has anyone got the 10% Hertz car hire discount? I registered as a Hertz Gold Plus Rewards Member but the rates (applying through the Amex website travel section) don’t appear to be any different to those generally available (well not for Argentina anyway. And, last question, has anyone tried to buy Avios through the vente-privee site mentioned here lately? It looks as if it has disappeared or ended.

    • Julian says:
      5 Apr5 April 21:56

      This was a discussion specifically about Rob’s update on the current Nutmeg ISA bonus of up to 50,000 Avios. By derailing the discussion and coming in with your totally irrelevant personal question about another product provider (that you could have raised in an appropriate discussion forum like Moneysavingexpert) you completely stopped the discussion about Nutmeg.

      What is it with you people who won’t respect the original discussion topic and think that they can just take it over with the Avios collection issue they are bothered about. Are you the same kind of people who don’t listen to your team members who raise issues about no pay rises in recent years or inflexible and unreasonable company arrangements re taking annual leave?

      Rob should really clamp down hard on deliberate thread derailers and threaten to bar the perpetrator’s IP address from making any further Comments here for the next 6 months. Then you guys might actually get the message.

      Alternatively Rob could set up a proper HeadForPoints discussion forum in which members could initiate new topics of their own with the correct subject heading that did not then derail discussions on other topics that were already in progress.

      • Alan says:
        5 Apr5 April 22:00

        I would much prefer an OT but helpful post like Liz’s one than a needlessly rude post like this, I’m afraid.

        • Julian says:
          5 Apr5 April 22:13

          @Alan Sounds to me then like you are a natural sycophantic yes man type guaranteed to rise fast to your natural position of optimum incompetence at the top of the marketing department in any large multinational organisation. Essential requirement for such a person is normally to have few creative or innovative ideas of your own but to always praise to the hills everybody else’s ideas and suggestions before then stealing those ideas as being their own invention upon reaching the top of the greasy corporate pole.

          • Alan says:
            5 Apr5 April 22:19

            Hilarious, love it – keep the weird insults coming (there’s no marketing dept where I work BTW :D)

          • LB says:
            6 Apr6 April 10:03

            Ouch…

          • the real harry1 says:
            6 Apr6 April 18:04

            we got us Callum #2, millions out there

            I’ve grown to love Callum this last year & I think he has measured his output 🙂

      • Nick says:
        6 Apr6 April 17:53

        Wow Julian, chill out little man!

        Your posts seem to be a reflection on your own anger issues, rather than on anyone else’s inappropriate behaviour.

        For you to begin your first post to Rob by saying ‘You seem to miss the point…’, demonstrates the impression you give of being quite argumentative.

        Stop taking a casual chat forum so seriously…

  • krys_k says:
    5 Apr5 April 12:34

    OT. Two questions please. One, can I upgrade to first from club on a 241 having already flown the first leg (in first). Two, a member of the crew in yesterday’s flight in first was incredibly condescending and rude to my partner to the extent that my fiancé went to speak with her and ask he what her problem was (she did all sorts of little rude things e.g. refuse to give a second blanket even though a bottle of water had spilled and soaked the blanket). Is it worth making a complaint to BA or will they just ignore this?

    • Anna says:
      5 Apr5 April 12:50

      I would think you’d need to check your “Manage my booking” page and it will say if you can upgrade the flight. My two current 2 4 1 bookings aren’t showing this option though. You could call BA but I have also found them extremely intransigent on such matters!

      You might get a standard expression of regret about your fiance’s treatment but I doubt much else. Good luck though!

      • Anna says:
        5 Apr5 April 12:51

        And I hope you are now both somewhere nice enjoying yourselves!

    • Mark says:
      5 Apr5 April 16:21

      On the complaint piece, my wife recently injured her finger on a knackered club world seat (the armrest collapsed) flying back from LAS on a very old 747. The cabin manager was very apologetic but I made sure she completed an accident report as I wanted to try my luck with claiming compensation from BA when we got home, although our booking was a 241 redemption so I wasn’t holding out for much. Initially we got the generic response above but I pushed and explicitly asked (via email response) how much compensation they would give us, and after that we got awarded 8.5k avios as compensation!

    • Leo says:
      5 Apr5 April 16:54

      Well ultimately can you prove the “rudeness”? Secondly what was the outcome of your partner’s ” chat” – did that resolve matters in any way? I doubt you’d get compensation for a damp blanket – I know that wasn’t your point, I’m just trying to establish any “loss” which BA might feel the need to make good. I agree with Anna, that you may get an anodyne “I am sorry that you felt our staff member was inappropriate” etc. (Stressing the perception on your part). Myself I’d let it go and try not to let it colour your journey home – I think it falls into a different category than the finger injury mentioned above.

      • Tom says:
        6 Apr6 April 10:17

        I flew business with Emirates last week where after getting on board a hostess tripped whilst carrying a tray of champagne which soaked me. The crew were apologetic (i also appreciate it was an accident) and gave me a blanket to try and dry off but It wasn’t pleasant with no spare clothes to change into. I was told I would be contacted shortly after my flight but this hasn’t happened. Is it worth pursuing? What would the likely outcome be?

  • Graham Walsh says:
    5 Apr5 April 17:30

    O/T I forgot to book parking for my trip 5 day trip to Shanghai tomorrow, so looking online for parking it was coming out as £190 on Purple Parking (and LHR etc). Taxi return was looking a better option.

    Then went to use the Virgin link and it wasn’t working this morning so tweeted them. Tried again this afternoon and it was working. Website a bit pants, showing rates but actually no availability, so went up to the meet + greet level for £75 and hey presto (although website failed I got a booking confirmation) and 500 miles too.

    • the real harry1 says:
      5 Apr5 April 18:29

      yep Virgin + PP gives RAC & NHS codes a good fight

  • Graham Walsh says:
    5 Apr5 April 17:34

    Oh and also Virgin’s partner for car hire in Boston in 10 days time worked out cheaper than anything else, plus miles.

    Another O/T, I had reserved a IHG Candlewood Suites in Boston and my sister got there this week and said it was crap, suggested I move to the IHG CP up the road. Cancelled the first booking and the CP was only 20k points a night. I did the points + cash (10k a night + $70) so needed to buy 40k points at $280. To purchase 40k points using the Buy points would have been $480, so seems like I got a good deal.

    • Genghis says:
      5 Apr5 April 18:27

      Is the 100% bonus offer still not on?

      • Graham Walsh says:
        5 Apr5 April 19:53

        Nope the last one was for 3 days only in Feb and nothing showed up when I logged in. Just normal rates.

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