News in brief:
Amex launches new travel statement credit deals
A new batch of statement credit deals has appeared from American Express. Some, all or none of these offers will appear on the statement page of your online accounts.
Remember that the offers differ for each card you hold. You need to ‘save’ the offer in order to take advantage.
Amex does a bad job of explaining which deals allow cumulative spend and which do not. For safety you should assume that you need to do the spend in one transaction, but in reality some will pay out if you cumulatively hit the spend target over the promotional period.
Here are the new offers I saw:
Monarch – £20 back on £200 spend, expires 14th May
Addison Lee – £10 back on £30 spend, expires 4th June (app link is here)
Hyatt – £50 back on £250 spend, expires 31st August
LOVEtheatre.com – 5% back on all spend, expires 21st June (LOVEtheatre is an Avios earning partner)
Avis – £15 back on £100 spend, expires 6th May
If you ‘saved’ the recent Hilton offer (£50 back on £250 spend, which IS proving to be cumulative) remember that you need to hit the target spend by 8th May.
And a wine deal ….
There is also a Laithwaites wine deal available exclusively for American Express cardholders until 30th April. Via this page, you can order 12 bottles of New Zealand sauvignon blanc for £66.60, which is just £5.55 per bottle – half the usual price. Delivery is FREE. (Oddly, whilst the deal is for Amex cardholders, you can pay with any card!)
Up to 35% bonus when you buy Avios
Iberia Plus has launched a new ‘buy Avios’ promotion which runs until 30th April.
The offer is:
10% bonus when you buy 2,000 to 15,000 Avios
20% bonus when you buy 20,000 to 24,000 Avios
30% bonus when you buy 30,000 to 80,000 Avios
35% bonus when you buy 85,000 to 100,000 Avios
At the top end, you will be paying €1,800 for 135,000 Avios. Given the weak £, this works out at 1.12p per Avios based on £1,523. You would need to add a 3% foreign exchange fee to this price if your credit card has one.
I would not usually be a buyer at this price unless I had a very specific redemption in mind which I knew would be worth more than I am paying.
The exact rules for who can buy Iberia Plus Avios are always confusing. You MUST have been an Iberia Plus member for 90 days before you can transfer Avios from Iberia to BA via ‘Combine My Avios’. I think you also need to have earned at least one Avios point in your Iberia account before you can buy points although that may have changed.
(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to visit our home page for the latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios from current offers and promotions.)
About Head for Points
Just realised I might be spending £400 on an end of May Hilton trip – any chance I would get the cash back if I went for a pre-pay rate? Not 100% certain, but the extra cost saving would probably sway me towards booking now.
A very good chance and not much risk if you are happy booking non refundable anyway. If your card isn’t charged within a day or two just call or email the hotel and ask them to process the charge.