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Bits: Big savings with Amazon Prime Day today, 75% bonus on Club Carlson points

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News in brief:

Amazon Prime Day – big discounts today only

Amazon Prime Day has returned for the third time.

What started as a one off event for Amazon’s 20th birthday two years ago, is now an established annual event where Amazon makes certain items available at big discounts to anyone who is an Amazon Prime member (or who is happy to sign up for a free 30 day trial).

Like last year we were given advance notice of some of the deals yesterday.  Full details, including how to join Amazon Prime for a free trial, and some sample offers can be found here at Shopper Points.

Amazon’s major electronic products are hugely discounted:

If you had been thinking about getting an Amazon Echo speaker, today is the day!  It is reduced from £149 to just £79 – a huge £70 saving.  That deal is here.

Amazon has also sharply reduced its Fire 7 tablet.  This is down from £49.99 to just £29.99 as you can see here.

If you’ve been after an Amazon Echo Dot, it is reduced from £49.99 to £34.99, saving £15.  See here for details.

Whilst not strictly travel related, the following deals looked pretty good and will be available all day today:

There are also lots of Lightning Deals available throughout the day.  I am not allowed to give out pricing details on these so you’ll have to look at the Amazon Prime Day site to find out.  As an example, from 23:34 (odd time, I know) Eve mattresses in various sizes are available for a very good price.

If you can’t find anything to buy today, you can buy a £50 gift card via this link and you will get a promo code for a £5 bonus.

If you do decide to buy anything, and you visit Amazon via this link, HFP gets a small commission and you can consider your annual HFP subscription paid …..

Our Shopper Points article is here if you want to know more.

Amazon Prime Day

75% bonus when you buy Club Carlson points

Club Carlson, the loyalty scheme for Radisson, Park Plaza and Park Inn, is offering a 75% bonus when you buy points, however few or many points you buy.

The link to buy points is here.  The offer runs until Friday 14th July.

This deal does potentially offer value if you redeem in the right places on expensive nights, although the fall in the value of the £ makes buying points in $ to use in the UK far less attractive than it was.

The maximum number of points you can purchase is 70,000 (40,000 + 30,000 bonus) for $280.  That is £217.

The key London hotels such as Park Plaza Westminster Bridge – a new London property with a pool and next to the London Eye, London Dungeon, London Aquarium etc – are 70,000 points per night, so £217.  Rob reviewed the hotel here.

The May Fair (which Rob reviewed here, and didn’t like much) is also 70,000 points.  The new Park Plaza Waterloo, which we covered the other day, is 50,000 points which is $203 (£157).

At the more prosaic end of the scale, there are various Park Inn budget hotels around the UK for 9,000 points per night.  Under this promo, 9,000 points would cost you just £22 based on the pro-rata price of 70,000.

Remember that you can also transfer American Express Membership Rewards points at the 1:3 rate if you need a few extra points for a planned redemption.  To be honest, if I had the Amex points I would use those rather than buy points even with a 75% bonus.  You are getting almost 1p per Membership Rewards point compared to buying the points directly.

You can buy points via this page of the Club Carlson site.

How to earn Radisson Rewards points from UK credit cards (January 2021)

Radisson Rewards does not have a dedicated UK credit card. However, you can earn Radisson Rewards points by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards.  These include:

Membership Rewards points convert at 1:3 into Radisson Rewards points which is a very attractive rate.  The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, which converts to 3 Radisson Rewards points.

Even better, holders of The Platinum Card receive free Radisson Rewards Gold status for as long as they hold the card.  It also comes with Hilton Honors Gold, Marriott Bonvoy Gold, Shangri-La Golden Circle Jade and MeliaRewards Gold status.  We reviewed American Express Platinum in detail here.

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

Category

Radisson Rewards

Comments (91)

  • Miguel says:
    11 Jul11 July 10:38

    OT – related to MC World Elite LHW benefit:

    Just off the phone with Leading Hotels of the World, they say the MC World Elite free one-year membership benefit has been indefinitely suspended. Wouldn’t say why, and advised I contact MC directly to find out…

    • Rob says:
      11 Jul11 July 11:30

      Thanks, good to know (but a shame).

      Seems a bit odd as it was a zero cost benefit to LHW – they get a high value person as a member and you don’t get anything that would cost them money (you don’t even get posted a membership card).

      • Miguel says:
        11 Jul11 July 18:37

        Even odder: when I phoned up MC, their automated systems asked me to type in my card number “to better assist” me… only to then immediately put me through to my bank! I had zero interest in speaking to HSBC, since they probably wouldn’t even know the benefit existed in the first place and would be of little help anyway. Like when they launched the WE card a year ago and the Lounge Key component wouldn’t work for the first few months – boy, was it difficult to get them to understand what the issue was and to refund me for having paid to access those Lounge Key lounges!

  • James says:
    11 Jul11 July 10:50

    Note that you have listed the Hero 5 Session. I’m not being picky, but they are not very good if comparing to the Hero 5.

    I would spend the extra on the actual GP over the session.

  • Matt says:
    11 Jul11 July 10:54

    For anyone interested in the HSBC Premier card(s), I’ve just been to try to open a Premier account and they’ve tightened up a bit – needed to pay £960 for investment advice first (I meet the income requirement). I decided I could live without the credit card. The guy said they now want investment first, then upgrade to Premier. They no longer upgrade in the hope of getting investments later.

    • New Card says:
      11 Jul11 July 11:13

      some people have reported adding £100 to HSBC Global Investment Centre qualifies as the investment

    • Chris says:
      12 Jul12 July 08:42

      OT but how do HSBC verify the income requirement?
      A P60 would be useless as anyone with an ounce of sense would be sacrificing the first £23k over their threshold into a pension.

  • James says:
    11 Jul11 July 10:57

    http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/10/us/alexa-calls-police-trnd/index.html

  • Justin says:
    11 Jul11 July 12:19

    Prime Day is a fantastic marketing ploy – the other half has spent a fortune on stuff today that neither of us have any real need for. At least it’s our HFP membership for 2017/8 covered 🙂

    • Rob says:
      11 Jul11 July 12:28

      Thanks!

      The good news is that, because I pay 40% tax on the Amazon affiliate commission, you’ll also see some money flowing to the Government from your Amazon purchase which would not otherwise be going there 🙂

      • Justin says:
        11 Jul11 July 12:43

        Crazy to be paying 40% on the commission surely there is a more cost effective way of doing it

        • Genghis says:
          11 Jul11 July 12:49

          For HRTPs+, not really these days given CT+ IT dividend income changes

        • Genghis says:
          11 Jul11 July 12:50

          It’s also crazy for me to pay so much IT but it is what it is

          • Talay says:
            11 Jul11 July 13:07

            Cash is king again !

            The only problem is that it is harder than ever to get it back into the system and they ask questions when you walk through the airport with tend of thousands spread between all family members.

            “So little Jonny, you’re nearly 7 years old and why is it that you have £10,000 of spending money for your holiday sewn into your teddy bear ?”

        • Mr Dee says:
          11 Jul11 July 17:07

          I think the point is that Amazon usually pay as little tax in the UK as possible, even for not higher rate tax payers its around the 25-35% tax after any allowances in most cases.

  • rick says:
    11 Jul11 July 13:16

    Spire Elite

    As a spire elite does one receive 10% of points back from IHG for any redemption?
    Or is it USA only feature?

    • Rob says:
      11 Jul11 July 13:37

      It is Ambassador feature, but only for Ambassadors who are renewing, not new ones, and who pay a higher fee.

      I think one of the US IHG credit cards might also offer this feature.

  • Optimus Prime says:
    11 Jul11 July 13:18

    An article on how to do so could be interesting 😛

  • Rob says:
    11 Jul11 July 14:02

    We edited this into the article this morning, although it wasn’t in the emailed version.

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