Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Update on the Amex / Amazon deal – points showing, gift cards OK, Prime OK, so jump in

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

There was a huge response to my article on Monday about the fantastic new Amazon offer from American Express.

It is available for many – but not all – British Airways American Express, Amex Gold and Amex Platinum cardholders.

You will find this offer on the ‘Offers’ tab of your British Airways American Express / Amex Gold / Amex Platinum statement page online, or in the app.

There are a few versions.  You will hopefully see some combination of:

Get 500 / 1,000 Avios / Membership Rewards points when you spend £25 at amazon.co.uk before 19th September using your BA Amex / Amex Gold / Platinum card

It isn’t clear who gets what and you may have got nothing if you are very unlucky.

It is limited to the first 20,000 people to register so I recommend you sign up immediately.  You have until 19th September to make a purchase and have it post to your Amex account.

There was some confusion over the wording of the offer.  It said “purchases made with Market Place Sellers, Amazon Prime or subscriptions to Amazon Prime” do not count.  Secondary terms and conditions also implied that gift cards would not count, even though American Express has no idea what you bought.

I did a test purchase on my own Amazon account for a £25 gift card.  I AM an Amazon Prime customer.  Within 2 minutes of making the purchase I got an email from American Express saying “Congratulations, you have earned 500 bonus Avios – if your transaction meets the offer terms”.

The 500 bonus Avios have now posted to my account.  See below (click to enlarge):

Amex Amazon screenshot

This means:

gift card purchases do count

even Amazon Prime customers still earn the bonus on gift cards

This offer should be a no-brainer for qualifying BA Amex / Amex Gold / Amex Platinum cardholders, especially if you have the 1,000 points version.  £25 is a ludicrously low purchase limit for earning 1,000 Avios or Membership Rewards points.

As I found, purchases of Amazon e-gift cards count.  These can be bought online via this link and added to your personal Amazon account via this page.  The balance is used automatically on your next purchase.


Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current 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

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

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

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

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

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

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.

Barclaycard Select Cashback Business Credit Card

1% cashback uncapped* on all your business spending (T&C apply) Read our full review

Comments (169)

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

  • Wally1976 says:

    Mmm, I managed to get this offer on 7 Amex cards, did a £25 Amazon top-up with each and received all the confirmation emails. Only 1 of the transactions is showing the base points earned so far as the others were done later on Monday but there are no bonus points showing :-(. Fingers crossed!

    • Anna says:

      I’ve got the bonus points but no base points, only just realised!

      • Wally1976 says:

        On my platinum card I’ve got base points but no bonus points but just logged onto my wife’s BACC account and can see 1 lot of bonus points (instead of 2) and no base points!

        Hopefully it’ll all sort itself out within the next couple of days.

        • Wally1976 says:

          Probably ought to mention – wife’s BACC card was the only place we had this offer loaded initially and I added it to the rest of our cards using URL trickery so that might explain it if it comes unstuck.

      • Geoff says:

        I think the base points will turn up in a day or 2.

  • Michael says:

    I cannot get the chat to work on laptop nor tablet. Has anyone any idea on how to make this work? Thank you.

    • Josh says:

      Me neither – any ideas?

    • Third Passport says:

      It didn’t work for me on Chrome so I used … IE! Might be worth trying a different browser?

  • Jo says:

    No luck with two chats this morning

  • Dan says:

    There’s another Amazon deal which offers you a £15 credit if you spend £25 and pay for a proportion of it using Membership Rewards. I paid 0.50p out of the total using MR and got a £15 credit. Seems to be offered if you link your Amex MRs to Amazon then it appears at the checkout in the payment options.

    • Gavin says:

      You could have just paid £0.01 (2 points)

      Offer has been around since last December.

  • Kinkell says:

    I’ve given up! Not targeted, can’t get on chat, phone CS agent refused . So annoyingl to read of folk who don’t have it, getting it and then getting added to loads of their cards.
    Ah well, enjoy the points.

  • Guy says:

    Took offer on tab on the Amex website.

    Bought £25 gift card with BA Amex.

    Had email re 1000 avios within 30 secs.

  • Kieran says:

    told by webchat that it is targeted at MR & BA cardholders who have not renewed any offers this year.

    • Kieran says:

      They won’t budge, claim it is not AMEX T&Cs that are driving this.

    • Cate says:

      Maybe, we haven’t renewed any and full 1000 each on BAPP and Gold.

  • Gavin says:

    I’m guessing Reading station, get the Railair coach?

    • Alex W says:

      Wouldn’t use reading station car park, it’s about a billion pounds an hour.

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

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.