Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

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

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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

18,000 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:

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

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

Category

American Express Membership Rewards, British Airways American Express

Comments (169)

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

  • Mark says:
    9 Aug9 August 16:59

    In case the offers are missing from your cards, the offer IDs are:

    1000MR with £25 spend on Amazon:
    offerId=3E2AC5005C27D3CB10291312B944249E

    500 Avios with £25 spend on Amazon
    offerId=C6AD875ECF6B34D22368646B4C7E3A8E

    • Charlie says:
      9 Aug9 August 17:30

      Thanks!

    • mark2 says:
      9 Aug9 August 17:43

      I think the rest of the URL is needed

    • Alex W says:
      9 Aug9 August 20:03

      Thanks but 🙁
      Unable to save offer at this time – please try again later

    • The Urbanite says:
      10 Aug10 August 11:24

      Thanks – added to my Gold Credit Card account!

    • Jonny says:
      10 Aug10 August 12:23

      Does anyone have the 1000 Avios URL?

    • Jo says:
      10 Aug10 August 12:25

      What is the full URL please?

    • Avios says:
      10 Aug10 August 15:14

      Needs to sourceId as well I believe

    • Alan says:
      10 Aug10 August 20:00

      Thanks, Mark

    • BigDave says:
      11 Aug11 August 14:29

      thanks

      hovered over the 500 one and copy and pasted the link and changed the offerid for the 1000 one and hit enter and hey presto have the 1000 one added to my green card

    • Mark says:
      11 Aug11 August 15:36

      The ridiculous thing is that:
      1000 MR and 500 avios added to BAPP gets you… 1500 avios.
      (But 1000MR and 500 avios added to Plat still only gets you 1000MR;)

    • Aziz says:
      13 Aug13 August 21:19

      Thanks for this Mark, just managed to save both offers to both BAPP. Also managed to save to my SPG card as well. Not sure it will work on SPG as there won’t be a link to my avios account, but might try anyway!

      • Alan says:
        13 Aug13 August 21:27

        That won’t matter if my Plat CC is anything to go by, should get equivalent value at a 1p/MR rate…

    • Juliet Soul says:
      14 Aug14 August 13:37

      Thank you, that’s amazing, it worked!
      Does anyone have the OfferID code for the 1000 Avios?
      Weirdly it added the Avios offer to my Amex Gold and the MR offer to my BA Amex (and the other ones too) even though they can’t earn Avios/MR points…

      • Alan says:
        14 Aug14 August 15:27

        Yep, as already discussed you should get £5 (500MR) or £10 (1000MR)-worth of whatever programme it is 😉

  • Tilly says:
    9 Aug9 August 17:28

    Hello
    Been lurking on the site for about a month now but not posted before. Enjoying reading all the articles and comments.
    I didn’t get the offer on both my gold card or BAPP card. Called amex but representative refused to add the offer. I did however add and redeem the Mulberry offer, spend £200 and get 3000MR points. Might try chat tonight if i can get on my laptop.

  • xcalx says:
    9 Aug9 August 18:26

    I vote this the post of the day. I did not receive this offer on 2 Plats. I have not bothered to contact Amex for a few K Avios . Lots more ways to gain FF miles without this much effort, one just needs to do a little digging to find the real gems out there.

  • George says:
    10 Aug10 August 01:59

    500 Avios? What’s that? £5? How much time have you people wasted on this?!!

    • Mr Dee says:
      10 Aug10 August 07:15

      About 90 seconds for 1000 points

    • Titus Adduxas says:
      10 Aug10 August 08:16

      30 seconds for 500 points – £600 an hour sounds a good rate good to me – it all adds up.

      • Worzel says:
        10 Aug10 August 08:41

        I value avios at around 0.5p, had to add a couple of cards and maybe it took me 10mins for 2500 avios = £75ph.

        Would have been nice to have given a 12hr shift! 🙂 .

        • the real harry1 says:
          10 Aug10 August 09:00

          took me a bit longer maybe 15 mins for 4000 points = £160/ hr

          I am obviously mgt, serf 🙂

          • Worzel says:
            10 Aug10 August 09:11

            OK Squills:

            Maybe you got up to £80/hr.

            However, we only have the 4 cards-responsible debt and all that! 🙂 .

  • Simon says:
    10 Aug10 August 08:27

    The 1,000 points posted this morning, nice and easy!

  • Alan says:
    10 Aug10 August 08:43

    Wife bought a £25 gift card on Tuesday with her gold card. Still no bonus showing 🙁

    • Worzel says:
      10 Aug10 August 08:53

      No loss though, apart from time, and assuming that you would spend anyway.

      Points will post.

    • Rob says:
      10 Aug10 August 09:33

      Do you have 25 base MR points showing on your Amex statement? If you don’t have the base points showing you shouldn’t expect the bonus.

      • Alan says:
        10 Aug10 August 11:44

        To be honest, I don’t know. Its my wife’s account. I’ll check when I get home. Cheers

    • Martin says:
      10 Aug10 August 17:47

      The £25 gift card I bought on Monday just posted today in Amex statement and I received the 1,000 bonus MR points.

      I did NOT receive any email from Amex regarding the bonus points after making the purchase. But it seems to work anyway.

  • IanMacK says:
    10 Aug10 August 10:14

    I’m still no clearer whether the offer has been loaded to my BAPP CC.
    I went through the LiveChat, completed the security tests and agent confirmed that the offer had been added.
    He refused to add to my wife’s supplementary card as he said that she needed to do the Chat herself and pass security … (???)
    Anyway, have been on my http://www.amex.co.uk and looked at tab Offers / My Offers and only showing the previous Hyatt £50 offer which I have already redeemed.
    Any suggestions ??

    • GQ says:
      10 Aug10 August 10:54

      Yes, write them a letter of complaint and withdraw your custom….consider small claims court?

      AMEX are so unfair, we deserve this bonus

      • IanMacK says:
        10 Aug10 August 15:15

        I have just been back on Chat with a different Amex agent.
        I explained the situation – offer confirmed by Chat earlier in the week but not visible on my Amex account offers.
        Agent checked and confirmed that the offer, although confirmed could not actually be added manually to my account. Hence it did not show. (And no contact from Amex to explain).
        Chat agent offered 500 Avios credit to my account, I said I’d rather have the offer to spend £25 and earn 1,000 Avios – not possible so accepted the 500 Avios.
        Reason given that the £25/1,000 Avios offer could not be added manually to my BAPP account is because I had not been solicited.
        NOT A SATISFACTORY EXPLANATION OR OUTCOME given other members’ experience as detailed above !!

        • IanMacK says:
          10 Aug10 August 15:21

          And don’t want to cut up card as the 2-4-1 is worth~170,000 Avios/£3,700

        • Crafty says:
          10 Aug10 August 19:23

          This is ridiculous. What other company would be expected to extend a targeted offer to all customers who ask for It?!

  • GQ says:
    10 Aug10 August 10:55

    In fact we are entitled!

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