Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Buy Avios for 1p via a French deals website

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I have covered a few of the Iberia / Groupon ‘buy Avios’ deals recently.  The French equivalent of this deal has now returned, after initially running in March.  It worked – administratively – pretty well that time.

You can find full details on the vente-privee website.

The first thing to note is that the deal is only on the French site, and the French site only operates in French.  You will therefore need to rely on Google Translate if you use Chrome, or something similar if you don’t.

You will also need to give a false five digit French postcode when you register as UK postcodes are not accepted.  It doesn’t ask for your address, only your postcode.

Here is the pricing:

2,000 Avios for €21 (0.97p)
4,000 Avios for €45 (1.04p)
8,000 Avios for €99 (1.14p)
12,000 Avios for €145 (1.12p)
20,000 Avios for €229 (1.06p)
35,000 Avios for €399 (1.06p)

What makes this deal easier to administer than the Groupon one is that Avios is providing the back-end redemption.

Once you are emailed your voucher by vente-privee, you go to a page of the Avios website (which is in English) and input your code number.

You will see that the Avios can be dropped into either a BA, Iberia, avios.com or AerClub account, although as you can move them around via ‘Combine My Avios’ it doesn’t make much difference.

You can buy up to 100,000 points.  The maximum you can buy of any particular quantity is 3, so you’d logically start with 3 x 2,000, then add 3 x 4,000, before juggling the other pricier options to get to your target.

In reality you can almost certainly buy more than 100,000.  Even if the redemption website kept track, which I doubt it would, you could send 100,000 to an Iberia account, 100,000 to a BA account etc.

Is this worth it?

Last Monday I showed you how to get 18,000 Avios for £146 via the Irish Independent newspaper.  This is 0.81p per Avios, compared to a minimum of 1p here.  If you only want a small number of points, do the Irish Independent offer first and then move on to this.

I won’t be buying via vente-privee at this price.  0.75p tends to be my floor price, as I’ve said before.  Over the last four years I’ve averaged 1.2p per Avios point redeemed so I’m not willing to pay 1.0p to buy them given that I wouldn’t be spending them for a couple of years.

That said, you may well get a higher value from your redemptions than I do.  You may also just be looking for a way of topping up your account quickly.  If you are, this may be a good way of doing it.  It is a decent price given that you don’t have to go to much effort to earn the points.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2025)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous 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

Get 5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, and the standard card is FREE. Capital on Tap cards also have no FX fees.

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 1 Avios per £1 Read our full review

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

50,000 points when you sign-up 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

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Comments (69)

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

  • Neal says:

    OT re Radisson Blu EMA
    The hotel used to be quite generous when it comes to Club Carlson Gold member upgrades, but when I checked in today (27 August) the associate tried everything she could to NOT give me an upgrade.
    She told me that they received an policy update from Carlson Hotels corporate informing them upgrade is no longer possible for gold members, which is a big lie, as I called Club Carlson and they confirmed this information is not right.
    Will not stay at this hotel again given it’s rate is not cheap and now no benefits for gold members.

  • Concerto says:

    I actually have a French address with a credit card registered to it, so I am in for this one. Can you use the €10 voucher to buy Avios?

    • Timo says:

      Yes, you may, for any purchase over 40 euro. 2000 x 2 is 32 euro after the coupon, worked fine for me.

      • Beppo says:

        Have not seen either the voucher or the discount after three days. Am I the only one?.

  • Timo says:

    No Avios yet! I guess, they website will send us letters after Sept. 1st

  • Luke says:

    I’m thinking about doing this just to get some Avios into my Iberia Plus account – I haven’t got any there yet. But all the links just talk about crediting to BAEC. Also, the ‘add to basket’ button doesn’t seem to work at the moment, but that might be a browser issue.

    • Rob says:

      Here’s the thing. Last time they ran this it was branded as BA and IB. This time, it is just branded as a BA offer. I get a feeling that the voucher should work irrepspective of programme but I can’t be certain.

  • Margaret says:

    Has anyone received their codes yet?

  • Nems says:

    The codes showed up in my account now but when I tried to redeem it said codes expired.
    Le code ‘********’ a expiré. Not sure if i did something wrong.

  • Jonathan Coyle says:

    All three of my codes say the same thing – all expired! May just wait until later today in case they haven’t updated systems all round?

  • Chris says:

    Got the Avios code today, but it says “expired” when entering it on the Avios voucher page.

    Means I’m now left in limbo.

    Can’t complain with Vende Privee as I entered a dummy address in France.
    Can’t complain with Avios as I’m registered with a different address there.

    Luckily, I only bought 2K point once. Means lesson learned never to use this offer again.

    • the real harry1 says:

      nil desperandum

      there were no issues last time, I’m sure Ventes privees will sort it out

      was PayPal an option? that is also a cast-iron guarantee you’ll get your money back if something goes wrong – that’s why I used them on the luggage tag purchase

      • sharon says:

        I have the same issue. Lots of miles purchased, phoned Vente Prive
        They say it is an Avios problem. Told me to email evouchers at Avios. Despairing!
        Can anybody experienced help?

        • sharon says:

          Have spoken to Vente Prive, Executive Club and Avios. Nobody keen to take responsibility yet

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

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