Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Bits: win £50 for our 200,000th comment, good SAS EuroBonus deal with Avis

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News in brief:

Make our 200,000th approved comment

At some point this morning, approved comment number 200,000 will be made on Head for Points.

This is a slightly crazy and very impressive achievement – especially as well over 199,000 of them have been polite and thoughtful.  And at least 198,000 have had no mention of Harry’s ‘place in the sun’ …..

Thank you to everyone for your contributions.  The site genuinely would not be the same without you.

You can go onto a site like Fiverr and buy yourself thousands of fake page views, Twitter followers or Facebook likes.  Online readership statistics can be faked in a hundred different ways.

What you can’t fake, however, are 200,000 comments, and whenever we have a marketing meeting we always point to the discussions on HfP as the best measure of the success of the site.

Anyway …. we’re going to send a £50 Amazon voucher to whoever makes the 200,000th comment.  Unless it is me or Anika.  Or the person did not give their real email on the comment form.  Anyway, we will decide on a winner and let them know.

Good SAS EuroBonus deal with Avis

We don’t cover SAS EuroBonus much on Head for Points, although the scheme is an American Express Membership Rewards airline partner.

Until the end of October, SAS is running a very attractive Avis deal.  Take 2 x 2-day Avis rentals before the end of the year (to be booked by 31st October) and you will receive a whopping 12,000 EuroBonus miles.

That won’t necessarily get you far, but you could do a top-up via Membership Rewards.  You can get a night in a Radisson hotel for 20,000 SAS miles for example – that is how I got my free night at The May Fair in London 18 months ago.

Using them for flights is less attractive.  You need 20,000 SAS miles, plus taxes, for a one-way European flight on any Star Alliance airline.  That said, if you stretched the definition of Europe to its far reaches then it still may be an OK deal if the taxes made sense.

Full details are on this page of the Avis site.


How to get FREE car rental status and other benefits via UK credit cards

How to get FREE car rental status and other benefits via UK credit cards (April 2025)

If you hire a car in the UK, you can get special benefits (discounts, upgrades, free additional drivers etc) if you have elite status with a car rental programme. You can get elite status for free via certain American Express cards.

The Platinum Card and American Express Business Platinum

The Platinum Card from American Express and American Express Business Platinum come with two free car hire status cards. Your supplementary Platinum cardholder can also receive status in their own right.

From Avis, you receive President’s Club status in Avis Preferred. This gets you up to 25% off standard rates, a free additional driver and a guaranteed one class upgrade. For weekend rentals you will receive a two class upgrade, subject to availability.

From Hertz, you receive ‘Five Star’ status in Hertz Gold Plus Rewards. This gets you up to 15% off standard rates, a free additional driver and a one class upgrade, subject to availability.

Hertz also offers Platinum cardholders a 4 hour grace period on rentals. Your final day is treated as 28 hours, so a 1pm pick up with a 5pm return the following day is only charged as one day, not two days. We wrote about the Hertz / Platinum 4 hour grace period here.

The Platinum Card also comes with full car hire insurance with no obligation to pay for the rental via American Express. You can refuse any attempts to sell you additional insurance at pick up. This benefit has substantial value if you rent on a regular basis.

You can find more details on the two Platinum cards, and apply, in our full reviews linked below. You can apply here for the personal card and here for the business card.

The Platinum Card from American Express

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

American Express Business Platinum

50,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is an excellent card in its own right. You receive 20,000 Membership Rewards points for signing up (convert to 20,000 Avios amongst other things), four airport lounge passes and £120 of Deliveroo credit. Even better, your first year is free.

There are two car rental benefits:

  • you receive Preferred Plus status in Avis Preferred
  • you receive a special package with Hertz – 10% off best available rates at participating locations, a one class upgrade for rentals of 5 days or more, subject to availability, and no additional driver fees

Find out more about the benefits of American Express Preferred Rewards Gold in our review. You can apply here.

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

Comments (404)

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

  • David Ward says:

    Buying points? . I look at weekends when there are 1000 bonus points for £5 ish and add them into my booking. Checking against my and my wifes IHG accounts. ( we only use hers for the additional easy points!) Points monitoring – much better rewards than playing suduko!

  • Alessandro Behling says:

    Fantastic achievement !!! With the quality work you do to help us out for our cravings for points, it’s hard to believe a different outcome would be possible, we all salute you !!

  • Peter K says:

    Here’s bumping towards 400 comments. Well done Rob. This site is flying high 😉
    Mucho thanks for your help!

  • Kiran says:

    On the IC Times Square – unless you are Ambassador you are far better off at the Crowne Plaza Times Square. We’ve just come back from a week there and as a Spire member, we were upgraded to a top floor, Times Square view room (that was much bigger than the IC room we had a year or so ago), given $10 breakfast buffet vouchers and two $15 drink vouchers as well as a late check-out. At IC we were given zero extras. Add in the fact the CP is 10k points per night cheaper and I don’t know why you would choose the IC.

    Thanks to Rob as always for the site – the trip (Club World and 6 nights at the CP) came to only £1k – and that was the CW taxes!

    • the real harry1 says:

      you forgot the points have a value…easily done…

      • Peter K says:

        They do, but the bank only says £1000 has gone out so that counts as only costing £1000 to most of us! 🙂

        • the real harry1 says:

          sure, it’s pat on back time for getting a cashflow-cheap holiday/ flight – I do admire that

          so no problem with OP, I guess it’s why we all strive to get cheap points

          still – convertible points (eg Avios) = tangible alternatives such as wine, so worth bearing in mind all these points are currencies (I only say that obvious truth because so many people think they’re free, esp as it happens holders of Tesco points)

        • Genghis says:

          I would hope holders of Tesco points who are buying lego and ink don’t think that…

        • the real harry1 says:

          those, no

          but I shudder to think of the % of Tesco points that get exchanged in store @ face value for weekly groceries

          my guess would be 50%+ of all Tesco points, now that the big Clubcard Boost has gone

  • Slamb says:

    Can I convert American Express points into virgin points? If so how long does it take? Do I have to tfr them before I close the card?

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

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