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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 (May 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 The American Express Business Platinum Card

The Platinum Card from American Express and The American Express Business Platinum Card 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 / Amex 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

The American Express Business Platinum Card

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

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold Credit Card

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is an excellent credit 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 the American Express Preferred Rewards Gold Credit Card in our review. You can apply here.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold Credit Card

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.

  • Fahd says:

    Can you cancel IHG reward bookings and what happens to points you’ve bought if you do?

    • Genghis says:

      If you buy points the points go to your ihg account. Redemptions are refundable up to a point. If cancel, you just get the points back to your account straight away.

    • Richard says:

      Yes you can – you should get an instant refund of the points when you cancel. I think you now need to cancel at least the day before (or sooner).

    • Alan says:

      Points post back into account expiry is reset, so pretty handy!

  • Lee says:

    Congratulations on the achievement!

  • John Dammone says:

    Congratulations on a great blog. Like many readers it’s my first read of the day. Also my wife’s first words of the morning are usually ” anything interesting on head for points this morning” . She is very grateful of my hobby of reading Hfp since our travel quality has increased exponentially. In fact funny you mentioned Intercontinental Times Square as that was our last Business class trip paid for with Avios and Amex 2 4 1 and also our first ever trip with a full week of accomadation paid for with IHG points and using ambassador status all picked up with tips from HFp. Keep up the good work.

  • Alan says:

    Haha love the TRH1 reference!

    For old times’ sake my competition entry is… 6HF

    😛

    • Rob says:

      Amazing achievement and great kudos to you Rob for all the hard work that goes on behind the scenes. An idea for a news item might be “a day in the life of a Head for Points blogger”. I’d sure be interested!

  • TripRep says:

    Congrats Rob & Anika.

    To echo the thoughts of others, have you thought about issuing a reminder on guidelines for comments to try and ensure they are not aggressively rude?

  • steven laity says:

    Congratulations, I stumbled across the site by accident a few years back and now it’s the first thing I read after getting up in the morning, certainly helped me boost my points account balances.
    Always enjoy reading through the comments daily for other tips from points hunters

  • Casey says:

    Congrats on all the comments. I can only dream of the luxury travel I read about on this site but I still find it so valuable and read every morning on the bus to work 🙂 Thanks for the great site!

  • Andy says:

    50 quid would go a little way to “Andys place in the sun”…

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

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