News in brief:
£15 Amazon discount code ending soon
(EDIT: at the last minute, Amazon has extended this offer to 31st March 2018!)
For the last 10 months or so, Amazon has been offering an exclusive £15 discount code for Amex Gold, Green and Platinum cardholders when they spend £25 or more. Holders of the Amex Rewards Credit Card should also be able to take part.
This offer expires on 31st October. If you haven’t taken advantage of it yet – probably because you didn’t have an Amex Gold or Amex Platinum when it launched last Christmas – this is your last chance.
You will save £15 on your next Amazon order of £25 or more as long as you part-pay with Membership Rewards points from your Amex Gold or Platinum card. This is what to do:
If you have not already done so, link your Membership Rewards account with your Amazon account by visiting this page on the Amazon website
Buy £25 of items on amazon.co.uk (these MUST all be sold by Amazon and not third party merchants, and excludes digital content and gift cards)
Enter code AMEX16SWP at check out
You MUST select your Membership Rewards-earning Amex card as your payment card (you cannot use gift cards or any other payment source)
Part-pay for your order using Membership Rewards points. The sneaky option is to redeem just 2 points for a 1p discount. This saves you ‘wasting’ MR points on a low value redemption. You will only get 0.45p per point and you shouldn’t waste more than 2 of your valuable points on such a poor deal!
The Amazon link above (and here) pays HFP a small commission if you use it – thank you.
This offer is open to all UK American Express Gold, Green, Platinum and presumably American Express Rewards cardholders. It will NOT work on brand new Amazon accounts, however. It isn’t clear when the cut off was, but if you don’t already have an existing Amazon account don’t bother opening one just for this deal.
From April 2018, please use our new Uber sign-up code UBERHEADFORPOINTS via this link, or download the app and add the code via the promo code box on the ‘Payment’ tab. This gets you £3 off your first ride.
No more Starwood Preferred Guest points from Uber
Starwood Preferred Guest has announced that it is ending its Uber partnership on 17th December.
This is a shame, as it was a very easy way to rack up SPG points. You would earn 1 SPG point for every $2 equivalent spent with Uber, up to a maximum of 10,000 Starwood points per year. Given that I value a Starwood point at 1.5p, this was a rebate worth having. You even earned points on rides taken with Uber credit from Tesco Clubcard.
If you never registered for this promotion, you can still sign up and earn a few points during the final seven weeks. This Head for Points article explains how to link your Uber and Starwood accounts and the registration page is here.
Fully refurbished lounge in Madrid Terminal 4S now open
The Sala VIP Velázquez lounge in Terminal 4S at Madrid Airport is now open again after a major refurbishment.
The reason for mentioning this is that, if you are flying British Airways, you are likely to find yourself in the 4S satellite terminal and in this lounge. Some Iberia flights also use it as I found recently.
There are a couple of pictures on Flyertalk here – it looks very impressive.
Refurbishment work will now start on the Dali lounge in the main terminal, which you are more likely to use if flying on Iberia to the UK.
(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to visit our home page for the latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios from current offers and promotions.)
About Head for Points
OT – a follow-up to my question on Wednesday regarding tax on Aer Lingus redemptions – I called BA again, and this time the nice lady said that it’s £169.20 for TWO (DUB-YYZ out in Business, back in Economy), not per person as the last lady said. Not exactly big money, but pleasing nonetheless.
O/T: anyone tried to register for the double avios promo for 8 segments till 31/12 and have been considered not eligible with no reason when resident in UK?
O/T Daily Telegraph
British Airways owner IAG could swoop on Monarch’s former slots at Gatwick Airport as a way to boost its fledgling low-cost airline Level, the group’s chief executive Willie Walsh has said.
Mr Walsh confirmed he was interested in the collapsed airline’s slots at Gatwick but was unsure yet about how or when they would become available.
After Monarch went into administration earlier this month, analysts calculated that its airport berths could be its most valuable assets, worth up to £60m. The stricken carrier’s administrators launched a judicial review yesterday in a bid to maintain ownership of the slots as they can be sold to help pay its creditors.
Should Monarch be stripped of the slots, they would be redistributed by Airport Co-ordination Limited, which organises slot redistribution for the aviation industry.
Mr Walsh said that in such a process a new entrant airline would get precedence and he noted his company’s Level and Iberia Express did not operate out of the airport – one of the UK’s busiest – at present.
“The interest in Gatwick is not just from British Airways,” Mr Walsh said. “We would only have priority with a new entrant and there are parts of the company that would be new entrants.” These included Level and Iberia Express.
so looks like Monarch’s slots could be worth £60m – or nothing – to Monarch – what a minefield or simply bad management by Monarch in not doing something about this before they went bump
I think Raffles has touched on this before with LHR slots – they’re not actually owned by the airlines that use them – those airlines can still sell them for £millions though the back door
Iberia express do flu from Gatwick
Completely OT, but perhaps of interest…
Just got an e-mail from topbonus stating the programme will continue to operate. Miles can still be earned and redeemed on Etihad, points can still be earned with various partners, and the topbonus Visa will continue to earn points too.
Presumably it will get subsumed into the Etihad FF scheme in due course, though?
I wouldn’t put any money on that.
I had that email too and deleted it. Given that some frequent flyer schemes can be worth more than their main airline, I just guess the bankruptcy administrators are desperately trying to keep people in the scheme with a view to selling it on as a viable asset. If I had been crediting flights to Air Berlin I’d have been crediting them somewhere else by now.
;
No time to check whether anyone else has posted this elsewhere, but today’s xkcd comic seems relevant to us all 🙂
https://xkcd.com/1908/
the other one’s my wife 🙂
OT @Genghis and any others on the 14k nectar point insurance promotion: Discovered today that they did not process my nectar number. An easy first check would be if you are getting double points on Sainsbury spend. If not then they almost certainly have not processed yours either. If not, call nectar with policy number so they can escalate it.
Did not process? Even though you entered? I’m not a Sainsburys shopper but might grab lunch there one day next week to check. Thanks.
Yes and yes, good idea to buy something over a £ to check points, it should be double points for two years. It just dawned on me today I was not getting double points so I called about that, they said no record of insurance at their end eitger. I thought better to sort out the issue if necessary before cancelling policy hence the headsup here. next month. .
Thanks for heads up
Even before refurbishment this lounge at MAD was simply amazing – much better than any onworld business class lounge I’ve ever been. The only snag is that even BA Gold passengers can’t get their +1s through fast track security. “Iberia – yes, Britis Airways – no”, this is what my boss and I were told when we tried recently…
OT : Similar to what someone reported the other day, referred someone to a Gold Amex from my Platinum and got 18,000 referral points
Odd. Should not happen.
Thanks! just saved £15 off a nice gaming monitor for my son, so included 3 years accidental damage warranty for free! and used the £5 top up from £25 gift card top up. Off to paypoint now
Amex/ Amazon£15 offer – just does not work- I fulfilled all the criteria and tried every possible permutation- it just does not accept the code AMEX16SWP
I gave up in the end
leo
a lot of people had issues first time round, worth persevering
checklist – is it sold by Amazon themselves/ not 3rd party? is it over £25? are you the main cardholder? can you part-pay with Amex points?
having said that, our 5th family Amz a/c won’t take it (even though I get the offer pop-ups) but I think that’s because I opened the Amz a/c too recently (after 30th June istr)
I’m going to give it one last go
WORKS FINE FOR ME. Used it on 4 different accounts. £100 of goods for £40 quid. score.
I contacted Amazon and they told me that the code has expired because the maximum amount of people had used it.
you got a muppet
Still having problems enrolling the Amex card. Its now says ‘American Express® reports that you do not have a Membership Rewards® account. ‘ when i enter my details.
This is of course, nonsense. I do have an account with thousands of points. Think ill have to admit defeat on this one.
I’ve just used it so it’s still working.
the website clearly says:
Special offer: Shop with Points and get £15 off your eligible purchase at Amazon.co.uk
Use your Membership Rewards eligible American Express Card to Shop with Points at Amazon.co.uk and get £15 off an order of £25 or more with promo code AMEX16SWP by 31/03/2018.
so no rush on this offer.
here’s the link:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/shopwithpoints/marketing.html?inc=swpamexukmr&pr=swpamexukmr&plattr=vanamexuk1309
And conditions have been updated to accounts created before 27th October, so any recent new account members can pile in (not me unfortunately… didn’t think there was any point creating a new account given old terms!)
good spot! 🙂
that means our latest family a/c should work now
@Eli Gold – will have updated T&Cs in the last couple of days
Grief, it’s the deal that never ends! Thanks for flagging.
can I use it to purchase amazon vouchers?
no
Anyone recently tried the AMEX16SWP code? I have one £60 item in basket that’s sold and dispatched by Amazon and somehow Amazon is rejecting the code.