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Bits: last call for £15 Amazon / Amex discount, no SPG points from Uber, Madrid BA lounge

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News in brief:

£15 Amazon discount code ending soon

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.

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.

Starwood Uber

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.


Getting airport lounge access for free from a credit card

How to get FREE airport lounge access via UK credit cards (April 2024)

Here are the four options to get FREE airport lounge access via a UK credit card.

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with two free Priority Pass cards, one for you and one for a supplementary cardholder. Each card admits two so a family of four gets in free. You get access to all 1,300 lounges in the Priority Pass network – search it here.

You also get access to Eurostar, Lufthansa and Delta Air Lines lounges.  Our American Express Platinum review is here. You can apply here.

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

If you have a small business, consider American Express Business Platinum instead.

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for the first year. It comes with a Priority Pass card loaded with four free visits to any Priority Pass lounge – see the list here.

Additional lounge visits are charged at £24.  You get four more free visits for every year you keep the card.  

There is no annual fee for Amex Gold in Year 1 and you get a 20,000 points sign-up bonus.  Full details are in our American Express Preferred Rewards Gold review here.

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

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard gets you get a free Priority Pass card, allowing you access to the Priority Pass network.  Guests are charged at £24 although it may be cheaper to pay £60 for a supplementary credit card for your partner.

The card has a fee of £195 and there are strict financial requirements to become a HSBC Premier customer.  Full details are in my HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard review.

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard

A huge bonus, but only available to HSBC Premier clients Read our full review

PS. You can find all of HfP’s UK airport lounge reviews – and we’ve been to most of them – indexed here.

Comments (116)

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

  • Go says:

    Does Amazon work with supplementary cards?

  • Liz says:

    Has anyone else noticed this article on the website is different to the email version of the article this morning?

  • alex says:

    The title is misleading. IT is not a BA lounge. The lounge is operated by Iberia.

  • Laura says:

    O/T I have a Virgin companion voucher and PE upgrade from spend on the Virgin cards last year, need to be booked by late January but I won’t be using them. Anyway I can gift these or transfer them to charity/someone else?

  • JamesB says:

    OT Bit: 800 bonus nectar points for first Virgin Trains East Coast booking within next 5 days. No idea if targeted or wide open. It might work even if booked previously but not since launch of new site.

  • Andy Miller says:

    Thanks for that. Just saved £15 that I wasn’ Expecting.

  • Nate1309 says:

    O/T sorry. Do any of you know if it is possible to upgrade flights that are booked by a travel agent. It is a group booking of 10 seats. I just want to upgrade myself to CE so I can pack a heavier bag (its my snowboard and kit before anyone comments on who need that much stuff lol).

  • @mkcol says:

    Amazon site won’t let me link my AMEX Rewards account – any thoughts?

    I’ve had my Amazon account for years and *an* AMEX account for years, however the specific AMEX rewards credit card I’m linking for only a month.

    • the real harry1 says:

      must have owned the Amex card before 30th June istr

      • John says:

        OT Harry, 500 avs from Bud just posted, three days after I got their authentication thing to work properly.

        Thought it was something to do with Budweiser when I saw your post, but turns out to be a financial-loyalty version of award wallet.

        Skeptical about its long term prospects but will the 500 no cost, no commitment sign-up certainly made me sample, cheers.

        Worth a mention, I think, Rob.

        • New Card says:

          Mine just showed up too – cheers Harry

        • Rob says:

          We are working on a competition and existing members would be blocked, so I am not plugging it until that is clear.

        • Andy W says:

          Missed this one, what is it?

        • the real harry1 says:

          @ Andy W it’s on the avios.com site, might as well wait for the competition, there is a glitch enrolling (to get the 500 Avios) for some avios.com a/cs incl mine, glad to hear others got it to work

          might give it another go, I am enrolled @ Bud so presumably no good for the competition now

        • Andy W says:

          Thanks Harry

        • RussellH says:

          My Avios arrived too. Not quite sure what the site is for, though, and the log-in was a complete failure here at home, where there is little of no mobile signal, and just phones that work on phone signal, no Android or iOS. The help desk tried, but that involved installing Chrome.

          In the end I got it to work fine in the Hampton in Newcastle.

    • Meadowlark says:

      I’ve had the same problem trying to enroll cards this morning. I get a message “we’re sorry but something went wrong while enrolling your rewards account for Shop for Points”. I’ve tried my own Gold card and Mrs Meadowlark’s card (not supplementary) with the same result. And my Amazon account is pre-June 2017 too. I wonder if the “maximum 33,333 enrolled” has been reached before the 31 October deadline?

      • Mark says:

        Same problem here. Hoping it’s just a glitch.

        • Alan says:

          Yes, the click-through from main Amex website appears to have broken in the redesign and this and the app seem to be the only way to view details of points (MR or otherwise) added on any cards.

        • barnyd says:

          Yep the same for me. A 15 year old amazon account and a Amex Gold 8 months old. When I try to enrol the card it says ‘We’re sorry, but something went wrong while enroling your rewards account for Shop with Points. ‘
          Been trying it for 2 days now.

        • Alex says:

          Still trying here. I tried Amazon support who seemed to not understand the problem. Tried removing the card from amazon and readding. Different browser/computer too. Nothing works, unable to enrol card. Can’t be to so with offer limit, that would stop the discount code working but surely not stop me enrolling my card!

        • the real harry1 says:

          I didn’t have to ‘enrol’ my card at all – this on our first 4 family a/cs – or do you just mean adding the card as a payment card?

          I think you do mean ‘enrol for this promotion’ – there is no need to do that so Amz have probably disabled it as unnecessary

          I simply added the card as a payment card, chose it on these 4 a/cs when I bought item over £25 from Amz, used 2 MR points and paid the rest in cash, added the code, promotion worked fine x4

        • Alex says:

          I’ve now managed to successfully apply the offer. Glitch has been fixed seemingly. Was able to use my card on both my and my girlfriends account and discount code worked fine.

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

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