The British Airways Wine Explorer club, run by Laithwaite’s, has launched a new deal. And it is a pretty good package.
If you are a new customer, you will receive:
A 12-bottle wine case, chosen from three options (mixed, reds or whites)
2 free bottles of Marlborough Sauvignon and two Dartington Crystal wine tumblers worth £41
1,000 Avios (250 Avios if you are an existing Laithwaite’s customer)
Free delivery
….. for a total cost of £55.
Full details and the order form are here.
There is one snag you need to deal with.
By ordering, you are signing yourself up to Laithwaite’s Wine Plan. Every 8-12 weeks they will automatically send you another 12-bottle wine case. It is very easy to stop this happening – simply give Laithwaite’s a call to cancel your Wine Plan membership, there is no penalty – but you must trust yourself to remember.
The offer runs until 30th September 2018.
It is also worth taking a look at the main BA Wine Explorer website here which has a range of other offers, albeit none with a 1,000 Avios bonus.
About Head for Points
Laithwaites produce and offer some very acceptable wines at an extremely good price. There is a small catch, in that many of these wines have labels which are created to make the wine look appealing and quite often there is no obvious winery behind them. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, but if you enjoy drinking a wine and further enjoy relating it to a particular vineyard or story, you may struggle to do this with some of the wines on offer. If this does not phase you, then go for it!!
I’ve never used Laithwaites or any other wine subscription company. Under this offer you’re paying £3.90 a bottle which seems way to cheap for a half decent wine. Do the wines actually taste any good?
Laithwaites’ wine is usually not bad. They do keep phoning you however.
Correct. That’s what put me off them.
They ask for your mobile number which they say is compulsory for delivery but they then phone you on it incessantly.
Not a problem! My mobile does not work indoors.
Will – may be worth dropping them an email pointing out that they need to comply with their GDPR obligations or a complaint to the ICO and a demand for compensation will be your next correspondence on the matter. I’ve been doing that with a couple of persistent window salespeople and it has worked a treat so far.
I’ve never had a single call from them across three subscriptions.
Virgin Wines have been doing that to me over the past two weeks. Calling my mobile number almost every day. I’ll be unsubscribing from their constant emails too. I am yet to receive my 750 Flying Club miles for a case of wine I purchased from them last December!
Why not use the opportunity when they call you to ask, along the lines of: “Ah, thanks for calling to follow up on my missing miles”
I found one company’s persistent inability to unsubscribe me from their incessant emails when I had bought from them once and asked to be unsubcribed several times, finally was overcome when I sent them an email referring to all my previous requests, stating they had 48 hours to stop and that each further email received after that time would be invoiced by myself to them at a professional rate of £55 per hour plus a minimum £5 handling fee for each email. Stated that any invoice issued would be pursued to any length necessary to obtain full payment.
It had been previously beyond their control to stop calling me but I never heard from them after that. (Hat tip to MSE). Now we have GDPR this should be even more effective.
Laithwaites are not too bad although don’t expect fine wine for that price. All the wines I have had are good and easily drinkable and I have only had one bottle which was not nice. Plus if you don’t like them, they normally refund you. I have had to only use it once and it was very hassle free unlike majestic where they wanted to see the bottle of my corked wine before replacing it.
Mrs W is no wine buff but for some reason was.not a fan of laithwaites. Probably because there’s no big name bottles. That and the constant hounding phone calls means I’m out!
This is just a special offer where I assume they are making a loss. Normal price of around £100 for 12 bottles.
More like breakeven minus, ie I assume a couple of quid down on the transaction but you can call that couple of quid normal marketing investment in recruiting new customers.
We use our avios to get ‘free’ bottles of wine. I know rob might say the spending etc.
We enjoy the wines and they do taste nice enjoyable every seems to like the merlots.
I took one of their offers last year, and can say that quality of wine was very poor. Probably rightly priced for their “heavily discounted” introductory offer, but I would never pay full price for it
Sorry, very much off topic but a bit stuck.. last week I booked 2 club returns to honolulu, paying an extra £160 to arrive on earlier flight at 20:15 rather than later at 23:26. American have since cancelled the earlier connection, so BA have moved us back to the later arrival, and handily pocketed the extra £160 we paid to avoid being on that exact flight. Silver helpline can only move us to a different connection, arriving 21:30, slightly better, but with a 7+ hour layover in SEA rather than 2 hours in LAX, not so good. Apparently I can ask customer relations to refund us the difference, at their discretion, but they will not even look at the case until after the flights have been taken! Anyone any experience of similar, or helpful suggestions?
I’m not sure you’ll get very far with this. If you’d booked the cheaper option and then been moved to the more expensive one you wouldn’t expect to have to pay any more. You are relying on BA’s discretion unfortuntely and since the problem is ultimately one of AA’s causing I wouldn’t hold out too much hope.
Of course if the cheaper option is still available for less than you paid then you can cancel for a full refund without penalty and make a new booking.
If you were moved to a more expensive flight, no you wouldn’t expect to pay more as your being inconvenienced and it isn’t what you originally booked.
If your moved to a cheaper flight and they don’t automatically refund you then cancel and rebook if possible, if not complain before taking the flight as once you have taken it you have no choice.
I think I’d rather do 7 hours in Seattle than 2 hours in HellAX…
You didn’t pay £160 extra to take the earlier flight. You bought a series of flight coupons that happened to cost £160 more than another series of similar coupons.
As this article is about wine – the offer is 14 bottles for £55, but suppose the 12-bottle case was £50 – you can’t buy the 14 bottles and then demand to return the extra 2 bottles for a £5 refund, except at the retailer’s discretion.
I’m in a very similar position with some flights where AA have changed the time. Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do – they’re allowed to change the time and rebook at their discretion. The fact the original booking would have been cheaper is irrelevant – the fact you paid means you agreed the price was ok… if you don’t want their offer they will provide a full refund so you can rebook yourself.
The only other option is to find another flight you would be happy with, and ask to be put on that. AA are happy to do this, not sure about BA’s policy but I’m sure you can negotiate something.
I’d do my work on the timetables and politely ask for another routing that gets me there in about the same kind of time (even changing the earlier flight if necessary). I’ even add in an all-American option or non-BA option (but still Oneworld) but actually have one that keeps the existing airlines on their segments if I could. Even switch to another day if I could. Late day flights tend to land further after schedule than early dates too so you could be landing even later than they’re now proposing. I’d present what I would like and any acceptable alternative to them with flight numbers, dates and timings and ask them to switch you. This change is not your fault, it’s a significant change and therefore I would be polite about but ask for what you would like instead. But do your research. Personally I’d be prepared to cancel over it (even a nonrefundable ticket should be cancelable for this kind of reason I believe) . The length of the later arrival they’re now proposing is significant, would be signficant at much less, and is not your fault. Just be nice and get what you can – and play hardball(s) if not.
sorry for long post I should have broken it up a bit
Where’s Harry, btw? I mean, we are discussing wine here aren’t we?
He’s around!!
Agree with this advice – AA normally extremely flexible when it comes to re-routing. An all-AA itinerary (at least for Westbound leg, no EU261 if doing so Eastbound) would be a nice hard product for the TATL leg. Also option of different routing that might get you more TPs if you were interested.
There’s also a BAPP Amex offer for Laithwaites, spend £80 and get £20 back – should you wish to top up your spend.
I’ve not got this on mine. But normally aren’t the Laithwaites Amex offers money off codes rather than statement credits?
Def functions as statement credit on this occasion
I’ve got this one on my Gold supp to a Plat and can confirm that it’s a statement credit, although I agree the wine offers are usually money off.
This particular offer expires in 2 days (fro T&Cs -> “Spend must be billed to your Card account by 12 August 2018 to be eligible for this offer. If Laithwaite’s Wine does not charge your Card during this period, e.g. because of a delay in dispatching your goods, you may not be eligible for this offer.”)
They have got a few shops e.g. Solihull.
I recommend their Black Stump Shiraz, but entirely a matter of personal taste
Any idea how to add extra items to the wine offer page??
Never mind, i just ordered 17 bottles with a free gift of 2 goblets for £62 via wineclub on the introductory offers. There is a 10% voucher that pops up on the checkout page if you “delay”. The £20 cashback from AMEX is instantly confirmed via email.
A further 7% off that £62 if top cashback tracks.
Yep – nice result you got there
There is currently a similar offer via AMEX for Naked wines (£100 off) that takes a case to £55. Surprisingly the reds are very pleasant indeed, i took advantage of a similar offer a few months ago.
I found the quality from Naked wines better than Laithwaites. The £100 off £150 made them very cheap.
I used all Amex wine offers and I did not like a single bottle from Naked wines (whites)…too rough, too crispy, too acid…Laithwhites whites were absolutely fine…both cost about the same.
Off topic, a bit – Speaking of alcohol, the latest Visa Offers are out including GBP24 off a spend of GBP26.95 at Beer52.com, which describes itself as a craft beer discovery club, but which sounds to me like a Laithwaites for beer. In this case you sign up for the case, get it delivered, and then have the choice to cancel or keep going.
I found the beers very good indeed.
A friend of mine did that, saw an offer somewhere else. He had it delivered to me and I have to bring it to him next month – he’s in Oslo, guess I’m checking luggage in!!!
Which visa card is this for?
Similar offer came through my Nationwide Visa Simply Rewards. Card had to be registered first though. Offer likely targeted.