Etihad adds a 4th daily London Heathrow to Abu Dhabi service for Christmas

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• Erico1875 says:

  5 Oct5 October 06:26

  I must of been one of those wrong type of customers. A few years back did 75K+ club card points in the year.
  Popped in the other day. My balance is at 18cc points lol

  • Mike says:

    5 Oct5 October 07:17

    ditto – i used to be worried about staying under the quarterly cap on points – whereas now I don’t amass enough to get a £2.50 voucher

  • Rob says:

    5 Oct5 October 08:25

    I have 138 this quarter, I think all via my Mum.

    • sunguy says:

      5 Oct5 October 10:03

      +1

      • Andrew says:

        5 Oct5 October 13:43

        687 this quarter for me – all from the mortgage.

  • thomas howard says:

    5 Oct5 October 08:57

    Tesco seem to be more concerned about getting rid of the “wrong customers” rather than retaining the right ones. The quality of most of their non branded products is appalling, I’m thinking specifically baked goods but overall theres enough inedible stuff in there that you might as well go to Sainsbury/Waitrose.

    I know the UK/IE business is broadly pleasing investors but it seems to be a long way from its heyday of being all things to all people.

  • trickster says:

    5 Oct5 October 08:59

    My clubcard didn’t scan correctly at the pay @ pump last night. Considered going in and asking for the point to be added and then noticed it would be 32pts, so decided it wasn’t worth the effort! We now shop in Aldi, or where ever else is convenient; haven’t had a Tesco delivery in years, and have largely abandoned them now.

    Re the BA conversion, I just did one on 1st Octobrer, and this says it’s from the 2nd! However, my transaction date on the BA app is 2nd, so hopefuly I’ll ge my bonus.

    • John says:

      5 Oct5 October 10:47

      You should be using a Tesco debit card as your clubcard… I haven’t “scanned” a clubcard in 6 years, and at the moment you should be using Tesco debit to pay as well

  • Eppleby says:

    5 Oct5 October 09:36

    I must ‘have’ been….. not “I must ‘of’ been…..”

    English as she is spoken!

• Shoestring says:

  5 Oct5 October 06:26

  The £5 conversion to get 1000 bonus Avios is definitely NOT targeted (the other one is, though).

  T&Cs make it clear the only eligibility qualification is to be a BAEC member & convert minimum £5 Clubcard points to BAEC.

  • Shoestring says:

    5 Oct5 October 06:30

    Terms and Conditions
    This promotion is only open to Eligible Participants. An Eligible Participant is a person aged 18 or over and is a British Airways Executive Club (“BAEC”) Member (membership Terms and Conditions apply).
    By taking part in this promotion, Eligible Participants confirm that they accept these Terms and Conditions.
    The Eligible Participant will need to exchange their Tesco Clubcard Vouchers into Avios between 2 October and 15 November 2018 to collect 1,000 bonus Avios.
    To qualify for the 1,000 bonus Avios an Eligible Participant must exchange a minimum of £5.00 in Tesco Clubcard Vouchers in a single transaction, during the Promotional Period.
    The Promotional Period is 00:01 on 2 October 2018 to 23:59 on 15 November 2018.
    The bonus Avios will only be awarded once per British Airways Executive Club account.
    Base Avios will be earned during the Promotional Period in addition to the bonus Avios

    • BJ says:

      5 Oct5 October 07:03

      So, accirding to these terms the statenent “convert their upcoming October vouchers” is not quite right because we can only convert existing vouchers from 2 October until new vouchers issued? I sent £5 over yesterday.

      • Shoestring says:

        5 Oct5 October 07:35

        ‘upcoming Oct vouchers’ refers to the 20% bonus promotion, not the £5 + 1000 bonus promotion

  • Rob says:

    5 Oct5 October 08:24

    I wouldn’t trust that until it appears on ba.com. It isn’t on the internal list of Avios promos that BA circulates to the media.

    • Shoestring says:

      5 Oct5 October 08:46

      But that is to ignore the upside potential vs downside risk. Looking at it mathematically:

      1p Tesco = 2.4p Avios or 3p Uber/ Redspottedhanky etc
      £5 Tesco = £12 Avios or £15 Uber/ Redspottedhanky etc
      Difference on a £5 conversion is £3

      Converting to Uber = definite £15
      Converting to Avios = definite £12, potential £22

      Downside risk £3, upside potential £7
      Fallback – phone CS, quote the T&Cs and ask where your 1000 Avios bonus is.

      I think £3 risk is manageable for most of us 🙂

      • Mark says:

        5 Oct5 October 10:09

        Indeed. I have the 1,000 bonus email but it doesn’t look like my wife has. Worth a punt though for a £5 voucher conversion….

        Whilst I was looking I discovered she has an Amex offer for 400 bonus MR on a £10 Tesco spend.

      • Shoestring says:

        6 Oct6 October 18:53

        Anyway, 2.4 Avios is usually worth at least 3.5-4p to me, whereas 3p Uber is always worth 3p

  • Roger1* says:

    5 Oct5 October 11:33

    I hesitate to offer a different opinion. However, Mrs Roger DID receive the e-mail, I didn’t. Curious, as our redemption/collecting patterns are similar.

    But with £0 in unspent vouchers and just 70 points balance, she can’t make use of the offer. However, I have all of £15 in unspent vouchers. I’m converting £5 to Avios and will see whether I get the bonus without a direct invitation.

    Given that Waitrose are offering variable Virgin miles and Aldi will open their long-awaited local store soon, I feel the need to simplify matters – convert my last £10 in Tesco vouchers to Uber and say farewell after all these years to collecting BA miles with groceries – initially at Sainsbury’s, then at Tesco.

    • Roger1* says:

      5 Oct5 October 11:35

      That was in response to Shoestring at 06:26.

• Daniel Evans says:

  5 Oct5 October 06:30

  The demise of Tesco Direct is a real hit on us Avios collectors. I was turning round at least 150,000 Clubcard points per year, now the amount is negligible.

  • FlyUpTop says:

    5 Oct5 October 08:58

    Some of us were doing double that per year.

    • Yuff says:

      5 Oct5 October 13:41

      You weren’t trying hard enough 😉

• Andrew says:

  5 Oct5 October 06:37

  Why is Uber credit only useful if you live in London?

  • Czechoslovakia says:

    5 Oct5 October 06:43

    Indeed, it’s certainly easier catching an Uber “up t’north” to directly where you need to go than a London Airways flight….!

    • Shoestring says:

      5 Oct5 October 06:48

      Have you non-London lot got Ubereats as well? (Credit also works for Ubereats).

      Nothing like Uber down here in the sticks South West.

      • Jonathan says:

        5 Oct5 October 10:45

        Uber is in Bristol.

      • Lewis King says:

        5 Oct5 October 12:26

        Uber is in Bristol and Bath.

      • Shoestring says:

        5 Oct5 October 16:18

        That’s not the real South West 🙂

  • BLT says:

    5 Oct5 October 08:19

    Because London based people pay so much for their house/ rent they can’t afford a car – hence the need to use Uber. Us up north can afford a car so less need for Uber.

    • John says:

      5 Oct5 October 08:31

      Umm, if nobody can afford a car then nobody would be able to drive for Uber.

      • David says:

        5 Oct5 October 08:40

        I think most Uber drivers lease their cars, rather than using their own.

      • John says:

        5 Oct5 October 10:55

        I actually don’t know, and this is a futile discussion anyway, (blah blah public transport sux in the north etc) but when saying “afford” a car I was referring to leasing since I thought most people buy cars on finance. I mean if you buy an 18 or 68 plate outright you are either rich or stupid or both. Well I bought my car outright at cargiant 10 years ago as I found an excellent deal, but I saw most people needing to talk finance. And all the Ubers around here seem to be priuses that get sold to cargiant once they stop being shiny.

  • Rob says:

    5 Oct5 October 08:23

    Because Uber is crap outside London in my experience!

    • guesswho2000 says:

      5 Oct5 October 09:33

      Didn’t realise it operated outside London in the UK actually! It’s pretty average outside Melbourne in Australia, regional Vic anyway, but if you can get a driver it works well enough. No real need for it though, dial 131 008 for taxis Australia wide, and they all take plastic, but it’s good to have competition I guess.

      Uber was excellent in Singapore, although it’s now been replaced/bought out by Grab…which I did end up using, albeit it was my hotel guy who hailed them on his phone for me, in Vietnam a few weeks back, and it was fine to get me to the airport, and cheap, like most things in Vietnam though I guess.

      • Dan says:

        5 Oct5 October 11:23

        Can i just say, it is not at all crap outside of London!

        what an oddly unevidenced view!

        • Rob says:

          5 Oct5 October 13:01

          Can you get a black cab or Uber outside your front door within 3-5 minutes, 24/7? Thought not 🙂

      • Jon says:

        5 Oct5 October 13:15

        Nope, but then I can walk a lot more places because I don’t have to chew through the disgusting brown air after I’ve left the house (that cost £1 million but has an 5 ft sq guarden), avoid the miserable unfriendly people (which is everyone) or dodge the knife-wielding muggers and gun-toting dealers on every corner either 😛

        The N/S game is always fun!

    • Lewis King says:

      5 Oct5 October 12:27

      Fine here in Bath! Much better than the local cabbies who had a complete monopoly and shit service!

      • Dan says:

        5 Oct5 October 20:19

        Can get an Uber to my door in 2 minutes sat here right now Rob. Leeds LS8.

    • Stu N says:

      5 Oct5 October 12:31

      It’s great in Edinburgh and Glasgow for UberX – certainly prevalent enough to wind up the cabbies, which in my book is a good thing. If you need an XL or Exec you might struggle. We have UberEats here too but never used them.

      • Ryan says:

        5 Oct5 October 14:19

        Pretty good in York as well (and Ubereats)

• Cheryl Domone says:

  5 Oct5 October 06:37

  IIs the Uber £15 for £5 Tesco vouchers only valid in London?

  • Andrew says:

    5 Oct5 October 06:42

    It’s not, Rob just thinks Uber only operates in London!

    • Rob says:

      5 Oct5 October 08:22

      I know where it operates, but I also know from experience in Sheffield you will always wait 20 minutes for a car. Typical central London wait is under 5 minutes.

      • Andrew says:

        5 Oct5 October 08:36

        Central Birmingham wait is 2 minutes.

      • Alan says:

        5 Oct5 October 09:14

        Devon wait is forever.

      • iamfugly says:

        5 Oct5 October 10:59

        The speed at which those Uber drivers reach, you would have thought that you wouldn’t need to wait more than a couple of minutes! 😉

      • GRIMZ says:

        5 Oct5 October 12:18

        What about in USA?

      • Down the Back says:

        5 Oct5 October 13:03

        Just used Uber in Miami from the airport to Hilton Bentley South Beach and back again,
        waited 5 mins at airport, looks like he was waiting in the cell phone parking lot and cost was $23.17, on the way back wait was less than a minute and cost was $20.23.

        DtB

• Nick_C says:

  5 Oct5 October 07:07

  You can still earn a decent amount of Avios on Tesco Wine By The Case by going through the BA shopping site and paying with a Tesco Debit Card.

  • Shoestring says:

    5 Oct5 October 07:37

    for the next 3 days, maybe

    • Shoestring says:

      5 Oct5 October 07:40

      earn twice the store points today, tomorrow, Sunday

  • Daniel Evans says:

    5 Oct5 October 09:17

    It was the resale potential which made Tesco Direct so valuable. £60 lego = 1000 bonus points. So 30 sets of Lego could net you the theoretical 30,000 maximum clubcard points per quarter. Flog them on Amazon and you could at least break even if not turn a small profit. It’s a bit more complicated to resell wine.

    • Darren says:

      5 Oct5 October 12:41

      Resell wine!!! Oh, I don’t think so.

      • Choons says:

        5 Oct5 October 15:05

        You could have tried bidforwine.com, although break even would likely be a best-case scenario

• Eugene says:

  5 Oct5 October 07:20

  OT but Tesco OT- anyone know what will happen to the now cancelled Tesco Premium MasterCard product for those of us still plugging away with our existing cards.? The death of Tesco Wine cuts another online bulk buying channel to get to the 5k spend needed.
  Will they renew or just let them quietly die on expiration? I called the chocolate teapot that is the Tesco Bank helpline but you can imagine the info they had…

  • Andrew says:

    5 Oct5 October 08:23

    You put a complaint into the business first though…

    Not every complaint will cost them £500 either. Whilst you are fine with Tesco Bank, sadly FCA registration doesn’t always mean that they will talk to the FOS either.

    Tracesmart Limited (t/a LexisNexis) have recently refused to engage with the FOS concerning a complaint from me. They are managing to do this on the tenuous basis that whilst they have engaged in inappropriate behaviour, I’m not the “customer”, the people who they sold the data to are the “customer”. So now it’s off to the ICO – but they are well aware that the ICO are so inundated that they are effectively impotent.

  • Andrew says:

    5 Oct5 October 09:43

    I’m not sure how you can claim the loss of Tesco Wine makes it more difficult to spend money at Tesco. The whole point of closing it is that you can already buy wine through the regular Tesco groceries site. Why keep two channels open which do the same thing?

    It’s completely different to Tesco Direct. You can’t buy the majority of what they sell in Tesco stores or from their regular website.

• Paul says:

  5 Oct5 October 07:31

  Avios BA and Tesco. Companies that have too much power in the respective markets and who abuse their market dominance. Tesco are paying the price for their huberous and like others here I simply don’t spend anything like I did since they turned the club card points off.
  BA and Avios charge eye watering fees even after devaluation of the programme and the only remaining real benefit is the amex 241. One wonders how long that has left. Personally I am keen to find an alternative to BAEC. I like oneworld BA excepted but non of the programmes offer decent family accounts.
  Bad time to be a customer

  • Shoestring says:

    5 Oct5 October 07:55

    I’m pretty happy with the Avios program & find it quite generous, easy enough to earn points on the whole. Keeps my European flight costs very reasonable.

    BA in Europe is all I’m concerned about and IMV they have a pretty good value, frequent, reliable & safe service, particularly if you pay cash and can book tickets in advance. Avios Reward flights are also fairly generous, 4 + 2 on all flights and often many more opening up closer to flight night.

    Tesco – losing market share to disruptors Aldi & Lidl, a fairly dynamic, competitive market IMV and Tesco’s huge store footprint has come to be seen as something of a weakness not an unfair advantage. [And very happy about our new PFS just up the road! 🙂 )

    • Ben says:

      5 Oct5 October 14:43

      Have to say, avios have been a lifesaver for me. Live in Zurich and Stuttgart but frequent trips back to the UK (4 weddings this year and counting). Currently on 24 short haul redemptions, this year alone, cash saving is easily 4 grand. Will be eternally grateful for allowing me to afford to keep the parents happy whilst living abroad.

  • Marcw says:

    5 Oct5 October 08:01

    You are making the big mistake of associating Avios only with BA. They’re excellent carriers where you can use Avios on, with low to very low taxes and fees.
    In Short, Avios is excellent for short haul. For long haul it’s not that great. If you collect MR points you may considers other options: for instance with Flying Blue you can go in businesses to Vancouver for about 60k Miles Return or to Japan for 90k return in business. Of course, these are limited offers in their Promo Awards, but it shows how succulent they can be.

    • Mikeact says:

      5 Oct5 October 08:24

      And their lower ‘taxes’ ,particularly starting in AMS as we do.

    • guesswho2000 says:

      5 Oct5 October 09:43

      I agree, I mostly use mine on Qantas, for flights which would otherwise cost a ridiculous amount of $ and for which using Qantas points is almost twice as expensive (9k MEL-SYD J BA vs 16k QF), and the taxes are only around $18.

      Flights ex HKG using Avios on BA/CX/QF have been great for me too, but that’ll change as of November, since HK authorities have lifted the ban on YQ.

      • thomas howard says:

        5 Oct5 October 16:51

        Can you collect tier/status points on Qantas Avios redemptions? I believe the BA IT system sometimes allocates them by mistake and Qantas own rules seem to offer them if its points plus pay.

  • Mark2 says:

    5 Oct5 October 08:18

    People like to rant about the fees that BA charge but Virgin for one charge almost exactly the same. Other airlines charge even more in some cases. I agree with Shoestring that BA fees are reasonable especially short haul. But even on LH we are flying today to Boston in F at a cost of c. £550 each plus 136,000 Avios plus Amex 241.
    We are very satisfied.

  • Stoneman says:

    5 Oct5 October 09:23

    I agree that BA are, overall, a fairly terrible carrier. However, Avios can be redeemed on rest of the One World Alliance with flights out of Hing Kong on Cathay Pacific attracting very small fees. just flew to NYC in Cathay First for 40 quid in fees! Return flights from HK to Tokyo for two people cost me £70. Avios is not exclusive to BA and I only use them on the other One Workd Carriers as I find the BA experience to be utter garbage.

    • guesswho2000 says:

      5 Oct5 October 09:44

      Only until Nov, HK authorities have lifted the ban on YQ.

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