Get a 25% bonus when you convert TopCashback money to Avios points

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• BJ says:

  3 Apr3 April 19:09

  @Lady London, I’ve decided to keep mine for just that eventuality. At £1.34 and £1.62/month life is cheap.
  @Harry, was curious why my policies came in cheaper than yours, thought I was older but turns out I’m five years youngerl

• Shoestring says:

  3 Apr3 April 19:17

  cheeky young whippersnapper! lol

  mine were worst, my wife is 5 years younger = cheaper, my 18YO son was cheap as chips

• BJ says:

  3 Apr3 April 19:20

  Don’t trust any of them, I take the cash. Will rarely buy avios over 0.5p so the 25% bonus doesn’t even work for me.

• Shoestring says:

  3 Apr3 April 19:24

  yep but you don’t have 2-3 years’ worth of Avios sitting there ready to fuel your flights, do you BJ? Aren’t you a bit earn & burn ie 1 year max?

  Not a bad situation to think you can already fund your flights on Avios for the next 3 years.

• BJ says:

  4 Apr4 April 05:20

  @Harry, my earn and burn strategy is working with 2-3y insulation (could have been 4 with IB…). Currently I’m about 50k short of my 2021/22 Xmas flights, 25k in pipeline with tesco mobile and will probably open another 2x clubcard accounts.

• Qwerty Bertie says:

  4 Apr4 April 09:38

  Related to your topic of buying points Rob, and that you achieved good value from those points, I again make the case for you increasing your official Hilton valuation from 0.3p per point. I might need to stay near Cardiff one weekday night later this month. I checked it last night, eliminated one of the two possibilities based on lack of parking, and at the other had a choice of an AA fully flexible rate of £84, or a 10k points option, which would give 0.84p per point value. (I would pay the cash price if I didn’t have the points.)

  • Rob says:

    4 Apr4 April 10:54

    If you look at 50 Hilton redemptions at random you’ll find 45 are around 0.33p. You can always do a lot better than this and if you only have a few points then it makes sense to save them for such occasions.

    Someone with 1m Hilton points (I have 1m Marriott at the moment and my wife and I have almost 1m IHG between us) will probably use them at every possible opportunity and so ends up nearer the average.

• Qwerty Bertie says:

  4 Apr4 April 15:23

  I think we must be looking at it as different types of hotel user, because the proportion of higher value found by me is much higher than your 10%; I’m closer to 50%. I’m currently having to make a fair few one night weekday stays in various towns and cities around the country.

  In particular, and I expect this is common knowledge to seasoned hotel users, but I’ve only recently noticed, that Tuesday cash prices tend to rise quite high above the typical rate. Points offer great value on such days where a flexible stay needs to be booked, especially when a slightly less central option is taken to keep costs down but without it becoming too onerous with location.

  • Alan says:

    4 Apr4 April 17:14

    Yep, I’ve generally been able to get better value too. I’ve stuck with 0.4p for IHG/Hilton/Marriott and 0.75p for VS/AA/BA for a while. With the weakened pound I’ve found the hotel points esp valuable abroad. Had about 700k each in Hilton & IHG but still tend to not redeem unless getting at least those levels (or preferably more). Was glad I had a stash for upcoming Tokyo trip where most hotels were >£400/night. Conrad at 90k/night suddenly seemed pretty good value! (it was priced at £700+/night but definitely wouldn’t pay that!)

    • Alan says:

      4 Apr4 April 21:28

      Yep, I’ve found that as you say once all the taxes and carrier surcharges get added in the miles just aren’t worth quite as much, esp with reasonable business class fares being about (certainly at levels I’d be willing to pay). Hotels a much ‘cleaner’ redemption in that regard. The other thing I’ve found relaxing is only aiming to maintain Silver with BA – has meant I’ve been able to take other more direct or better value options than having to stick with BA!

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