Get £100 off British Airways Holidays and 10% off Virgin Holidays packages this weekend

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• DaveL says:

  3 Jan3 January 18:03

  OT#2(!) – Due to overprocrastination, I managed to missed the deadline for 35,000 AerClub Avios on Groupon – doh! When I saw the ‘4 days left’ warning, I figured 31st Dec was the cut off – however it had already disappeared.

  Anyway…anyone aware of any other current (or upcoming) offers to buy avios for close to 1p? Need to get that 35k asap. Thanks.

  • Rob says:

    3 Jan3 January 18:41

    I would be shocked if Groupon Ireland, Groupon Spain or a 50% buy points bonus via BA or Iberia did not appear within a month.

    • Anna says:

      3 Jan3 January 22:01

      Hopefully there will be a few offers this year…I get my pension lump sum in May, gonna buy me a big diamond ring and as many Avios as BA will let me to blow on F 😂

      • Shoestring says:

        3 Jan3 January 22:08

        hopefully that means you timed it pretty well when you agreed things

        15 year gilts hit a new high about mid October or so

        not to say they won’t get to a higher high – but not so bad!

  • BJ says:

    3 Jan3 January 18:53

    Has the economist offer ended? It’s 0.8pp via Canada so there would be potential for 30k that way but IIRC avios took about a month to arrive according to comments.

    • DaveL says:

      3 Jan3 January 23:28

      Thanks all. I felt economist 0.8p/avios a bit high given risk, complexity around country and as you say potential delay. Will hold out and hope availability sticks.

• Shoestring says:

  3 Jan3 January 18:08

  @Ammar – here we go! https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/18712166-post681.html
  After she [my wife] saw the video of the room, she was happy to stay in the Coral suite [of the InterContinental Thalasso Bora Bora, clearly not a cheap place]. The main reason she would have liked to stay in the Coral is because of the kitchen. When we first planned this trip, we had to figure out a way to make it affordable. The best way to do this was to stay in the coral suite for the kitchen.

  I contacted the hotel and asked if those rooms had a kitchen. I was told yes but they didn’t have any utensils in the kitchen. I asked for specifics and they said they don’t carry anything in the kitchen. So we decided to pay for the extra luggage on the Tahiti domestic flight. The $100 we spent on extra luggage for one of our fares went from 44 lbs. to 110 lbs.

  As time got closer, I decided that I wasn’t ok with staying in the Coral suite. I wanted to stay in the OWB [over-water bungalow]. So here is what we did. We purchased an electric burner from Best Buy. We brought the burner, pans, cups, silverware, drink packets, a voltage converter, and 50 lbs of food. We purchased box meals, chips, canned chicken/ham, peanut butter, jelly, tortillas, english muffins, mac/cheese, rice packets, turkey sausage links, soup, hot sauce, vegetarian food, protein powder, and other various items to be able to eat on the cheap while we there. We ended up eating in for every meal except three while being there a week. (Honey is not allowed) We did purchase limes, cheese and loafs of bread from Tiare Market. We spent less than $150 on food while we were there. That includes the market and the few times we ate out.

  I do have pictures of the outside of the Coral Suites but not the inside. I also have a picture of all the food we were able to bring with us. Feel free to PM me and I will send them to you.

  • Lady London says:

    3 Jan3 January 18:16

    Iconic post.

    I thought I was bad carrying a kettle to make tea sometimes 🙂

    • BJ says:

      3 Jan3 January 18:41

      Since you can buy such things as travel kettles I am sure you are in many and good company.

    • Peter K says:

      3 Jan3 January 19:04

      I hate hotels without a kettle!

    • Spurs Debs says:

      3 Jan3 January 19:46

      Kettle and tea bags first thing I pack lol
      On my last trip to UAE while I was waiting for my room to be ready I ordered pot of tea ..£8!
      Now I drink a lot of tea as it’s my drink of choice being teetotal, without my trusty tea bags and kettle I would have a huge bill.

    • Cat says:

      4 Jan4 January 21:30

      Teapigs teabags (seriously – what is the point of Lipton?), and if I have no kettle in the room, I have been known to bring my Trangia!

      • Lady London says:

        5 Jan5 January 15:04

        Hum. Got a feeling TeaPigs is now owned by the same people that own Lipton?

        • Rob says:

          5 Jan5 January 15:29

          Yes, Tata, the same people who own British Steel. It wasn’t even set up as a ‘small brand’, Tata was behind it from Day 1.

  • Anna says:

    3 Jan3 January 21:59

    I love this story! Makes me feel quite normal for taking F & B to GCM, though to be fair a lot of visitors do this (Americans on short flights have been known to bring coolers full of meat!) due to the insanely high grocery prices.

  • DaveL says:

    3 Jan3 January 23:25

    Absolute legend! Puts my packets of instant porridge to make in a cup into perspective. You are an inspiration.

• Shoestring says:

  3 Jan3 January 18:19

  PREMIUMPLEASE

  I wanted Monese people to get this code, courtesy Boi!

  It was posted too late yesterday for many people to grab it. Gives you 3 months Premium, free, on Monese. If you faff around trying to find the Promotions link like me last night – click on the head top left and after that it’s easy enough.

  • Peter K says:

    3 Jan3 January 19:05

    I used it yesterday, thank you Boi!

  • Wally1976 says:

    3 Jan3 January 19:17

    Thanks, had missed this.

  • Dave B says:

    4 Jan4 January 09:27

    Thanks just entered , great post!

• BJ says:

  3 Jan3 January 18:35

  OT: Just had a nice email from Hilton so take care not to delete any you receive without checking. 10k (3k + 7k) bonus for two stays within 90 days of registration, which can be any time during 2020. Reason given for offer was to rebuild my balance after having redeemed 80k points in December.

  • Dave Barron says:

    3 Jan3 January 19:03

    Is it a link exclusive to you or one which can be shared with others?

    • BJ says:

      3 Jan3 January 19:24

      Definitely targeted, even related to date of redemption concerned. Flagged it here so readers would check any emails carefully before deleting.

      • Tom1 says:

        3 Jan3 January 21:52

        I get these every time I redeem points. Even works when you book/cancel, so worth doing that sometimes.
        Never had amazing offers. Today’s was 60% extra when buying points, or 3x points on stays through to… 5th jan 😂

        • BJ says:

          4 Jan4 January 09:02

          Thanks Tom, first time I got one. I’ll follow your suggestion and see what happens.

• Chas says:

  3 Jan3 January 18:50

  OT – Lounges

  Am currently in Dubai and will be returning from T1 tomorrow morning and would appreciate any experience as to which of the following lounges (via Priority Pass) is the best for breakfast as a family of four:

  1) Ahlan Business Class, 2) Marhaba and 3) Sky Team.

  Thanks in advance

  • The Original Nick says:

    3 Jan3 January 22:36

    Marhaba is my choice. Forget the Skyteam lounge as that’s terrible,

    • Harry T says:

      4 Jan4 January 00:01

      Marhaba is excellent, if I recall correctly. Didn’t go there at breakfast time but they did make you dishes to order and there was a relaxed ambience. Plenty of booze too.

  • Chas says:

    4 Jan4 January 02:26

    Thank you both – much appreciated. Have woken to 3 notifications from Check my Trip telling me of progressively later delays, so could be spending longer there than would be ideal. Currently only 35 minutes, but who knows how many more I’ll get in the next few hours…..

• Roger* says:

  4 Jan4 January 11:18

  The discussion of second bank accounts reminds me that we’re looking for a Swiss account to receive regular CHF payments and from which to pay the odd CHF invoice. All the Swiss banks now charge non-resident Swiss outrageous monthly fees to maintain accounts – they have a different interpretation of competition … (We are both joint GB and CH nationals.)

  Closest here seems to be the Fineco 4-currency acount, but they charge £19.95 to pay CHF from the CHF account, rather too high IMO. Euro payments would be OK, but Switzerland is not an EU, EFTA or EEA member, unlike Liechtenstein …

  i’d be grateful for any ideas.

  • Shoestring says:

    4 Jan4 January 13:02

    would a UK a/c offering Swissie holding currency not work equally well (nearly)? that’d be easy to sign up for & you wouldn’t get ripped off on charges – eg HSBC & others

    also, bank to bank transfers can be very cheap these days (eg WorldRemit) ie about £1 fee with a good conversion rate

    I’m thinking you can have both (say) a CHF HSBC a/c, cheaply, to control your currency risk (ie keep a chunk of savings in CHF) – & make bank to bank transfers from either a GBP a/c —> somebody’s CHF bank a/c in Switzerland when you need to pay bills, using the likes of World Remit, or if currency has moved significantly and therefore the higher fee still justifies it, pay HSBC fee to move CHF—> CHF

  • Rob says:

    4 Jan4 January 13:11

    Revolut, N26 etc not offering accounts in CHF? N26 is German in the first place.

  • Lady London says:

    5 Jan5 January 15:06

    Revolut?

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