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Bits: £40 Amex cashback at Bicester Village (+ triple Avios), 3 month trial of Kindle Unlimited

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News in brief:

Get £40 American Express cashback at Bicester Village

Bicester Village, the designer outlet centre in Oxfordshire, is offering triple Avios (15 Avios per £4 spent) during October as part of its ‘private sale’ promotion.

On top of this, boutiques are offering special discounts if you register in advance. Participating stores are offering one of the following:

  • 10% off when spending up to £99 and 20% when spending £100+, or
  • 20% off when spending up to £199 and 30% off when spending £200+, or
  • 20% off when spending up to £499 and 30% off when spending £500+, or
  • 20% off when spending £900+, or
  • 20% off with no spending limit, or
  • 30% off with no spending limit

To find out which boutiques are offering what discount, check the T&Cs on the Bicester Village website here.

If this wasn’t enough to get you down there, American Express has now added a cashback deal.

If targetted, you will receive £40 cashback when you spend £300 in Bicester Village by 1st November. The participating boutiques are here. I assume that cumulative spend counts although it is not stated directly.

(It is worth noting that the document states that Bicester Village gift cards are included in the offer. This means, presumably, that if a boutique is not participating, you could pop out to buy a gift card and then go back to redeem it!)

For clarity, this WILL stack with triple Avios and the ‘private sale’ discounts, which is a very attractive combination.

You need to look under the ‘Offers’ tab on the app or online statement page for EACH of your American Express cards. If you have this offer, you must click ‘Save to Card’ to activate it.

Full details of how to register for the private sale, and how to claim Avios, are in this HfP article about Bicester Village. You can also register by clicking the ad below:

Get a three month free trial of Kindle Unlimited

In the run up to Amazon Prime Day next week, Amazon is offering a special deal on Kindle Unlimited.

Kindle Unlimited allows you unlimited access over 1 million books, thousands of audiobooks and selected magazine subscriptions.  You won’t struggle to keep yourself busy for the next three months!

Got Amazon Prime?

If you have a Kindle device, or are happy using the Kindle app on your iPad, other tablet or smartphone, you can claim a FREE three-month trial to Kindle Unlimited via this link.

This offer is exclusive to Amazon Prime members and you can’t take part if you’ve had a free trial in the past 12 months. It ends on 14th October. You can sign up here.

Not got Amazon Prime?

Non-Prime members can access a ‘three months for the price of one’ offer instead. Via this link, new Kindle Unlimited subscribers receive three months for just £7.99 in total.

This offer last longer, ending on 31st October. Sign up here.

Apologies for running a non-travel deal, but these offers have proved popular with readers in the past and the commission we earn from Amazon is valuable given the lack of advertising revenue around at the moment.

Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (39)

  • BJ says:
    6 Oct6 October 05:46

    Thanks for posting the Kindle offer. Currently I’m Prime but just came off a 3 month free trial of Kindle Unlimited about two weeks ago. Following the Prime link in the article offered me 3 months for £7.99 which is still a good deal. Remember though that new Amazon accounts get a one month free trial of Prime. The £5 free credit offer for Prime members downloading the app is back on some accounts too, I used it yesterday. Generally, I would advise downloading the app only to take advantage of offers, once you do so uninstall the app to leave you ‘primed’ for the offer next time it comes around. Finally, as Prime, I noticed yesterday that the incentive for applying for the amazon credit card had been boosted to £30 although I saw it last year at £40 and even £50. I have never held this card so have no idea about customer experience. It is issued by a company I never heard of before.

    • Liz says:
      6 Oct6 October 07:42

      Are there ever any deals other than free months for joining Prime. We are thinking of joining this month. I think in the dim and distant past they used to offer it for £39 but maybe my memory is wrong.

      • BJ says:
        6 Oct6 October 08:11

        Best I recall was £59 for a year. I don’t think it is worth even that though so I just sign up with free month and 99p for a week that they offer existing members from time to time despite them having previously used the offers.

        • Rob says:
          6 Oct6 October 08:26

          Come on. Netflix is, what, £108 per year? Prime gets you Amazon Video for free and virtually immediate delivery.

          A while back I was reading to my son in bed on a Sat night and we decided to order the follow up to the book. 10am Sunday morning it dropped through the letterbox.

          • BJ says:
            6 Oct6 October 08:52

            I cannot find the time to watch Prime Video if I’m reading HfP!

            ….which is free 🙂

          • Genghis says:
            6 Oct6 October 09:05

            There’s barely anything on Amazon Video (bar the Grand Tour and no new episodes for a while) that is “free” to watch. Still, I pay for Prime for the delivery alone (and I like and pay for unlimited of the music player).

          • Rob says:
            6 Oct6 October 09:19

            There is a good little app called JustWatch which I’ve got into. Basically you tell it what platforms you can access and you can then search for a film to see where it is.

            If your main interest is films, not original series, I find Netflix and Amazon roughly the same. What IS helpful is the £3.50 of Rakuten TV credit I get free via Amex Business Platinum which lets us pay for a film which isn’t streaming free anywhere.

          • BJ says:
            6 Oct6 October 09:47

            @Rob and others, a monthly Rakuten movie rental has been added to the choices of Club Lloyds (switch bonus currently available) benefits for the coming year. This will meet my movie watching needs hence my lack of interest in Prime.

          • Rui N. says:
            6 Oct6 October 09:51

            “There’s barely anything on Amazon Video (bar the Grand Tour and no new episodes for a while) that is “free” to watch.”
            No?! Mad Men, Lost, Desperate Housewifes, The Boys, Man from the High Castle, Walking Dead, Modern Family (not all seasons), Futurama, South Park, Blackish, Handmaids’ Tale, MasterChef Australia
            Those are just the ones that I remembered. Just the 11 seasons of MasterChef Australia can keep you busy for 1 year! (they really milk that show! 60+ 1-hour episodes per season)

          • Rui N. says:
            6 Oct6 October 09:53

            And this is just series, plenty of movies there as well. All the Bourne movies, Lord of the Rings+Hobbit already available. 1917, Parasite and Borat 2 all coming this month, etc.

          • Genghis says:
            6 Oct6 October 10:54

            @Rob – thanks for the tip
            @Rui N. Exactly. Nothing worth watching. I actually watched a few series of the Walking Dead and then gave up as all they do is just run around. There’s no serious storyline. Nothing about what ACTUALLY happened.

          • Rui N. says:
            6 Oct6 October 11:10

            @Genghis, OK that is your pregorrative. But it is not exactly a list of shows and movies that a lot of people don’t like to watch…
            @BJ don’t think you’ll be able to watch many movies with those Rakuten vouchers. Those vouchers only work on movies costing £3.49 or less, and if the movie costs more you pay the full amount (so for a £5 movie you pay £5, cannot use the voucher for partial value). Before lockdown, for most movies the SD version (which looks OK-ish in bigger (50+ inch) screens) was £3.49, so you could always watch most of the stuff that you wanted. Since lockdown, they raised the cheapest price for most movies (and 100% of the movies from the past year that I checked) to £3.49. So, I now have more than 10 unused vouchers (I get them to my perks at work), only managed to redeem 2 since lockdown began.

          • Rob says:
            6 Oct6 October 11:15

            The Rakuten vouchers stack in your account. Each is a £3.50 credit which increases as you redeem more of them. My accout currently shows a £10.50 balance as I haven’t used one for a while.

            I admit I’ve never used one for a film costing over £3.49 but I don’t see why, given my £10.50 balance, it won’t work.

          • Rui N. says:
            6 Oct6 October 12:13

            There must be different kinds of vouchers then. The ones that I have from my job perks cannot be added to my account, can only be reedemed against a specific movie. Before lockdown they even gave you the “change” from each voucher (because the voucher is for £3.50 and movies cost £3.49 or less) and that was indeed added to your account, but now even that was zeroed out (and I had more than 10p already!).

          • TGLoyalty says:
            6 Oct6 October 13:26

            @Genghis Tried The Boys

          • BJ says:
            6 Oct6 October 13:54

            Thanks @Rui and @Rob for Rakuten feedback. Options on Club Lloyd of little value to me now so might be stuck with Rakutem option.as others covered.

        • Liz says:
          6 Oct6 October 09:16

          Thanks – i think you are right about the £59 offer. Going to give it a go as there are a few shows we want to watch over the winter. Remember to try and shop local for Xmas gifts this year and not give it all to Amazon!

          • BJ says:
            6 Oct6 October 09:51

            Worth watching for a specisl offer next two weeks or Black Friday as Grant suggests below.

        • Steve says:
          7 Oct7 October 02:51

          I wonder if Rob uses “People who can’t watch anything without Clarkson in it” to describe his core demographic?

      • Grant says:
        6 Oct6 October 08:25

        There is normally a Black Friday offer for joining

      • Andrew Steele says:
        6 Oct6 October 10:48

        When I signed up for Prime I took a free month and immediately cancelled to avoid the charge at the end of the free period. A couple of weeks in I was offered a further three month free trial at the end of the initial month. So in the end I got four months free and that was enough to make my mind up. It has been a good investment with the Virus lockdown etc. I compared my Amazon orders for 2019 and so far this year. I’ve ordered three times as many thing in the first nine months of 2020 compared to the whole of 2019…

        • John says:
          6 Oct6 October 11:07

          I used to rotate between 12 accounts which got the free trial once a year.

          I don’t do this any more because it is not needed. Many people on my road have prime, so the delivery driver comes almost every day and all the non-prime orders also arrive with this driver.

          My friend gave me their netflix account so I don’t need the prime video

      • Lady London says:
        6 Oct6 October 12:54

        i would give it more time and wait till a deal comes along. Last quarter of the year is often a few occasions when they might offer.

  • Andrew says:
    6 Oct6 October 06:42

    Anyone got experience of previous Bicester Amex offers working on cumulative spend of smaller amounts across multiple boutiques?

  • Mike says:
    6 Oct6 October 07:13

    Rob-don’t apologise for running a non travel deal. I don’t think many people are doing much travelling right now – I am certainty no company U.K. travel until Easter 21 or overseas until summer 21.

    • Andrew says:
      6 Oct6 October 07:17

      Yup, agree, certainly nothing travel related to write about at the moment. At least in the first wave we had refunds, airline insolvency and status extensions to discuss, and the hope it would all be over by Christmas. Now we have nothing!

    • BJ says:
      6 Oct6 October 08:17

      I thought the apology was a bit odd and unnecessary myself but then figured it was for the benefit of the many new readers finding their way to the site this year who might not yet have fully grasped our long-standing eccentricities here 🙂

    • Nick says:
      6 Oct6 October 08:49

      Shame its not across all the Macarthur Glen retail outlets

      • Andrew says:
        6 Oct6 October 10:35

        Bicester Village is nothing to do with McArthur Glen – it’s in quite a different league.

  • Sukes says:
    6 Oct6 October 08:47

    I May have missed a post about this, but Amazon are doin a version of ‘shop small’ if you’re eligible….spend £10 on products from select small businesses on Amazon and you’ll get a £10 credit to spend on prime day. Small print is here https://www.amazon.co.uk/b/ref=mh_s9_acss_cg_SBP01_1a1_w?node=22363955031

  • Andrew Steele says:
    6 Oct6 October 10:43

    Well, my offer was £7.99 for three months even tough I haven’t had a Kindle Unlimited sub ever and am a Prime member. £7.99 for three months still isn’t a bad offer but it isn’t the free deal. In fact on Amazon the link to Kindle Unlimited says ‘Try It Free’. Click the link and the next page says £7.99 for three months 🙁

  • cinereus says:
    6 Oct6 October 17:26

    Imagine actually using the pathetic small libraries of Prime/Netflix/etc. and the terrible bitrates they use.

    • John says:
      6 Oct6 October 18:00

      I have a new-model iPad Pro. I’ve downloaded a lot of stuff on Netflix for flights… I press play and “error code blah blah”, I’m not using a VPN.

      Tried deleting Netflix, reinstalling. When offline, the issue repeats.

      The conclusion is, download what you want from some Russian website as it’s just not worth the hassle!

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