News: Boots / Amex cashback deal, 100% bonus buying Hilton points, double Avios at Bicester

News in brief:

New American Express cashback deal with Boots

Whilst it won’t save you a huge amount of cash, unless you stock up on premium cosmetics, American Express is offering 7% to 10% cashback on purchases at Boots and boots.com.

This should also work if you bought gift cards for other retailers from Boots, which is handy as most stores tend to have a decent range.

I had 10% cashback on a business card and 7% on a personal card but this could just have been random. Remember that you must register by going to the ‘Offers’ tab of the Amex website or app for each card you hold and clicking ‘save to card’ if the deal is there.

The offer runs to 22nd September. You can only benefit from it once per registered card and there is a £10 minimum spend.

Get a 100% bonus when you buy Hilton Honors points

Hilton has brought back its offer of a 100% bonus when you purchase 15,000+ points.

The Hilton ‘buy points’ page is here. 

The maximum purchase is 160,000 points, which doubles up to 320,000 points with the bonus.

320,000 points is what you need to book a 5-night stay at an 80,000 points per night luxury hotel, given the ‘5 for 4’ deal given to all elite Hilton Honors members.

This is the deal I used to book 5 nights at the Waldorf Astoria Palm Jumeirah Dubai over Christmas, saving over 60% on the cash price. I wrote about how I did that in this article.

At $1,600 for 320,000 points, you are paying 0.5 cents (0.36p) per point. Our published valuation of a Hilton Honors point is 0.33p so you won’t lose out and could do a lot better at peak times.

The page to buy points is here if you are interested. The offer runs to 30th September.

Get double Avios at Bicester Village

Bicester Village, the discount luxury shopping outlet in Oxfordshire, is running a double Avios promotion until 12th September.

The standard Avios rate is 5 Avios per £4 spent.  During this sale period, you will receive 10 Avios per £4 spent. 

You do not claim your Avios in each individual store.  You scan your receipts and send them to Bicester after your trip – but this must now be done within 24 hours of making your purchases.

You can find out more on this special BA page of the Bicester Village website.

Note that Bicester Village works with MANY other airline partners so if Avios is not your core focus you should still find a partner to suit you.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (October 2023)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points.

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

EDIT: Applications for this card are temporarily suspended due to IT issues with the British Airways On Business SME loyalty scheme.

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.