Avios is starting its own ecommerce business, starting with wine

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• TimM says:

  1 Sep1 September 05:47

  Assuming IAGL Retail is intending to make a profit, I envisage mediocre wines promoted ‘as served in’ at inflated prices. ‘Your chance to enjoy the highlife at home’, etc. Other wines will have to be exclusive otherwise they will be exposed as being over-priced compared to the low-margin supermarkets – most of which deliver anyway. Of course, I also expect a couple of generous Avios offers to convince us to buy mediocre wine at inflated prices.

  What was the expression? Something along the lines of, “Air miles are the crack cocaine of loyalty schemes”.

  • meta says:

    1 Sep1 September 06:18

    Yes, I imagine it will be more likely £45 a bottle instead of £4.50. The worst thing is that there will probably be people who will buy it at that price and think they are drinking top of the range…

    • Dubious says:

      1 Sep1 September 11:42

      It could also give BA the opportunity to advertise that it’s onboard £4.50 wines retail for £45.

• David says:

  1 Sep1 September 06:21

  I wasn’t aware of this before I flew first recently. I have a small interest in collecting wine, so know a tiny bit about wine classification etc

  Absolutely gutted to see what’s being served in first note, having previously been pleasantly surprised. Was this just a short term cost cutting measure? Hope it improves in the future

  • G says:

    1 Sep1 September 08:58

    Food and beverage at BA is a shambles.

  • Rhys says:

    1 Sep1 September 09:12

    The article is from 2019, so at the height of BA cost cutting under Alex Cruz, which peaked around 2018ish

• David Cohen says:

  1 Sep1 September 06:22

  Surely this is simply a pre-cursor to IAG setting up an Avios equivalent of the Lufthansa Group’s “Worldshop”? I’d never actually use it for my M&M miles as it’s dreadful value, but apparently it’s a very popular way for people to dispose of their M&M for ‘free’ items, when they’re getting about 0.5c of value on catalogue shopping.

  • PMG says:

    1 Sep1 September 07:11

    “Worldshop” worked quite well for my mum – she had quite a few expiring M&M miles from a 2019 flight to Asia. She was going to just let them expire next month (her understanding of using miles is very basic and I was not going to spend the hours needed to explain it) but she needed a new trolley suitcase so the Worldshop was a good way of getting at least some value 🙂

    Definitely works for that target market!

    • Lady London says:

      1 Sep1 September 07:51

      I got aome bits of Anker kit for my final set of LH miles from their Worldshop. Of course I’dv
      rather have had the domestic US 4-hour flight in First they’d messed up the ticketing of, but that was the final straw.

      The trick with Worldshop is to wait for when they have a sitewide 25% off. As I’m no longer LH Gold I can only suspect Golds and Senators may get a higher % off when this comes around. IIRC both times the reductions were December? or late November?

      Remember also that you are shown a catalog with slightly different offering dependent on where you click ship to. IIRC I got around that at least once by using their Click&Collect option to collect at an airport. The best and most comprehensive catalog is, of course, the German one.

      • Elguiri says:

        1 Sep1 September 08:41

        I ended up using my expiring miles for Tesco gift cards via the M&M store. There was a 10% miles discount at the time, and as sent via email no need to pay for postage.

        We were originally looking at trolleys but the postage was £30-40 and only a couple (which we didn’t want) were available for click&collect at Frankfurt airport.

  • Andrew. says:

    1 Sep1 September 09:19

    Oh, I’ve had a few bargains over the years from the M&M shop, although my balance is currently 0 thanks to the lack of business travel by my boss over the last 2+ years.

    The website is (or maybe just was) really poor, and sometimes items priced at 0 points as they were out of stock, or negative points were listed.

    You’d never guess what happened when you try to buy those… 😉

• Andrew J says:

  1 Sep1 September 06:26

  Perhaps they should concentrate on running an airline well before they start diversifying.

• ChrisBCN says:

  1 Sep1 September 06:31

  IAG loyalty don’t run an airline. Which one did you think they ran?

  • ChrisBCN says:

    1 Sep1 September 06:32

    (reply to Andrew J)

    • Andrew says:

      2 Sep2 September 19:59

      I hate to be a spoiler but IAG Loyalty is owned by IAG which owns BA.

• Sammyj says:

  1 Sep1 September 07:20

  I tried the Prosecco in the BA First dining room at Dulles last week, and it was quite nice, so I took note of the name – Villa Chiopris. A quick Google revealed that I could get it delivered for £7.98 a bottle, which is less than I pay for a bottle of Mionetto in Sainsburys! I’d have stocked up if it wasn’t for customs charges.

  • patrick C says:

    2 Sep2 September 06:39

    How one van buy any prosecco remains a mystery to me.
    If it needs to be italian sparling get Ferrari Brut or something, where a touch of skill has been used.
    Beisdes paying more than 8gbp for Mionetto is nuts. Costs less then 5eur here. Also Freixenet (the spanish version equivalent) is hugely overpriced in the UK

• Dirtyneedlebluesky says:

  1 Sep1 September 07:25

  If they could sell Villa Maria for £4.50 the way prices have gone up I’m all in!!!! 😉

  • Mike Hunt says:

    1 Sep1 September 22:53

    I paid £6.37 last week at Tesco ! Club card price £8.50 plus 25% off for buying 6. Well actually I bought 6 cases at that price !!

• sturgeon says:

  1 Sep1 September 08:33

  Regretting my BA AMEX more and more as if the ‘treat’ of business class is insane cost cutting, tight assed ripping passengers off it makes me never want to use them. £4.50 a bottle in FIRST CLASS is a joke. How do they think it’s acceptable charging £1000’s for these seats and being laughably poor vs any competition? Last thing I’d want to do is buy wine from IAG.

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