People who don’t buy points are already buying points without realising it
Links on Head for Points may pay us an affiliate commission. A list of partners is here.
We have run a couple of articles recently about special offers for buying points:
- Avios has launched monthly subscription packages for buying points
- get up to a 70% bonus when you buy Virgin Points
- get up to a 100% bonus when you buy Hilton Honors points
These articles always generate feedback along the lines of ‘I never buy points’.
This approach is wrong on two levels.
The first reason why it’s wrong to never buy points ….
The first reason, which I don’t intend to go into again today, is that buying points CAN make financial sense.
I wrote a piece in 2021 explaining how I spent over £2,000 on Hilton Honors points to book our stay at Waldorf Astoria The Palm Dubai over Christmas – and how it saved me over 60% on the cash price.
Last year I also looked at the value of buying Hyatt points for their great value suite upgrade awards.
I’m not going over this ground again but it is worth reading the Waldorf article to learn more about my thinking. The bottom line, however, is that flight and hotel prices have been so high this year that it was very easy to make the maths stack up in your favour.
The second reason why it’s wrong to never buy points ….
….. is that you are already doing it.
This second reason is what I want to focus on today. You are ‘buying’ miles and points every day without fully realising it. Ironically, you are often paying more for them than you would pay in the points sales which many people dismiss.
There are three ways of obtaining frequent flyer miles and hotel points which are genuinely free:
- you fly the airline, or stay at the hotel, on a trip which someone else – usually your employer – is paying for
- you receive a sign-up bonus for taking out a new credit card
- you receive points from a product or service you would pay for anyway, and there is no alternative pseudo-cash reward (the Avios deal with Alan Boswell Insurance Brokers falls into this category – you can learn about that here)
That’s about it. All of the other points you earn are, de facto, being purchased.
After all ….
- when you earn miles and points from a credit card, you are turning down the chance to earn cash via a cashback credit card – I looked at some of the best UK cashback credit cards here
- if you convert Nectar points into Avios, you are losing out on 0.8p of free shopping for every Avios you receive
- if you convert Tesco Clubcard points into Virgin Points, you are losing out on 1p+ per point of value by redeeming for another partner offering 2.5x to 3x face value
- if you convert Heathrow Rewards points to Avios or Virgin Points, you are losing out on 1p of Heathrow shopping voucher or 2p of Heathrow parking voucher for every mile you earn
- if you convert Capital On Tap points from their Business Rewards Visa card (Capital On Tap review here) to Avios, you are giving up the alternative of 1p cashback – albeit there would be tax issues if you took the cash as this is a small business credit card
- if you convert American Express Membership Rewards points to travel rewards points, you are giving up 0.8p per point of pseudo-cash via Nectar as I explain here
There are other occasions where you may pay to take part in a deal purely to earn points:
- Barclays Avios Rewards charges you a £12 monthly fee to receive 1,500 Avios in return. (This is still a very good deal, because of the annual British Airways upgrade voucher you receive.)
- We occasionally cover offers such as The Spectator subscription deal – click here – which lets you ‘buy’ Avios for 1.2p by subscribing to the magazine. There is also the excellent Economist offer running at the moment which lets you ‘buy’ Avios for 0.8p – and get a year of digital magazines.
Many of these options require you to pull a trigger, just like buying points
There is, psychologically, a difference between pulling out your credit card to buy miles and points and just picking them up automatically. I get that.
When you use your British Airways American Express card, the Avios just turn up. You are not ‘buying’ the Avios by specifically making a transaction, if you see what I am getting at.
However …..
Whenever you log in to Nectar, American Express Membership Rewards, Capital On Tap, Tesco Clubcard or Heathrow Rewards and make a transfer into Avios, Virgin Points etc, you are ‘actively’ buying those points just as if you’d gone to the ‘buy Avios’ page on ba.com.
Conclusion
The point I wanted to get across in this article is that we are all buying points, all the time – we just don’t always realise it.
Actively buying more points by pulling out your credit card should be seen in the context of this.
Whenever you buy points directly OR transfer in from another programme such as Membership Rewards, you need to have a relatively firm plan for using them.
At the end of the day you need a good excuse to swap cash (very useful) for points (not so useful, as you’ll discover if you try to pay for your dry cleaning with Avios or Virgin Points).
ChasP 
NorthernLass 
dougzz99 
Bernard Bjorn 
Jon 
John 
Swifty 
ryan 
Colin Thames 
The Savage Squirrel 
riku 
TGLoyalty 
Navara 
yorkieflyer 
Reney 
cinereus 
Kevin 
memesweeper 
Lady London 
Rob 
The Streets 
Comments (66)