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eBay planning a big Valentines Day deal – 30 Nectar points (19 Avios) per £1

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In 2021, Nectar and eBay ran a very generous Black Friday offer.

For one hour – between noon and 1pm on Black Friday – you received a crazy 50 Nectar points per £1 you spent.

The offer is coming back for Valentines Day, but at a lower rate of 30 Nectar points per £1. You can’t complain though.

Nectar eBay power hour valentines day

The only restriction is that you only earn the bonus on the first £300 you spend, and on only one item. Your Nectar earning will be capped at (£300 x 30) 9,000 points which would convert into 5,625 Avios.

If you value an Avios at 1p, you are getting a 18.8% rebate on your spending.

What is the small print?

Very little.

There will be a £10 minimum spend required.

You only earn the bonus on one ITEM. A bundle of items sold as one package (eg a £20 bundle of clothing) counts as one item.

Only ‘Buy It Now’ items will qualify.

The standard eBay rules on excluded categories applied. Full details of excluded categories are here but in summary, you won’t earn on:

  • Cars, Motorcycles and Vehicles (parts and accessories are NOT excluded)
  • Holidays & Travel
  • Property
  • Gift Vouchers & Coupons
  • Baby Feeding: Formula

‘Gift vouchers’ is a key one to note.

Nectar Power Hours Valentines Day eBay

We will post a reminder, and the link to register, on Tuesday morning. The deal will run from noon to 1pm.

(Don’t leave it too close to 1pm. Some readers had issues last year when, buying at the last minute, eBay decided that they had booked the transaction just after 1pm even though the customer pressed ‘buy’ shortly before.)

You may want to have a think about an upcoming purchase which you could get through eBay next Tuesday. The ‘sweet spot’ would be an item worth around £300 (a games console?) which is rarely discounted elsewhere. However, this offer is still worth jumping on even if you only want a £10 book or similar.

The eBay home page is here. You can find out more about the Nectar partnership, and link your card, on this special eBay page.

PS. If you don’t have the Nectar American Express credit card, take a look at our review here.

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (September 2024)

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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 26th September 2024, sign up for FREE Barclaycard Avios Mastercard and you will receive a sign-up bonus of 10,000 Avios. This is double the usual bonus! You only need to spend £1,000 within 90 days. Our full review is here. Click here to apply.

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

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

10,000 Avios (to 26th September) for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

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

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

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.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

10,000 points bonus – plus an extra 500 points for our readers Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 22nd October 2024, the bonus on American Express Business Platinum is increased to up to 80,000 Membership Rewards points, worth 80,000 Avios. You will receive 8 points per £1 spent for the first three months, on up to £10,000 of spending. Click here to read our full card review. Click here to apply.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 22nd October 2024, the bonus on American Express Business Gold is increased to up to 40,000 Membership Rewards points, worth 40,000 Avios. You will receive 4 points per £1 spent for the first three months, on up to £10,000 of spending. The card is FREE for your first year. Click here to read our full card review. Click here to apply.

American Express Business Platinum

Up to 80,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

Get up to 40,000 points as a sign-up offer and FREE for a year Read our full review

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

Category

Sainsbury's and Nectar

Comments (28)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Michael says:
    9 Feb9 February 07:00

    Off topic – BA just sent me an email that “ Due to a reduction in capacity on your upcoming flight, we’d like to offer you the option of changing to an alternative service on [different dates]. Due to any inconvenience caused, we would like to offer you a £100 voucher per person for use on a future British Airways flight.“ Is this considered to be the norm or quite generous?

    • Rob says:
      9 Feb9 February 08:09

      Remember that get out of paying you the EC261 compensation for bumping you.

    • JDB says:
      9 Feb9 February 09:00

      It’s not generous at all, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t get sufficient volunteers accepting the £100 voucher that nobody gets the involuntary denied boarding compensation which is the same sum as cancellation/delay compensation based on distance £220/£350/£520.

      • Michael says:
        9 Feb9 February 10:43

        It’s less than 1500km, so would be £220 under EU261. I’m quite chuffed as I was planning to cancel anyway, so getting £100 flight credit is a bonus. Also, it was an Avios booking that I did in February last year, I paid £17.50 + 5,250 Avios. I am really surprised that I got £17 back when I cancel.

  • DevonDiamond says:
    9 Feb9 February 09:47

    Shark hoovers sell direct via ebay and were price-matching with other retailers on Black Friday, 9000 nectar points collected

  • Jonathan says:
    9 Feb9 February 10:33

    I’m not buying much on eBay these days since they’re just getting so expensive

  • Skywalker says:
    9 Feb9 February 10:36

    Can anyone post the link to the ebay/nectar offer activation/registration page please?

    Seems to be stuck in some kind of loop when I click the banner.

  • PJJ says:
    9 Feb9 February 10:38

    If you bought say 10 packs of 1 item would that count as 10 or 1
    TIA

    • Lady London says:
      9 Feb9 February 10:47

      It would be the unit cost of the purchase.

      Provided you buy 1 unit on ebay, if that is a box containing 100 matchboxes, say, then you’ve purchased 1 item

    • J says:
      9 Feb9 February 14:33

      The first power hour I bought 2 units of 1 item containing 5 of the same product, in one order. The points were awarded for the full purchase.

  • Lady London says:
    9 Feb9 February 11:07

    Provided Ebay also pays out the Nectar reward promised if you clicked at 11.58am, and their internal processing was completed 4 mins later, at 12.02pm?

    Why do I have a feeling somehow, Ebay wouldn’t consider this to be q qualifying transaction either?

    I had this happen to me on a purchase on another website. I clicked in time, having synced clocks on 2 phones with Google repeatedly in the previous hour while I built the basket, including correcting an error spotted 6 mins before the deadline. According to my phones I clicked Buy 2 minutes before the deadline and the transaction was duly processed.

    The transaction confirmation email was timed at exactly 00:00:00 (ie 0 hours the following day) when the deadline for the promo was end of day I’d clicked Buy.

    The vendor refused to honour the promotion when I pointed out that for them to obtain credit card authorisation, then find/update their stock etc, would certainly have had to be done the previous day (ie qualifying for the promotion) as had my Buy, for the confirmation to be issued with a timestamp of 00:00:00. They refused to honour the promotion.

    What can I say? They were French.

    Oh, and 5 months later, last month, they went bust.

    • Alex W says:
      9 Feb9 February 13:08

      This offer is noon to 1pm so there’s no issue with the date. Before you confirm the purchase the eBay checkout page tells you how many nectar points you will earn, so there’s no confusion – screenshot the page of you are concerned.

  • Peter says:
    9 Feb9 February 12:06

    Has anyone been banned for buying a “£300 friend’s jacket” ?

    • TimM says:
      9 Feb9 February 12:23

      eBay selling and payment fees are not inconsiderable. The Nectar benefit under the offer would be at most very marginal

      • zapato1060 says:
        9 Feb9 February 12:33

        Thing is you could spend£25 ( £5 per month) for 5 months for sainsbobs over 50 insurance for 12500 avios. If it’s £1 eBay selling fee then we are seriously talking.

    • will says:
      9 Feb9 February 15:48

      Yes, but the threshold is high. It took about 20 orders to trigger someone looking into it.

      Incidentally, if you buy something off a friend using buy it now then you have not broken any ebay rules (not true for bidding as it’s considered shill bidding). There are also no ebay restrictions on the number of accounts you can set up:

      https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/identity-policies/multiple-accounts-policy?id=4232

      “What are the guidelines?
      Allowed
      Users may have multiple accounts on eBay. We understand there are various reasons why someone would choose to have more than one account.

      Not allowed
      Registering new accounts or using other existing accounts to avoid buying and selling restrictions or limits or other policy consequences.”

  • Andrew. says:
    9 Feb9 February 14:45

    Just a reminder that the Virgin Money eBay rebate offer is back on at 10% and valid for 13 days.

    (Offers are targetted and you may have different rebate levels and expiry dates.)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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