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Help!!
Away to spend around £20k on a trip next March 2025 to New Zealand, Australia, hong king and Singapore.
Looking at the best rewards, benefits, for the cost. BA Amex, Barclaycard? Free or fee. Just want to get some rewards for flashing the cash. Have various other cards for spending whilst we are away. Will be my wife and I. Maybe one of us does Amex and one does barclaycard. Would use each one to pay about 11k each then get the rewards and close the card down or reduce to the free card. Plan would be to load the card up with the required credit then charge the costs of the trip to the card.
Any suggestions as to the best way to do this and get the best benefits/rewards?
Thanks.
Any FX spend on any rewards card (with the exception of the Virgin card in the Eurozone) has a 3% FX fee which kills most rewards. Even most sign up bonuses don’t look great if all the spend has a 3% surcharge on it.
The boring old Chase debit card with 0% FX and 1% cashback looks hard to beat in your case.
Apologies. Probably wasn’t clear in the original message
When we are abroad we will have Revolut metal and Chase card.
What I’m trying to figure out is what card can I get to actually pay for the trip and get the best rewards.
Thanks.
Ps if I’m teaching my grannie to suck eggs just ignore me. 😄I’m a bit confused about loading cards up? You can only load up Revolut from a bank account now, so this won’t help you get points.
If you don’t have any Amexes or the Barclaycard already, I’d look for the best SUBs and maximise that route. Maybe put £10k on the BAPP Amex and £10k on the avios Barclaycard so you’d get a chunk of avios, a 241 plus an upgrade voucher. If you want a more flexible points currency than avios, look at Amex gold or Platinum. Don’t forget the rules for SUBs though!
Yes as NL states above. Dont credit to the CC then buy the flights, rather do the opposite. Keep in mind Gold’s 25k bonus which works out at 1.5p but not necessary if your have BAPP or Avios Plus.
NL
Many thanks.
That was what I was wanting to get an idea of. 10k on both sounds like a plan then benefits of both.
Will look to see any reason why I can’t do this.
SUBS stands for…….?
SUBS stands for…….?
Sign up bonus, i.e. what you get when you take out a new card and meet the spend requirement.
What I’m trying to figure out is what card can I get to actually pay for the trip and get the best rewards.
If you’re in the UK and paying in GBP, then Gold Amex has a bonus payout for things like airline tickets, and BA PP has one for BA spend. In addition, the Gold has an extra bonus if you spend X pounds in Y months — this is in addition to the SUB. If you’re about to drop a five figure sum — or even half that — on flights Amex Gold could be an excellent choice.
Foreign spend probably doesn’t want to be on a UK Amex; possible exception is, again, flights.
Always travel with an Amex even if you don’t intend to spend on it. One of the few firms that can get you replacement plastic abroad in the event of theft is Amex (based on an old experience of mine, perhaps lots of firms offer this now, but was a god send when we needed it and Amex was the only firm that did it when we needed it).
Surely Curve metal linked to Barclaycard Avios plus must be a good option. I’ve earned 10000s of Avios abroad with it.
Yes, our curve is linked to bc, great not paying fees. So yes, Amex BAPP for U.K. spend pre travel, to 10k, then curve with bc once you leave on this great trip… that’s our pattern when travelling. Works a treat.
That sounds like some trip away. Must be great fun planning it…
Remember, no pro rata refund if you drop down to free card, so time it well.
I use Virgin for most spending abroad, with Curve if not paying in euros. There’s not the same points-earning scope as for avios so it’s a good way to build up the balance.
So got the Amex and Barclaycard cards all set up and ready to go. Splitting total cost across both cards to get full benefits as publicised…..
Company doesn’t take Amex……aaaaarrrgggghhhh.
Any suggestions…….??
do they take paypal?
Rookie error not checking this beforehand! As @Reney says, ask about PayPal but be aware that even if they accept it, they can still set up their system to decline Amex.
BUT – they “say” they don’t take Amex but quite often they can, they just don’t want to because it costs them. As you’re spending a big chunk of cash with them, you could ask nicely whether you could pay an agreed amount by Amex, because, you know, other travel agents are available …
Or get partner a Barclaycard as well?
Travel company that doesn’t take Amex? I’d be deeply suspicious about that!
PayPal would mean loosing S.75 protection. I’d not do that for some points.
If they stick to their “No Amex” guns ask for more time to pay… tell them you need the Amex line of credit… they may soften their position suddenly. Or actually go elsewhere.
Rookie error not checking this beforehand! As @Reney says, ask about PayPal but be aware that even if they accept it, they can still set up their system to decline Amex.
BUT – they “say” they don’t take Amex but quite often they can, they just don’t want to because it costs them. As you’re spending a big chunk of cash with them, you could ask nicely whether you could pay an agreed amount by Amex, because, you know, other travel agents are available …
Or get partner a Barclaycard as well?
Agreed…..rookie mistake.
Getting partner a separate Barclaycard was in my thoughts.Is there any possibility of booking this trip via BA? £10k spend on the BAPP would give you 30k avios on top of the SUB.
So little update……
Got the travel company to take my Amex card and I paid them £20 for the pleasure.
So I now have 44000 Avios points and an upgrade voucher from Barclaycard
and
110417 Avios points and a 2for1 voucher from Amex.Still have 27000 Avios points and associated Tier points to come from BA themselves with associated tier points.
So a good win all round. Thanks for all you help.
Sounds Like a good result. Thanks to posters on this thread as I am trying to work out something similar (unfortunately not a 20K holiday) in terms of which cards to take out next year to get max Avios and vouchers..
If using BAPP, don’t forget to opt in to tier points offer:
https://www.headforpoints.com/2023/11/21/earn-british-airways-tier-points-with-credit-card-spend/So little update……
Got the travel company to take my Amex card and I paid them £20 for the pleasure.
Sounds like a decent result in practical terms, although slgihtly worrying that you have given a large amount of money to a company that was quite happy to do something unlawful (card surcharge), so I’d just keep an eye on them…
So little update……
Got the travel company to take my Amex card and I paid them £20 for the pleasure.
So I now have 44000 Avios points and an upgrade voucher from Barclaycard
and
110417 Avios points and a 2for1 voucher from Amex.Still have 27000 Avios points and associated Tier points to come from BA themselves with associated tier points.
So a good win all round. Thanks for all you help.
Sounds like a great result. That amount of Avios from the Amex sounds high, how much spend did you put through the Amex to land 110k Avios?
So little update……
Got the travel company to take my Amex card and I paid them £20 for the pleasure.
Sounds like a decent result in practical terms, although slgihtly worrying that you have given a large amount of money to a company that was quite happy to do something unlawful (card surcharge), so I’d just keep an eye on them…
Card surcharges in the UK were legalised a few years ago. However, HMRC aside, they haven’t made a comeback fortunately.
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