Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Did you join the Amex Membership Rewards / Tesco madness yesterday?

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Yesterday afternoon saw one of those crazy moments in the miles and points game.

It started at 3.36pm, when a poster on Flyertalk callyed Richyo said that he had just redeemed 4,000 American Express Membership Rewards points for a £100 Tesco gift card. This was a 2.5p per point value – at least 250% more than you would expect to get from MR on a good day, and 500% more than you usually get for gift card redemptions.

It turns out that someone at Amex had made a big mistake.

Amex Membership Rewards

Tesco gift cards are a new offering this year from American Express. As an introductory offer, they were meant to be offered at a 16% discount. The £100 card, for instance, should have been reduced from 24,000 points to 20,000.

However, someone somewhere read their instructions wrong. Instead of reducing the price to 20,000, they reduced it by 20,000! You were getting an 84% discount!

The gift cards shot out of stock very quickly. By 4.57pm, just 80 minutes after it was posted on Flyertalk, it was dead. Tesco gift cards disappeared from the Amex website.

I placed a tentative order for £550-worth, for 22,000 Membership Rewards points. I don’t shop at Tesco, but I figured out that this was enough to get myself an iPad 5 when they appear later this year.

Amazingly, as I type this (8pm Wednesday), there are STILL some other products on offer at huge discounts. There is a Dyson DC34 handheld vacuum cleaner, reduced from 38,450 points to 3,990. They sell on eBay for £120.

They are also still offering 12 bottles of red wine from Laithwaites for 2,920 points instead of the usual 19,540!

I have passed on both of these. We don’t drink much red wine at home and becoming a Dyson reseller is too time consuming. By the time you read this these deals might be dead as well.

However, I have an e-mail confirmation for my £550 of Tesco gift cards! Let’s see if Amex choose to deliver.


Want to earn more points from credit cards? – December 2021 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit or charge card, here are our November 2021 recommendations based on the current sign-up bonus

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the top current deals:

British Airways BA Amex American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending ….. Read our full review

British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

Nectar American Express

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

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

American Express Platinum card Amex

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers.

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and free for a year Read our full review

Amex Platinum Business American Express

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and a long list of travel benefits Read our full review

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express card

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

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

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending:

Barclaycard Select Cashback Credit Card

1% cashback and no annual fee Read our full review

Comments (46)

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

  • PM says:

    My Dyson order also still showing in progress at this moment in time.

  • PanGalactic says:

    Surprisingly 😉 I happened to be reading Flyertalk at the time.

    I dithered for about 20 minutes or so, then ordered £850 worth of (£50) Tesco vouchers on my account and another £1400 worth on the wife’s.

    My £850 are showing as completed but the £1400 are still “in progress” as of today.

    There’s a good argument for NOT posting things like this to blogs as when it suddenly ends up in everyone’s inbox at the same time the “glitches” soon die. This is a perfect example of that.

    I’ll lay my money on Amex honouring this, rather than having to face 100s of trading standards cases.

    Their losses on this are mere peanuts in the big scheme of things.

    Lastly, as someone mentioned earlier Raffles does provide this site for free for us and we should all be very grateful.

    If you missed out, don’t be too disappointed, this deal is OK but it’s certainly not “deal of the century” by any stretch of the imagination.

  • I love miles and points says:

    I am one of the thousands who read and rarely, if ever, comment on blog or forum posts. I have read your blog avidly since i first discoved it a few weeks back and have beem meaning to say thank you for some time. Motellgamzol’s comment was the incentive i needed. News of mistakes etc are inevitably time sensitive and unless one is a full time 24 hr 365 day a week writer or part of a large team inevitably some will be missed or moted elsewhere first. Your forte is analysis with a uk emphasis and I, for one, am very grateful that you take the time you do to enlighten us. People are very quick to complain and tardy in saying thanks. So a belated thanks from me

  • g2-c74d428b3fe4991fc2f2089b312fa3f9 says:

    My Dysons are still ‘in progress’ as of this morning.

    I note that the glitch items have now all re-appeared at the correct ‘prices’.

  • John O'Sullivan says:

    I’ve been looking for an explanation of the crazy offer (thanks, it makes sense now). I signed up for a gold preferred rewards card last august and got 20,000 free points once I’d spent £2,000. Plan was to exchange points for a free kindle for my daughter. Had 26,500 points when I by chance spotted the offer. £550 worth of gift cards on way, showing as completed on my MR account.

  • Neil Spellings (@neilspellings) says:

    Two boxes of Red Wine just arrived courtesy of Amex and Raffles! Cheers!

    I missed the Tesco gift cards, but my two Dyson orders are showing as pending still.

    I’m guessing that Laithwaites probably have a much larger inventory available to fulfil the large order volume generated by this mis-price than whoever is shipping the Dysons.

  • Richyo says:

    Various reports of gift cards arriving today for those that managed to get in on it!

  • seenoevil says:

    I actually found the ‘glitch’ by chance when looking through my account, initially ordered a couple of Tesco cards and then about 10 minutes later went back in and ordered another few (every little helps…). Got the first 2 cards through the post yesterday am hoping batch 2 comes off as well. The first order showed as completed the following day, as of this morning my second batch still shows as In Progress. Not sure what this means for people whose orders are still ‘In Progress’. Fingers crossed.

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.