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Is Avios Recycling a decent way of earning points?

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It is over a year since I last looked at Avios Recycling, so I thought it was worth revisiting it again to see if it offers a decent way of earning extra Avios points.

Avios_Recycling

The site is run on behalf of Avios by a firm called Anovo, who operate a number of gadget recycling businesses including Weebuy. Initially only accepting old mobile phones, they now accept digital cameras, consoles, laptops, MP3 players, sat navs and tablet PC’s.

In theory, these services SHOULD be a good deal for you. Why? Because Anovo presumably buys Avios from avios.com at a highly discounted rate (lets say 0.5p per Avios) and you value them more highly. In a perfect world, this service should thefore be a better deal than taking cash from a competing recycling service.

In reality, it didn’t work like that.

You should never do a trade like this before looking at the excellent Mobile Valuer site, run in conjunction with MoneySavingExpert. Here are a few tests I did:

Blackberry Curve 8520 – £37.25 from MobileCashMate or 3,000 Avios (so 1.24p per Avios)

Apple iPhone 4S 16gb – £210 from RPC Recycle or 20,000 Avios (so 1.05p per Avios)

Canon IXUS 900 Ti camera – £24.50 from Asda or 2,150 Avios (so 1.14p per Avios)

These are not terrible results, by any means – the effective price per Avios is less than you would pay if you bought them from avios.com directly. However, I am not a buyer unless the price drops below 0.75p per Avios, because I know at that level that I will always come out ahead.

It will, at the end of the day, depend on how much you need the Avios points as to whether Avios Reycling is worth a look. And, of course, it depends on how you plan to use them – someone who redeems for ‘Upgrade Using Avios’ is likely to value them more highly than someone who uses 100,000 outright, without a 2-4-1 voucher, to fly to San Francisco in Club World for example.

My old post on ‘What Is An Avios Point Worth? is here.


How to earn Avios points from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

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

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

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

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

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

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

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus:

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

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

(Want to earn more Avios?  Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)

Comments (3)

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

  • Mark says:

    Shame that the Tesco mobile recycling site no long offers Clubcard points. A couple years back I managed over 22,000 Avios for a couple of Nokia feature phones by exchanging the CC points during one of the Avios conversion offers.

  • John says:

    Isn’t the “standard” cost of an avios 0.6p, so I wouldn’t call a company buying in bulk for 0.5p “heavily discounted”

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