1,200 Avios for £5 in Tesco with ‘Call of Duty’ (24,000 Avios possible per Clubcard)

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It’s back. When will Tesco ever learn? Hopefully not for a while.

On Tesco Direct, there is a very average offer for 500 bonus Clubcard points and £5 off when you pre-order a selection of new video games. Fifa 15, Battlefield Hardline, Call of Duty – Advanced Warfare and Destiny are all included. It’s an OK deal if you are buying it anyway, but nothing to get excited about.

However, in store, something MUCH more interesting is back.

Tesco is offering 500 bonus Clubcard points when you pre-order ‘Call of Duty : Advanced Warfare’, Destiny’ . ‘Disney Infinity 2.0’. ‘Fifa 15’ or ‘Battlefield Hardline’ for £5. This is 1,200 Avios points or 1,250 Flying Club miles for just a fiver.

How it is meant to work is that you get a display box scanned at the check-out, pay £5, and receive a special receipt. (You don’t keep the box.) Visit the store on the day the game is released and you are guaranteed to get a copy and you will get your £5 back as a discount.

The 500 bonus Clubcard points are credited with the pre-order payment. You have NO obligation to actually go back to the store and buy the game on the day of release.

There is no obligation to ever buy the game when it is eventually released. This means that you can treat this as a chance to buy some Avios airmiles for 0.4p each.

You need to be very careful not to overdo this promotion. It is acceptable to buy ONE copy of each game ON EACH FORMAT per Clubcard. For each of the five games that means you could do a pre-order for the Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox 1 versions, netting yourself 5,000 Avios points.

There seem to be 20 different variants available – five games across four different games consoles. This means you can earn 24,000 Avios or 25,000 Virgin Flying Club miles for £100 per Clubcard account.

The boxes tend to be on a separate stand to the usual video games. You take an empty box to the checkout, it is scanned, but you do not keep the box – it goes back on the shelf. You will only tend to find these in larger Tesco stores.

It is possible that your local store will not have the special sticker up promoting the 500 points. However, the points WILL go on at check-out. Note that whilst the label in the image above does not mention that ‘Fifa 15’ and ‘Battlefield Hardline’ give you a bonus, they will.

(There is also a game called ‘Alien’ which is available for pre-order. This is not included in this promotion and does not give any bonus points. Do not buy any of these.)

If someone can provide the barcode numbers, it will also be possible to pay for these games at a self-service check-out in ANY Tesco store (except Express, as they have a different IT system) by manually inputting the bar code. The problem is that all of the games except for ‘Fifa 15’ are age-restricted and a check-out supervisor would be required to approve the purchase.

This will also combine with the ‘£5 cashback for spending £10 in Tesco’ American Express deal that I posted about on Tuesday.

To summarise the above, this is how it works:

Visit the video games corner in a large Tesco store

Pick out empty ‘pre-order’ cases for any of the five games listed above, across any of the four formats

Pay £5 at check-out for each empty case you hand over. Do not take the case home!

Your till receipt should show the 500 bonus points

Do NOT buy exactly the same game twice on the same Clubcard, whether in the same transaction or in different transactions. If you do that you have crossed the Tesco ‘bulk buying’ line.

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:

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

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: