Bits: last call for £15 Amazon / Amex discount, no SPG points from Uber, Madrid BA lounge

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News in brief:

£15 Amazon discount code ending soon

For the last 10 months or so, Amazon has been offering an exclusive £15 discount code for Amex Gold, Green and Platinum cardholders when they spend £25 or more. Holders of the Amex Rewards Credit Card should also be able to take part.

This offer expires on 31st October. If you haven’t taken advantage of it yet – probably because you didn’t have an Amex Gold or Amex Platinum when it launched last Christmas – this is your last chance.

You will save £15 on your next Amazon order of £25 or more as long as you part-pay with Membership Rewards points from your Amex Gold or Platinum card. This is what to do:

If you have not already done so, link your Membership Rewards account with your Amazon account by visiting this page on the Amazon website

Buy £25 of items on amazon.co.uk (these MUST all be sold by Amazon and not third party merchants, and excludes digital content and gift cards)

Enter code AMEX16SWP at check out

You MUST select your Membership Rewards-earning Amex card as your payment card (you cannot use gift cards or any other payment source)

Part-pay for your order using Membership Rewards points. The sneaky option is to redeem just 2 points for a 1p discount. This saves you ‘wasting’ MR points on a low value redemption. You will only get 0.45p per point and you shouldn’t waste more than 2 of your valuable points on such a poor deal!

The Amazon link above (and here) pays HFP a small commission if you use it – thank you.

This offer is open to all UK American Express Gold, Green, Platinum and presumably American Express Rewards cardholders. It will NOT work on brand new Amazon accounts, however. It isn’t clear when the cut off was, but if you don’t already have an existing Amazon account don’t bother opening one just for this deal.

No more Starwood Preferred Guest points from Uber

Starwood Preferred Guest has announced that it is ending its Uber partnership on 17th December.

This is a shame, as it was a very easy way to rack up SPG points. You would earn 1 SPG point for every $2 equivalent spent with Uber, up to a maximum of 10,000 Starwood points per year. Given that I value a Starwood point at 1.5p, this was a rebate worth having. You even earned points on rides taken with Uber credit from Tesco Clubcard.

If you never registered for this promotion, you can still sign up and earn a few points during the final seven weeks. This Head for Points article explains how to link your Uber and Starwood accounts and the registration page is here.

Fully refurbished lounge in Madrid Terminal 4S now open

The Sala VIP Velázquez lounge in Terminal 4S at Madrid Airport is now open again after a major refurbishment.

The reason for mentioning this is that, if you are flying British Airways, you are likely to find yourself in the 4S satellite terminal and in this lounge. Some Iberia flights also use it as I found recently.

There are a couple of pictures on Flyertalk here – it looks very impressive.

Refurbishment work will now start on the Dali lounge in the main terminal, which you are more likely to use if flying on Iberia to the UK.

Getting airport lounge access for free from a credit card

How to get FREE airport lounge access via UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, here are the three options to get FREE airport lounge access via a credit or charge card:

The Platinum Card from American Express

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

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with two free Priority Pass cards, one for you and one for a supplementary cardholder. Each card admits two so a family of four gets in free. You get access to all 1,300 lounges in the Priority Pass network – search it here.

You also get access to Plaza Premium, Delta and Eurostar lounges. Our American Express Platinum review is here. You can apply here.

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 Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for the first year. It comes with a Priority Pass card loaded with two free visits to any Priority Pass lounge – see the list here.

Additional lounge visits are charged at £20. You get two more free visits for every year you keep the card.

There is no annual fee for Amex Gold in Year 1 and you get a 20,000 points sign-up bonus. Full details are in our American Express Preferred Rewards Gold review here.

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard

A huge bonus, but only available to HSBC Premier clients Read our full review

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard gets you get a free LoungeKey card, allowing you access to the LoungeKey network. Guests are charged at £20 although it may be cheaper to pay £60 for a supplementary credit card for your partner.

The card has a fee of £195 and there are strict financial requirements to become a HSBC Premier customer. Full details are in my HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard review.

PS. You can find all of HfP’s UK airport lounge reviews – and we’ve been to most of them – indexed here.

Category

American Express Gold card, American Express Membership Rewards, American Express Platinum card, British Airways and Avios, Iberia and Iberia Plus, Marriott Bonvoy

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

Nick M says:

27 Oct27 October 10:08

I was able to stack the £15 off with the £5 PayPoint top up code, and then paid the balance with the gift card balance on my account…
JP says:

27 Oct27 October 10:52

I was getting interested in the Marriott -> AA transfer until I noticed this new term added to the conditions:

Travel Packages: Points converted to AAdvantage miles as part of a Marriott Rewards/AAdvantage travel package do not qualify for this promotion

Not good…..
- Roger says:
  
  27 Oct27 October 16:37
  
  yes.
  I did this earlier in the spring/summer when there was 25% bonus, with the current offer not possible to use travel package with the offer.
- Cate says:
  
  27 Oct27 October 16:55
  
  I’m pretty sure that somewhere on Marriott’s website I’ve seen another page where you just get the miles and not hotel plus miles which ‘may’ (?!?) circumvent the Travel package problem. I think (?!?) you also get a small bonus of a few thousand points in lieu of the hotel. Sorry but I have no idea where it is but a call to Marriott should point you in the right direction.
clarence says:

27 Oct27 October 10:59

O/T trying to look for flights on BA to use my 241 voucher . Is it my connection or is the BA site running very slow and when changing date range the ” we are having technical problems ” message comes up. Frustrating is the pleasant way to describe it.
- JP says:
  
  27 Oct27 October 11:04
  
  Not uncommon for the BA site…
- Johnni says:
  
  27 Oct27 October 11:05
  
  Have you tried this tool, very handy
  https://www.baredemptionfinder.com/
  - clarence says:
    
    27 Oct27 October 11:14
    
    I have tried that site but quite often the flights aren’t available when I go to the BA site
    - @mkcol says:
      
      27 Oct27 October 11:18
      
      Have you let the site developer know this disparity? There may be an issue they can resolve to improve accuracy.
Graeme says:

27 Oct27 October 14:18

OT – a follow-up to my question on Wednesday regarding tax on Aer Lingus redemptions – I called BA again, and this time the nice lady said that it’s £169.20 for TWO (DUB-YYZ out in Business, back in Economy), not per person as the last lady said. Not exactly big money, but pleasing nonetheless.
idrive says:

27 Oct27 October 17:32

O/T: anyone tried to register for the double avios promo for 8 segments till 31/12 and have been considered not eligible with no reason when resident in UK?
the real harry1 says:

27 Oct27 October 17:40

O/T Daily Telegraph

British Airways owner IAG could swoop on Monarch’s former slots at Gatwick Airport as a way to boost its fledgling low-cost airline Level, the group’s chief executive Willie Walsh has said.

Mr Walsh confirmed he was interested in the collapsed airline’s slots at Gatwick but was unsure yet about how or when they would become available.

After Monarch went into administration earlier this month, analysts calculated that its airport berths could be its most valuable assets, worth up to £60m. The stricken carrier’s administrators launched a judicial review yesterday in a bid to maintain ownership of the slots as they can be sold to help pay its creditors.

Should Monarch be stripped of the slots, they would be redistributed by Airport Co-ordination Limited, which organises slot redistribution for the aviation industry.

Mr Walsh said that in such a process a new entrant airline would get precedence and he noted his company’s Level and Iberia Express did not operate out of the airport – one of the UK’s busiest – at present.

“The interest in Gatwick is not just from British Airways,” Mr Walsh said. “We would only have priority with a new entrant and there are parts of the company that would be new entrants.” These included Level and Iberia Express.
- the real harry1 says:
  
  27 Oct27 October 17:44
  
  so looks like Monarch’s slots could be worth £60m – or nothing – to Monarch – what a minefield or simply bad management by Monarch in not doing something about this before they went bump
  
  I think Raffles has touched on this before with LHR slots – they’re not actually owned by the airlines that use them – those airlines can still sell them for £millions though the back door
- Lumma says:
  
  27 Oct27 October 18:38
  
  Iberia express do flu from Gatwick
RussellH says:

27 Oct27 October 18:26

Completely OT, but perhaps of interest…

Just got an e-mail from topbonus stating the programme will continue to operate. Miles can still be earned and redeemed on Etihad, points can still be earned with various partners, and the topbonus Visa will continue to earn points too.

Presumably it will get subsumed into the Etihad FF scheme in due course, though?
- Rob says:
  
  27 Oct27 October 21:03
  
  I wouldn’t put any money on that.
- Lady London says:
  
  27 Oct27 October 22:05
  
  I had that email too and deleted it. Given that some frequent flyer schemes can be worth more than their main airline, I just guess the bankruptcy administrators are desperately trying to keep people in the scheme with a view to selling it on as a viable asset. If I had been crediting flights to Air Berlin I’d have been crediting them somewhere else by now.
  ;
Fenny says:

27 Oct27 October 18:33

No time to check whether anyone else has posted this elsewhere, but today’s xkcd comic seems relevant to us all 🙂

https://xkcd.com/1908/
- the real harry1 says:
  
  27 Oct27 October 19:01
  
  the other one’s my wife 🙂