Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

No more easy Avios or Virgin Flying Club miles via Tesco Direct as its closure is announced

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Tesco has surprised the market today by announcing that it is closing Tesco Direct on 9th July.

Whilst some products will continue to be sold via the Grocery website, it is very likely that we have seen the end of the generous points bonanzas of the past – although, to be fair, pickings have been slim over the last couple of years. 

This was always of great interest to Avios and Virgin Flying Club collectors due to the ability to transfer Clubcard points into airline miles.

Anika has the full story over at Shopper Points here.

She also cropped up in the BBC News version here.

Feel free to share your best Tesco Direct points deal in the comments!


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 (50)

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

  • Jack says:

    I must have racked up over 250k clubcard points by unashamedly abusing their promos over the years. They’ll be sorely missed around here I imagine

  • G-STRX to FNA in C says:

    c.2012 – a Batman film you could download, pay c. £4 but somehow get £5 back (poss via a till spit coupon?) thereby generating a small profit, plus whatever the promotional clubcard points were (250?) . Never even opened the email with the film download in it!

    Also during that era of course (although not part of Tesco Direct) – the infamous 3V gift cards!! happy days. Just about trained my six year old how to process them then they stopped the promo!

    • Kathryn Dowd says:

      Ah yes, 3v cards! Could never get my hands on enough of them.

      • David says:

        They were the best as once you found stock you’d empty the shop by buying them, then buying a Tesco gift card with the 3V and then buying 3V with the Tesco gift card and repeat until the shop is empty. Max out every quarter for no cost!

  • Stu N says:

    I came to this a bit late but did pretty well out of HP ink cartridges. Not quite the cheapest ones but we picked up £30 bundles for the printer we actually own with 1000 points on each one, so basically free once you factor in the Avios earned.

    Main risk is that the printer dies before the stockpile is used up. If anyone wants a hard copy of Wikipedia run off, we could probably come to an arrangement. 🙂

  • Greenpen says:

    Oh dear, I remember all of these and not having Tesco points on tap will severely hit my travel. But what goes around comes around and there is currently a keen young marketing manager thinking up what they believe to be the best thing ever for their ……

    No one has mentioned the Unilever mobile telephone thing. A marketing person went home on Friday evening thinking they had made their career only to find that by Monday morning ClubCard points roughly equivalent to the gross domestic product of a medium sized economy have been given away!

  • Scott says:

    With any luck, they’ll do a “1000 points on cheap ink” farewell bonus 😉

    My most lucrative ones were the
    £1 Forever Love? CDs that gave 500 bonus Andrex wipes that were on offer at £1.50 and gave you a £3 coupon that you used against more of the same / toilet rolls then gave £1.50 back to use on anything.

    Never did the veg thing.

  • Yuff says:

    No one has mentioned the SIM card deal, £1.98 for 1000 pts last year, way better than the hassle of now tv boxes although I did make a profit on those for far too much effort.
    Still have way too many cc points

  • will says:

    Not Tesco direct but my first ever experience with points and miles back in the winter of 2009/2010 in store was 1000 points for a £10 mobile phone which would ebay for something like £13.

    Local stores were on high alert when I started turning up daily 🙂 The avios sent me on my first club europe redemption.

  • will says:

    Wonder if we’ll see a send off offer to clear the decks?

    • Andy says:

      If Maplin and Toys ‘R Us are anything to go by recently, there will be some deals but the majority of decent stuff which is easy to move will be bought up by larger companies.

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