Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

The HfP chat thread – Monday 22nd March

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We are running this daily chat thread on Head for Points during the coronavirus outbreak.

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Comments (392)

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

  • Dan says:

    Another terrible week of nectar bonus point offers on the app… A total of 6 amount on from 150 points.

    The maths just doesn’t add up in these scenarios no matter how much I’d prefer Avios over Virgin miles. Have switched (back) to Tesco for the last couple of weeks and prefer the guaranteed points earning rate week in week out vs the luck of the draw approach that Sainsburys and nectar are running on

    • TGLoyalty says:

      After not shopping I have

      120 for 225g Raspberries
      90 for 250g strawberries

      I will wait until Friday to see if there’s anything else so it’s actually worth making a trip for.

      • Aston100 says:

        I didn’t shop with them last week either.
        Today, received 16 offers totalling 250 points.
        So no improvement really.

        • Blair says:

          I get the SAME offers every week for things I have never bought in my life. 4pt low fat milk, cucumber, chopped tomatoes, white mushrooms, a single red pepper, 2pt low fat milk. It’s bizarre.

      • Andy says:

        320 points worth of offers I used this week and 410 last week. All on things I’d buy anyway so I’m much happier than I was before it swapped to Nectar.

    • Jill (Kinkell) says:

      Count yourself lucky…. I ve got 6 offers amounting to 90 points. Nothing to make me want to shop there. Tesco for me!

    • Waddle says:

      I’ve noticed my bonus offers have dropped from nearly 1,000 points to no more than 300 in a week. Part of me suspects it is because I have been more consciously trying to trigger every offer on my shops.

    • BuildBackBetter says:

      Looks like they had a small marketing budget

    • Alan says:

      Yep, always pants offers from Nectar and far pricier IME!

  • 747_Brat says:

    Does anyone know how much time it take for HSBC to upgrade the card from Premier to WE card using the postal method, where you sign the form and send it back using the freepost envelope.

    I sent the form on 26th Feb and haven’t heard back or got my card upgraded. Is it safe to assume now that the upgrade form has been lost in the post?

    • angel19 says:

      Emailed my upgrade form on 15th March. Account upgraded on 17th, and new WE card received in post on 18th. Great service from HSBC.

      • 747_Brat says:

        Thanks for your reply. Please could you share the email address where you sent the form.
        Thanks again.

  • Tarmohamed says:

    Anyone got a contact at Facebook? My account is stuck in ID verification and my account is running ads which I can no longer manage!

    • meta says:

      No chance. I had someone hack my FB last July, change the password and restart FB ads via Paypal. I haven’t done FB advertising for 2-3 years prior.

      I managed to spot it almost immediately, but they’ve already set up £600 worth of ads and money was taken from PayPal. I managed to remove all cards and bank account details. Called my bank to block all payments from PayPal. In the end PayPal never could take money from my account.

      FB also never responded. I wrote them a letter as well…

  • Secret Squirrel says:

    In my Marriott Bonvoy account the Amex U.K. Marriott card is being promoted. It states a referral offer of 9k points but on the Amex site I can’t see any info for the Marriott card?

    • Secret Squirrel says:

      Scrub above, looked it up on Google using all the relevant keywords & found it.

    • Rob says:

      There is a 9k referral bonus for the referrer on the Bonvoy card, I can confirm. New cardholders get 20k + 3k extra.

      • Andy says:

        Any idea if the bonvoy Visa card will ever launch?

        • Secret Squirrel says:

          Now that would be amazing news!

          • Rob says:

            As Creation seems to be abandoning the UK – EVERY card has now been closed to new applicants except the free IHG one – I wouldn’t hold your breath.

  • Rhys says:

    On the other hand, a vital supply of lipids for the Pfizer vaccine comes from the UK. This will turn into a mud-slinging fest if the EU proceeds with this.

  • JanM says:

    Hi! I need to urgently book an Iberia flight with Avios, but I cannot get the miles transferred either through BA or Avios.com. I keep on getting the error message “Sorry, your log-in details have not been recognised. Please contact us.” I just realized though that instead of entering my “PIN”, I have been entering my Iberia Plus password. I cannot find anything about a PIN in my Iberia account. And the link to “resetting your pin” on the BA and Avios websites just lead to a “not found” page on the Iberia website…

    The flight I want isn’t available to book with Avios through BA or Avios.com, and the cash price is 300+ euro instead of 5,000 Avios, so it really seems worth persisting.

    Help??

    • Peter K says:

      Maybe try going into iberia and changing your password to a numeric pin and trying again to drag the avios through.
      Have you tried dragging from Iberia rather than pushing from avios.com or BA?

    • JanM says:

      In case anyone is wondering, the trick was turning my Iberia password into numbers only. Buggy software, I guess?

  • Andrew MS says:

    Does anyone have a recommendation for a website or app that will alert me to any change in flight prices , please ? Skyscanner does not seem to offer this service now . Thanks in advance

  • Paul says:

    Just received the Amex “You just used your Avios offer”, for the Get 2 additional Avios for every £1 spent anywhere, up to 4000 Avios offer, but I’d just paid Screwfix with PayPal, which I was assuming is excluded, as it states in the very same email “Offer does not apply to spend on other Cards you might hold and is not valid for transactions made using third party Payment Aggregators”. Generosity or incompetence do we think?

    • meta says:

      I haven’t received a single bonus point under this offer yet, although I get an email every time. I am guessing they’ll aggregate all bonus points in one lump sump each statement period. It will be hard to track if that’s the case.

      • Andrew says:

        I’ve got all my extra Avios applies the same day or the day after the standard Avios have been applied. So I would speak to Amex to check that your account is properly activated for this offer.

        • meta says:

          I won’t speak to them. I’ll ask for extra compo later if they don’t apply it.

      • TJ says:

        I thought that would be the case too, but my bonus points are now coming through (about 5 days after spend). The only problem is I just can’t reconcile the points vs spend.

        • AJA says:

          Do the bonus Avios accumulate with previous spend or do they show separately? It is double Avios per £ so if you spent £100 you should receive 200 Avios. If they show separately you should be able to divide the bonus Avios by 2 to get the £ spend and tie it back that way.

          • TJ says:

            You’d like to think so, but even Amex (via chat) could not work it out and have raised an investigation! The points are coming through in batches which simply do not correlate with spend. I’ll have to wait for remaining batches to come through before being able to see if it all works out ok.

      • AJA says:

        I’ve received 1 set of bonus avios, credited on the 4th working days from spending to appear on my account. I got another email confirming I’d used the bonus offer after spending again last Thursday, 18th just checked and so far not been credited, will check again tomorrow which will be four full working days later.

    • KP says:

      Dont complain. Bag the extra avios and be happy

    • C says:

      I thought the offer applied to all purchases, in which case excluding aggregators makes little sense.

    • Andrew says:

      I think that’s just standard wording for all offers, ie if you spend money at Selfridges via PayPal you won’t get the Selfridges offer you’ve saved. But this offer is just the same as the extra MR earning rate that Platinum had last year which applies to all points earning spend on the card (so excluding fees and cash transactions etc). I’ve used it several times with PayPal and always got the extra Avios.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      Just a poor copy and paste job from AMEX

      All spend is included.

    • Aston100 says:

      I’ve received it on a couple of paypal friends & family payments.

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