The Avios Thread

A little surprised this topic doesn’t exist already, but I guess much of the Avios chat is covered under the AMEX topics.

Anyhow, last week the Sainsbury’s Nectar loyalty scheme was announced as the replacement to the previous Tesco Clubcard partnership.

There’s lots more about it here: Sainsbury's is the new Avios supermarket partner!

The headlines seem to be that:

  • Points can be transferred in both directions at no value loss.
  • 250 Avios = 400 Nectar Points
  • 400 Nectar Points = 250 Avios
  • 400 Nectar Points = £2
  • Suddenly every bonus Nectar offer becomes a bonus Avios offer and vice versa.
  • Necar has become a great way to spend Avios with 1 Avios being worth 0.8p when spent via Nectar.

The partnership has also launched with two introductory offers:

  1. Convert 1600 Nectar to Avios and get a 500 Avios bonus.
  2. Double points on all Sainsbury’s shopping from 25/01 to 19/04.

I’m personally really happy about this. I’ve been stacking Nectar points for years and with Sainsbury’s slowly moving electricals into Argos the annual Nectar double up has lost its value to me. Being able to shift my points to Avios is great.

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Ah, I don’t like this. It’s good for those who shop at Sainsbury’s anyway, but it quite get me to shop there. I find they’re more expensive and occasionally worse quality than Tesco for things we usually buy. And with them not offering click and collect around here there’s no chance I’ll be going in.

I guess I’ll have to convert Clubcard vouchers to Virgin miles and hope they don’t go under

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I’m very happy with this. Nectar’s app is great for bonus points and I have often rocked out with a few hundred points from one visit when you combine them with the additional points for certain items.

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I think the biggest thing to note is that you’re not limited to spending at Sainsbury’s to earn points whereas previously you were limited to just Tesco.

There are so many Nectar partners, for example Argos, ESSO, DFD, eBay and many many more.

Partnerships with the likes of South Western Railway mean that you can earn points on virtually any national rail journey in the UK too.

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Given the closest small and big shops to me are Sainsbury’s this is great news for me.

Have already done the initial transfer for the extra 500. Hopefully this will help build my Avios quite substantially :crossed_fingers:

Edit: good thread creation also. I am sure I’m not making the absolute most of my points, so def interested to hear what others do to boost and get extra etc.

Can you switch the bonus Avios back to Nectar?

There were some T&Cs saying you couldn’t reverse for so many days to get the bonus. Can’t recall seeing anything saying never though so maybe at a later date?

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Aside from AMEX-related bonuses the single most lucrative way I’ve found to get extra Avios is by shopping via the British Airways shopping portal.

Pretty much every online retailer is on there and occasionally you’ll find places offering anywhere between 5 and 15 points per pound spent. This is all on top of anything you’d earn paying with a rewards card too.

https://www.shopping.ba.com/

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Oh nice. I had seen this a while back but completely forgot to properly check it out.

I’ve never signed up for avios but feel like this might be a good time to do so.

My OH’s grandma saves her papers for us to use on our wood burner and her daily paper is the daily Mail. I might start collecting the nectar codes off the back before I burn them… :crazy_face:

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First time I’ve ever heard of a good use for that :joy:

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Something to be aware of:

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Have recently got the new Avios Barclaycard. It will probably become my main spending card as the value of the points is the same as my free Amex rewards card. Also, can be used with Airtime Rewards, unlike Amex. Anyone else using this card?

Do you find this to be more lucrative than standard cashback sites like Topcashback?

It depends how you value Avios. Technically speaking now they convert to Nectar there is a base for how much they can be worth (0.8p per point) but there are occasions where you can use them on flights for far more than that, generally 1p per Avios.

So they can be better than cashback at times, depending how you spend them.

That’s not considering the 2-4-1 voucher either.

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I can only speak from personal experience, but I have found that using the BA shopping portal does yield better rewards than many of the cashback sites.
As @coffeemadman mentions, it will be very dependant on how you wish to redeem the points.
I would imagine someone who doesn’t travel that often would bet better value converting the Avios to Nectar and getting money off their shopping, whereas the likes of myself get better value using the Avios for flights/travel extras, etc.

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So as an example below:

If you’re getting 25 points p/£ at JustEat you’re effectively getting a minimum 20% cashback if you’re spending it in Sainsbury’s (£10 spend at JustEat would get you £2 off at Sainsbury’s) but you could get more value on other ways too.

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Prepaid Avios card, 6 months fee free, £2.99pm thereafter.

Not much a thing for me but thought might be good for others :man_shrugging:t3:

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Has anybody tried linking their BPme Rewards account with their BA Avios account? It just sends me round in circles whether I try and initiate it from the BP website or the BA website.

If I start the link on the BP website it brings up a new tab asking me to login to my Avios account. When I log into the Avios account there is a link to connect the accounts, but that just opens a new tab asking me to login to the BP website.

If I start the link on the BA website it opens a tab asking me to login to the BP website, but then nothing happens - it literally just logs me into the BP website and that’s it.

Update on this - kept trying every day but still sent me round in circles.

This morning I tried again and got a different error - “Oops, we were unable to link your Avios account”. This was swiftly followed by an email from Avios saying “Congratulations, you’ve successfully linked your BP Rewards account”.

Obviously very flaky but it now appears to work. I’ve converted my BPme points to Avios, then the Avios points to Nectar.

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After 4-5 months on a Barclaycard Avios, we’ve tallied up and projected our spending. It does not look good.

  • Avios points are added to our BA Executive account
  • BA doesn’t fly direct from NI, so we can’t use them for part payment unless we book flights NI->London and London->somewhere else separately
  • Even so, we’d only be gathering around 14,000 points a year, which is hardly a benefit considering BA prices are usually higher than the cheapest (bar RyanAir which we will never set foot on) airline we can find for every trip, plus the cost of the extra flight NI to London would bring the total even higher
  • We could wait 10 years and get a good long-haul flight maybe paid fully by Avios?

But in those 10 years, we could have a shedload of extra Clubcard points on a Tesco credit card, a lot of cashback on Chase 1% or any other cashback account that comes and goes, etc.

Unless I am missing something, it really seems it’s not worth it unless one spends way more money per year than we do.
I must say that we also don’t use the Barclaycard for flight or holiday spend as a lot of the time we book flights in Euros and the card charges an extortionate 3% for foreign purchases.

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