Airmiles

Pete_Taylor

I am new to this site and frankly don't know what I'm doing. However, I do have a question if anyone can help? Are 'airmiles' worth pursuing or is it yet another con?

gustav

Pete_Taylor wrote:

I am new to this site and frankly don't know what I'm doing. However, I do have a question if anyone can help? Are 'airmiles' worth pursuing or is it yet another con?

Depends how much it costs you to save them, or, what you would have done with what it costs you to accumulate them. Make sense?

For example> I believe (although I am prepared to be corrected) the cheapest way to accumulate AirMiles is by sacrificing your Tesco Clubcard Vouchers for AirMiles. Doing this means you actually sacrifice (or forego) 4pence for each AirMile you buy.
However, if you look at the offers on the AirMiles site, you will see that for each AirMile you use you can only save between 5-9 pence for each AirMile you surrender to purchase a flight, generally speaking. AirMiles "offers" are also more expensive than you could buy elsewhere.

If you spend £250 at Tesco, you will be awarded £2.50 in vouchers, which converts to 60 AirMiles. So you would accumulate 240 AirMiles for every 1000 pounds you spend at Tesco. 240 AirMiles wont get you very far! (2 seats on the London Eye I believe)

So, figure out how much it costs you to save AirMiles, then decide if its worth it to you.

The best advice I read was that the best way to use you AirMiles was to use them on paying for hotels.

monkeyspanner

Great post by Gustav. Couple of things you can do to improve airmiles. If you are looking to get a holiday or flight entirely with airmiles this probably isn't worth it (unless Airmiles are having a sale), but you will find that Airmiles offer options of partial payment with airmiles and we have found these are sometimes ok if you take the option with the smallest use of airmiles. The other is to look out for Tesco club card offers giving you bonus club card points and then decide if you want to use the club card points for airmiles.

LesD

Hello Pete. Welcome to MSE. You've not done bad for your first post!!!

Whatever you do, don't spend money to accumulate Airmiles! I've had NatWest credit cards for donkeys' years and have accumulated the grand total of 7000 airmiles! I've only ever once found that it was worth using these to get a flight.

As monkeyspanner says, the best time to consider it is when there is an AM sale on. Even then, it usually coincides with BA's sale and you find prices are generally lower anyway.

Pete_Taylor

Thanks guys, I have a few useful suggestions which generally seem to indicate that airmiles are a dubious investment. Perhaps I am better to change my natwest visa card for one which pays cash back?

jnd

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elisebutt65

Yup -like I posted earlier today - I got 4 flights with BA to Barcelona for 1200 miles and £263. Minimum I could have got these same flights for was £105 + tax each. In fact Ryanair quoted over £150 + tax!!!!

I used then last year to get a free rtn to Barcelona and just paid tax - I also collect the free ones in the Times and get the ones from the House of Fraser loyalty(NOT CHARGE) card

My Tesco points, however, I convert into BA miles as you get 600 of them per £2.50 and I'm up to 30,000 doing this so far so enough for 2 of us to go to Paris later. Saving up though for an upgrade on long haul - better value.

gustav

elisebutt65 wrote:

My Tesco points, however, I convert into BA miles as you get 600 of them per £2.50 ........

How do you do this? or have I missed something here? :think: ?

se999

Go to the normal https://www.britishairways.com website. Enter Tesco into the search field and it comes up with all the info. The two options are to have Tesco points automatically converted to BA airmiles, or to do one-off conversions.

Personally we find it better to keep Teso points to convert into Deals, we think it gives us a better return.

chipfire

Are airmiles transferrable - I've accumulated over 4000 by using a particular credit card and I have over 1000 paper voucher air miles including a "bonus" air miles note with no denomination on it?

Could I transfer them to someone that is going to use them?

chipfire

Ok I'll answer my own question - Yes paper airmiles are transferrable and are still valid - send them to the address on the airmiles website -

also curiously - there is a thriving market on ebay for paper airmiles - they are worth about 9 pence each!