Boost Your Airmiles Discussion Area

NonGeographicalMan

johncas1 wrote: »

I THOUGHT you could not use airmiles dureing July and August someone said there blackout dates I tried to book a flight for 2 to malta from Heathrow in July and only a cash fare was available no Miles could be used or have they just booked up early and the allication has gone

There are no general official black out dates but a lot of routes to sunny places have almost no Air Miles seats allocated in either July or August. If you want to go somewhere where its winter in our summer (but not Australia or NZ where too many people here have relatives) and where the route pretty much always has good availability like Buenos Aires or Rio and have enough miles then going in July or August is much, much less of a problem.

London City to Palma (Mallorca) in August just has a handful of seats and they are basically going the opposite way to the way most people are going on those dates (i.e in when most people are going out and out when most people are coming back home) but they go within no time of being posted up on the Air Miles system.

tonyg_2

Lloyds Bank AMEX versus Tesco Clubcard Credit Card????

Just been reading through this article:
http://www.credit-card-comparison-online.co.uk/articles/tesco-clubcard-convert-miles.html
I know it's a little out of date but it seems to conclude that Tesco Credit Card is better for collecting airmiles that Lloyds Duo.

I'm not totally convinced as - if you spend money outside of Tesco - you get more points using Lloyds Duo. If spending within Tesco then you get some (convertable) miles from Tesco and then some from the LLoyds Duo card, though am not sure what works out better.

Am interested in what others think is better - Lloyds Duo or Tesco Credit Cardsw, especially with the recent changes in the Tesco conversion rate.

Thanks, Tx

NonGeographicalMan

tonyg wrote: »

Just been reading through this article:
http://www.credit-card-comparison-online.co.uk/articles/tesco-clubcard-convert-miles.html
I know it's a little out of date but it seems to conclude that Tesco Credit Card is better for collecting airmiles that Lloyds Duo.

I'm not totally convinced as - if you spend money outside of Tesco - you get more points using Lloyds Duo. If spending within Tesco then you get some (convertable) miles from Tesco and then some from the LLoyds Duo card, though am not sure what works out better.

This article quite clearly seems to be total junk in terms of its analysis since the only additional benefit of the Tesco Clubcard credit card according to the article is that you earn 9 Clubcard points on your Tesco Clubcard for a spend of £4 at Tesco if you use their credit card to pay compared to getting 8 points per £4 spent on your Tesco Clubcard if you use the Lloyds Amex card to pay instead (that is you get just 1 Tesco Clubcard point extra per £4 spent from the credit card compared to 8 points per £4 spent from Tesco Clubcard). And her final calculation of how many Air Miles you get using their credit card does not even factor in the 9th point on each £4 spend from using the Tesco credit card (instead she just says that you have a few Clubcard points left over perhaps not realising that you don't have to convert Clubcard Vouchers to Air Miles in £2.50 voucher blocks but can convert any amount of vouchers as long as it is £2.50 or more) This one extra point per £4 is definitely the only extra benefit of using a Tesco credit card compared to the Lloyds Amex card to pay your bill at Tesco or anywhere else as confirmed at /www.tescofinance.com/personal/finance/finance/creditcards/index.jsp

So by my calculations if you spend £1250 at Tesco with your Tesco Clubcard and Tesco Credit card you earn 2500 points at 2 per £1 spent on the Tesco Clubcard plus the Tesco credit card bonus of 312.5 points = 2812.5 points As each 50 points = 10 Air Miles (or 250 points = 50 Air Miles) at the current conversion rate that means you earn 562 Air Miles by using the Tesco Clubcard plus the Tesco credit card. However if you spent £1250 at Tesco with your Tesco Clubcard and paid the bill with your Lloyds Amex card then you still earn 2500 Clubcard points which gives you 500 Air Miles (as 250 points = 50 Air Miles) and then you earn another 125 miles on the Lloyds Amex card so that (i.e 1250/10 = 125) by my calculation using the Tesco credit card to spend £1250 at Tesco along with paying with your Tesco credit card earns you 562 Air Miles and doing the same thing with your Tesco Clubcard and paying with the Lloyds Amex card gives you 625 miles. Or put another way the Air Miles benefit of spending £10 on the Lloyds TSB Amex card is double that of the same £10 spend on the Tesco Clubcard credit card. That is that £10 spent on the Lloyds Amex card gives you 1 Air Mile and that £10 spent on the Tesco Clubcard credit card only earns you 0.5 Air Miles.

Therefore to earn the most Air Miles you are best to use your Lloyds Amex card for everything you possibly can including when shopping at Tesco. Simples.

The only complication with these calculations comes at joints that don't take Amex like B&Q or most small retailers (eg Robert Dyas in the City of London who refused to take my Amex card a few days ago). In this case you only earn 0.2 Air Miles per £10 (i.e. only 1 Air Mile for every £50 which assumes that you even hit £50 spend in the month on your Mastercard) spent on your Lloyds TSB Air Miles Duo Mastercard but you would be earning 0.5 Miles on on your Tesco Clubcard credit card on each £10 of spend at the same non Amex taking establishment. Also as you lose getting any Air Miles at all on any spend on the Lloyds Mastercard between 1p and £49.99 that does not hit a £50 block you can see that using the Lloyds Duo Mastercard is a pretty poor deal.

Speaking personally I also have an Egg Money Mastercard that earns me 1% cashback on all Mastercard spend paid once a year so if I run in to a place that doesn't take Amex I would always use the Egg Money Mastercard. By my calculations to earn a typical flight to Mediterranean Europe with Air Miles costs 1500 Air Miles and you have to spend £15,000 on your Lloyds TSB Amex card to get those miles. But had you used an Egg Money Mastercard to spend this money you would have earned £150 cashback. Furthermore in my experience other than at the most expensive times of year like mid July to mid August a single return flight to the Med with a hold bag (making it comparable to the BA offering) isn't going to cost you more than £150 and indeed may well only cost you £70 to £120 typically on days when Air Miles seats are also available.

Although cash fares to Med destinations in Economy with a hold bag do go up to around £250 to £300 in peak season there are never ever any Air Miles flights available in peak season to the Med on on days when the cash fares now cost that much to buy. So by my calculation even if you can use the Lloyds TSB Amex card you are still better off using the Egg Money Mastecard because cash is king and lets you go on any day you want if you can afford the fare. Air Miles says you can't go at all on loads of days (especially to destinations with only one flight a day to the Med in the summer).

The only time that collecting Air Miles is quite clearly better than 1% cashback with Egg is during special promotions like the one Shell is currently running where in return for two 15 litre fill ups (cost about £38) they were offering 200 extra Shell points worth 10 Air Miles on top of the nearly 4 Air Miles you would normally earn on the Lloyds Amex card. The 10 Air Miles are worth around £1 (on a generous interpretation not allowing for Air Miles flight non availability) and the 1% Mastercard cashback on £38 is only 38p. Far better still is the current Lloyds TSB promotion where if you spend £300 on the Duo cards in Dec and Jan they are offering 300 bonus Air Miles. Those 300 Air Miles are worth £30 on a 10p per mile basis compared to earning only £3 in cashback on the Egg Money Mastercard for this amount of spend.

So to return to your original point Ms Amy Rich of www.credit-card-comparison-online.co.uk quite clearly has her facts wrong and you are better off using the Lloyds TSB Amex card to pay for everything (including at Tesco itself where no better Clubcard point rate is given on their credit card than spending anywhere else). The only place where this is not true is at retailers who will take Mastercard but dont' take Amex. At those retailers you will earn Air Miles 2.5 times faster with the Tesco credit card than with the Lloyds Duo Mastercard but you would in any case be far better off using a 1% cashback credit card instead.

P.S I see that they are offering 500 points worth 100 Air Miles for successfully applying for a Tesco Mastercard online at www.tescofinance.com/personal/finance/finance/creditcards/clubcc/index.jsp so it may be worth applying for one just to get those even if you then close it down or keep it only for spending at places that don't take Amex (for those amongst you who prefer acquiring hard to redeem Air Miles at all times over easy to spend credit card cashback). But remember those 100 Air Miles are only worth £10 at best and that's assuming you can even manage to find a flight that suits your travelling needs to redeem them on..........................

NonGeographicalMan

I have just spotted the below on the home page of the www.airmiles.co.uk website and so would therefore warn anyone including myself who has paper Air Miles that these need to all be converted to electronic miles by 30th November or you will lose them forever. See www.airmiles.co.uk/spend/paper-airmiles-expiry?from=homepage for more details.

Surprise, surprise even though Air Miles sends out regular email collection bulletins to both myself and many of their other collectors (or they send the same stuff out to you in the post) they have never mentioned this minor little deadline for paper miles in any of those emails.:eek::eek::eek::mad::mad::mad:

Got any paper Airmiles?

They’re expiring - so you’ll need to send them to us by
30 November 2011.

Sneaky Air Miles no longer provide for download on their own website the form you need to send back with your paper miles in the post in order to redeem them in to electronic miles but below is a link to download if anyone needs one to print out and send one back with their paper Air Miles.

Get the paper miles form from www.myimagehosting.com/show-10763lQmtx-127612.html and by then clicking on the red Adobe PDF image to download the form.

dollywops

So by my calculations if you spend £1250 at Tesco with your Tesco Clubcard and Tesco Credit card you earn 2500 points at 2 per £1 spent on the Tesco Clubcard plus the Tesco credit card bonus of 312.5 points = 2812.5 points As each 50 points = 10 Air Miles (or 250 points = 50 Air Miles) at the current conversion rate that means you earn 562 Air Miles by using the Tesco Clubcard plus the Tesco credit card. However if you spent £1250 at Tesco with your Tesco Clubcard and paid the bill with your Lloyds Amex card then you still earn 2500 Clubcard points which gives you 500 Air Miles (as 250 points = 50 Air Miles) and then you earn another 125 miles on the Lloyds Amex card so that (i.e 1250/10 = 125) by my calculation using the Tesco credit card to spend £1250 at Tesco along with paying with your Tesco credit card earns you 562 Air Miles and doing the same thing with your Tesco Clubcard and paying with the Lloyds Amex card gives you 625 miles. Or put another way the Air Miles benefit of spending £10 on the Lloyds TSB Amex card is double that of the same £10 spend on the Tesco Clubcard credit card. That is that £10 spent on the Lloyds Amex card gives you 1 Air Mile and that £10 spent on the Tesco Clubcard credit card only earns you 0.5 Air Miles.

I have the original TPF Credit Card/Clubcard and I believe this gives me 3 points for every £1 spent in Tesco, ie 1+1 for the Clubcard and a further 1 for the credit card. This is what I have just had confirmed by Tesco Clubcard. Therefore, if I spent £1250 in Tesco using this card, I then get 750 airmiles. Please feel free to correct me if I am incorrect.

BTW when I phoned LLoyds to cancel my card as I no longer needed it, I was offered 1 point per £1 up to £3000 or for 6 months. That was sufficient temptation for me to keep the card.

NonGeographicalMan

dollywops wrote: »

I have the original TPF Credit Card/Clubcard and I believe this gives me 3 points for every £1 spent in Tesco, ie 1+1 for the Clubcard and a further 1 for the credit card. This is what I have just had confirmed by Tesco Clubcard. Therefore, if I spent £1250 in Tesco using this card, I then get 750 airmiles. Please feel free to correct me if I am incorrect.

Yes you are correct that if you have the original TPF Clubcard Mastercard then you will as you suggest earn 750 Air Miles by using your Tesco Credit card along with your Tesco Clubcard at a Tesco store and that this is a better deal than using the Lloyds TSB Amex card along with your Tesco Clubcard (which only earns you 625 Air Miles).

However for anyone else who has the more recent TPF Clubcard Mastercard that only gives one Clubcard point for each £4 of spend then you will definitely be better off using your Lloyds TSB Amex card in conjunction with your non credit card Clubcard when making purchases at Tesco.

This suggests to me that TPF worsened the deal on the Tesco credit card far too much (by cutting the Clubcard point allocation rate by 75%) to the extent where they may lose business to other credit cards that are still offering an effective 1% cashback on any spend on their card (whether in the form of Air Miles worth 10p each or the form of cash). If they had wanted to remain competitive with other reward credit cards they would have only cut the Clubcard allocation rate by 50% to 1 point for every £2 of spend.

BTW when I phoned LLoyds to cancel my card as I no longer needed it, I was offered 1 point per £1 up to £3000 or for 6 months. That was sufficient temptation for me to keep the card.

Interesting. Perhaps I had better give it a try now before they decide that this is far too generous an offer to try to hang on to existing customers of the card.

dollywops

Following my success, my son tried to cancel his card, because he did not need it either and the best he got was 1 point per £5 spend to a maximum of £3000 or 6 months.

NonGeographicalMan

dollywops wrote: »

Following my success, my son tried to cancel his card, because he did not need it either and the best he got was 1 point per £5 spend to a maximum of £3000 or 6 months.

Possibly you used to spend rather more on your card when you were using it than he did?

Also when you say 1 point per £1 of spend or 1 point per of £5 spend up to £3,000 of spend I take it that you are actually referring to Air Miles when you say points? Points are only awarded to Tesco Clubcards and Tesco Clubcard credit cards as I am sure you will no doubt be aware.

dollywops

NonGeographicalMan wrote: »

Possibly you used to spend rather more on your card when you were using it than he did?

Also when you say 1 point per £1 of spend or 1 point per of £5 spend up to £3,000 of spend I take it that you are actually referring to Air Miles when you say points? Points are only awarded to Tesco Clubcards and Tesco Clubcard credit cards as I am sure you will no doubt be aware.

You are correct, I meant airmiles, not point.

With regards to the Lloyds/Amex card, we both applied for the cards purely to get the 1500 airmiles flights and only spent the minimum amount on the cards. I suppose I was just lucky at the time.

NonGeographicalMan

dollywops wrote: »

With regards to the Lloyds/Amex card, we both applied for the cards purely to get the 1500 airmiles flights and only spent the minimum amount on the cards. I suppose I was just lucky at the time.

I suppose as you are older than your son and therefore perceived to perhaps have a higher income in the next few years and/or spending capacity on the card than he does that this may be why they offered you a better deal not to leave.

Or perhaps as you say you were just lucky and ran in to a more generous member of their staff. Or did you perhaps get your call escalated to say supervisor level about your card cancellation request (as supervisors have more discretionary powers on these matters) while your son perhaps did not?