Avios Points Boosting guide discussion

lea_t88

callum9999 wrote: »

EDIT: Completely ignore me! I didn't realise the bonus Avios you get from Tesco at the moment don't count towards the 2000 bonus. You'd therefore need to convert £6.50 each time to get them. You can do £6.50 now in each of the Avios and BA accounts, but you won't have enough left to do the BA one again next quarter (unless you earn another £2.50 in vouchers before then - don't know if there's time?).

Also, you'll have to earn an Avios on the BA account before you can do this offer (easiest probably buying something on the BA estore).

How confusing! I only got the £7.50 figure from the MSE article, and thought this was because you had to convert in £2.50 'chunks'.

I have just created a BA Executive account. I probably won't earn another £2.50 before next quarter. So if I do £7.50 in each of the BA and Avios now, would that give me 2 x 2000 points of 'new Avios collecting'?

Apologies if I am making this unnecessarily confusing.

callum9999

lea_t88 wrote: »

How confusing! I only got the £7.50 figure from the MSE article, and thought this was because you had to convert in £2.50 'chunks'.

I have just created a BA Executive account. I probably won't earn another £2.50 before next quarter. So if I do £7.50 in each of the BA and Avios now, would that give me 2 x 2000 points of 'new Avios collecting'?

Apologies if I am making this unnecessarily confusing.

No, I just managed to completely confuse myself!

Yeah I know MSE says £7.50 but Tesco say 1500 Avios. You get 1560 Avios for £6.50 of vouchers though - and you don't have to do it in £2.50 chunks, it's a minimum of £2.50 but you can go up in 50p's.

If I were you I'd just put all your vouchers into now while it's 900 instead of 600 Avios per £2.50. As long as you put at least £6.50 in each one, it doesn't matter what you put where (e.g. put £7.50 in Avios and £9 in BA).

Remember you need to earn an Avios in your BA account before you transfer these vouchers - but then if you're only doing it once, you've got until November to do that.

Wammer

Hi

I am very new to actively collecting Avios and the last few posts have sparked my interest that I should be doing something about it. I am intending reading this whole thread over the weekend.

I have a few questions I hope someone can help with.

We have a Household account with BAEC.

Q1 - Is it possible to change this back to individual accounts to enable Avios to be transferred between Avios and BAEC Avios without having to call them?

I currently have £18 in Tesco vouchers which I was intending exchanging for BAEC Avios before the end of the month.

Q2 - What is the benefit of having both an Avios and a BAEC Avios account?

From reading recent posts I am thinking of exchanging £6.50 Tesco vouchers for Avios and another £6.50 for BAEC Avios to benefit from the 2000 bonus points. However although I currently have an Avios account, I have never had any points in the account.

Q3 - Am I right in thinking that I need to earn at least one Avios point before I would get the 2000 bonus points? Should this point have been earned by a certain date or is there still time to do it?

Until today I thought the only way to earn Avios was spend on a paid for Amex card or fly with BA. It didn't seem worth it to me as, by my calculations, I would be earning more using a cashback credit card that I would save by using Avios points. According to MSE (I think), an Avios point is worth about 0.7p where I can earn 1-3% using cashback cards.

We have a balance of about 92000 BA Avios at the moment earned solely on flying with BA and BMI.

Sorry for all the questions. I have learned a lot today already from the last few posts and doing a search of this thread and hope to learn a lot more over the next few days by reading this thread in full once I have time.

Edit - Just thought of another question re qualifying for the 2000 bonus with Avios.

The Avios site states, "You can take part in this promotion as long as you are an Avios member who has collected one Airmile/Avios since 01 December 2010".

Q 4 - I have actually collected Avios with BA for a flight taken earlier this year. If I transferred some of my BA Avios to Avios, would that count as "collecting"?

curlylox

Hi

Sorry if this has been answered before -I did look. How do you find flights that only cost the £27 tax? We would like to use them for flights Edinburgh to heathrow. We have had 5 return flights with BA in the last few months. These flights qualified for Avios points. This is all so confusing. If anyone can help I would be very grateful.TIA.

richardw

Log in to your account and do a search.

trevorh

Q1 - Is it possible to change this back to individual accounts to enable Avios to be transferred between Avios and BAEC Avios without having to call them? Yes you can do it online.

Q2 - What is the benefit of having both an Avios and a BAEC Avios account? As far as I can see mainly to get the bonus twice

From reading recent posts I am thinking of exchanging £6.50 Tesco vouchers for Avios and another £6.50 for BAEC Avios to benefit from the 2000 bonus points. However although I currently have an Avios account, I have never had any points in the account. You can only get the bonus 2000 if you have already earned points some other way. You may be too late for this quarter even for BAEC as they take up to 28 days to credit miles

Q3 - Am I right in thinking that I need to earn at least one Avios point before I would get the 2000 bonus points? Should this point have been earned by a certain date or is there still time to do it? Yes, as above it has to be credited before you use the Tesco vouchers so you are probably too late for this quarter (ends 31 Aug)

Until today I thought the only way to earn Avios was spend on a paid for Amex card or fly with BA. It didn't seem worth it to me as, by my calculations, I would be earning more using a cashback credit card that I would save by using Avios points. According to MSE (I think), an Avios point is worth about 0.7p where I can earn 1-3% using cashback cards. As you've probably seen there are many ways to earn Avios and use your cashback cards. However its not always the best deal so check. With regard to the value of the Avios pints I think the best value is to upgrade from PE to Club and this is worth 5p/mile upwards.

Q 4 - I have actually collected Avios with BA for a flight taken earlier this year. If I transferred some of my BA Avios to Avios, would that count as "collecting"? I don't believe transferring counts as collecting. You can buy something small on say Play.com through Avios and then convert your Tesco vouchers once it is credited. As I said I think you are too late for this quarter.

trevorh

By the way to use the BAEC offer you must have 'collected at least one BA Mile or Avios point in the 12 months prior to 1 December 2011' I fell foul of this as I had travelled in Dec 2011 and thought that would be OK.

However having then transferred my Tesco vouchers in to BAEC and not getting the bonus I was effectively excluded in the future because the conditions say you must not have 'collected BA Miles or Avios with Tesco in the last 12 months' which of course I now have!

I am now using Avios to get my bonus with my remaining Tesco vouchers.

The conditions for Avios are slightly different in that you have to be 'an Avios member who has collected one Airmile/Avios since 01 December 2010'

trevorh

curlylox wrote: »

Hi

Sorry if this has been answered before -I did look. How do you find flights that only cost the £27 tax? We would like to use them for flights Edinburgh to heathrow. We have had 5 return flights with BA in the last few months. These flights qualified for Avios points. This is all so confusing. If anyone can help I would be very grateful.TIA.

Log in to Avios, go to spend, then flights, enter your details and Bob will become your uncle.

If you go to collect, then flights then calculate and enter your flight details you'll see you should earn 500 miles per flight, so 5 returns gives 5000 miles which is enough for a single reward flight +£13.50.

They really tried to make it straightforward.

Wammer

Many thanks for your detailed reply Trevor, it is appreciated.

After posting on here I continued to read as much as I could on Avios so I am a little clearer.

I called Avios with some questions and the guy suggested that I join the Shell Driver's Club to get the 50 points sign up bonus. He said the points should be credited within a couple of days then I can phone Shell to have them transferred to Avios. My nearest Shell garage is a 70 mile round trip, but as luck would have it, we are going there on Tuesday.

I exchanged my Tesco vouchers to BAEC Avios yesterday at £6.50 for 1560 + 50% so should qualify for the bonus as we earned BA miles in the last 2 years.

Thanks again for the reply.

Wammer

curlylox wrote: »

Hi

Sorry if this has been answered before -I did look. How do you find flights that only cost the £27 tax? We would like to use them for flights Edinburgh to heathrow. We have had 5 return flights with BA in the last few months. These flights qualified for Avios points. This is all so confusing. If anyone can help I would be very grateful.TIA.

Once you are logged in, it is Reward Saver flights you are looking for.

I found a page with which destinations are in which Zone. However after checking availability for a few destinations, I couldn't find that page again.