Advice on best how to spend 40000 Amex reward points

jingjok

Hi,
Through the advice from the website i signed up to Amex Gold Rewards Card and have managed to get over 40000 points.
I been struggling on how best to use it. I would like to use on flights but it would have to be for 2 people. Amex website is not too clear to me as how to use them best. we travel to Thailand and considered transferring them to Thai airways air miles but it seems i would lose out.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated i intend to cancel the card once ive spent them as i do not want to incur the £125 yearly charge. Should i consider down grading the card as suggested by some, if so what benefits would i get?
I would also consider voucher to spend at retail stores if they were good value.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

pingles

I'm not too sure how far 40,000 points will get you for 2 tickets- you're probably not going to get much of a benefit beyond what you could just buy direct. However, you could always either a) downgrade to the green card and pay a £60 fee to keep the MR account open, or b) transfer the points when you can to Avios (Amex occasionally run bonus transfers so you may want to wait until one of those- you might get 40-50% more avios that way).

If you do transfer to Avios you could consider opening their BA Premium Plus card- you'd get another 18k points for the introductory spend offer, and if you spend a further £7k in the year you'll get a companion voucher- so you can redeem 2 tickets for the price of 1. Lets say you do that and spend just enough for the companion voucher, you'd potentially end up with 93k Avios (60 + 18 + 15), of course you can redeem 2 tickets so it's effectively 186k Avios, which should be enough for at least World Traveller Plus, perhaps even Club World to the US (so much better than spending the 40k you have currently).

The BA card has a £150 fee but if you're planning on using points for travel it'd be a good way to double the value. You'll get 1.5 Avios per £1 on everything so that may be a better return than the tiered Gold card you use currently.

This is exactly what I'm doing- I'm getting good returns from the PRG at the moment but I'll be using the BAPP as much as necessary to get the 2-4-1 voucher. If you're interested PM me and I can generate you an Amex referral link that also gives you an extra 1k Avios in the intro offer (so you get 19k avios for 3k spend).

HTH

DunPin

jingjok wrote: »

If so what benefits would i get?

None as you'll have downgraded to a card with no benefits.

As for transferring your MR to Miles, Thai Airlines isn't a UK partner from what I can tell (looking at AMEX's site), you're best bet is British Airways although they are horrible to fly with but they'll get you one ticket for 30,000 plus taxes in economy (not really worth using miles on economy) or 60,000 plus taxes in business.

My opinion is to keep the gold open and save up more MR to transfer at a later date or transfer to Hilton for 80,000 HHonors and pay for flights separately.

jingjok

Many thanks for your replies Pingles and Dunpin, it really is a minefield when know what to do, the problem is once your in you dont want to lose what you have gained and that keeps you tied in.
BA card you suggest Pingles seems a good option. I will discuss with wife as we never normally pay yearly for cards but it would benefit us as we travel a lot each year.

[Deleted User]

Unless you are generating Avios from other sources, Id stay away from the idea of flights to Thailand - you're not going to have enough miles for a worthwhile redemption without upping your game by applying for more cards or using Tesco clubcard etc to generate points.

You could, however, transfer the points (or some of them) to British Airways for the purpose of Reward Flight Saver redemptions. I'll not go into all the details (google reward flight saver for info) but you can get an economy return to near europe for 9,000 points per person plus £35 Tax. You can go further with 15,000 per person. Also any required internal flights inside the UK are free (i.e. if you need to fly from Edinburgh to London then onto Paris or something).

Another viable alternative would be to join Club Carlson (hotel group consisting of Radisson, Park Plaza etc) and transfer points to that program. You get 3 club Carlson points per 1 Amex point which is a pretty good deal. You can then use these points to pay for hotel accommodation in Thailand or elsewhere. 40,000 Amex points would get you 120,000 carlson points - enough for, for example, 4 free nights in the Park Plaza Bangkok (although it's not a particularly expensive hotel so that wouldn't be great value). A better example might be 100,000 carlson points gets you two free nights in the May Fair in London - worth about £700.

Or finally you could just cash in for credit on the card (I think) or vouchers - about £400 worth.

See, lots of things to think about!

michaels

Lazyloki wrote: »

Or finally you could just cash in for credit on the card (I think) or vouchers - about £400 worth.

See, lots of things to think about!

I thought 40k points were only worth £200 in vouchers or 160 against travel spend on the card?

zerog

Yeah its only 0.5% for vouchers and 0.45% for travel spend but that's a good way to use up the odd points before you cancel.

Not counting double points for supermakets obviously.

[Deleted User]

michaels wrote: »

I thought 40k points were only worth £200 in vouchers or 160 against travel spend on the card?

You're probably right, I've never looked at the cash redemption options.