Credit Card Rewards

toomb86

I'm likely to have a couple of relatively large payments to make over the next couple of months (totalling around £8k - not a lot for lots, but it is for me...) - I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for credit cards with good initial reward schemes that I can take advantage of? I'd be looking to pay them off almost immediately, so am happy to have a higher interest rate with better rewards.
(The rewards cards on the main website are mainly AMEX, which I already have so don't qualify for the bonus, and seem to be focused on normal spending, rather than one large outlay)

jbrassy

Amex are the clear market leader when it comes to rewards cards and introductory offers. However, you may want to have a look at some of these:
https://www.headforpoints.com/best-uk-avios-airline-hotel-credit-cards/

There are a couple of Mastercard credit cards on there, but the sign up offers don't look very enticing to me.

pbartlett

if you want a mainstream credit card, john lewis pay 0.25% but in john lewis / waitrose vouchers

jbrassy

pbartlett said:

if you want a mainstream credit card, john lewis pay 0.25% but in john lewis / waitrose vouchers

The John Lewis card is a rewards card, but it doesn't have an introductory bonus offer like Amex, e.g. spend £X in the first 3 months and get £Y or Z number of points in rewards. 

The best looking non-Amex with an introductory bonus seems to be the Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard where you get 15,000 Virgin points with your first purchase. If you spend £10,000 across the year with the card, you also get a 2 for 1 voucher which you can use on Virgin Atlantic flights. If you're already going to be spending £8,000 on a couple of large payments, it's not too difficult to spend another £2,000 over 12 months on other day-to-day things like food shopping, petrol ,etc. The major downside to this card is it has an annual fee of £160, but I guess the rewards outweigh the costs and it's possibly worth considering if you like flying Virgin to the US. 

The other two non-Amex cards which have introductory bonuses are:

• The IHG Rewards Mastercard where you get 10,000 IHG Rewards points when you spend £200 within 90 days (which you can convert into 2,000 Avios or other airline points); or 
• The HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard which gives you 80,000 points which can be converted into 40,000 Avios points. However, this card is only available to HSBC Premier customers (which requires you to have an income above £75k per annum) and has a £195 fee per annum. 

Overall, none of these cards have very attractive intro bonuses compared to Amex. 

littlemissbossy

Tesco credit cards give Clubcard points.

jbrassy

littlemissbossy said:

Tesco credit cards give Clubcard points.

Again, the Tesco credit card is a rewards card but, as with the John Lewis credit card, it does not have an introductory bonus offer!

jay1804

Sainsbury's Nectar rewards card https://www.sainsburysbank.co.uk/credit-cards/nectar-reward

jbrassy

jay1804 said:

Sainsbury's Nectar rewards card https://www.sainsburysbank.co.uk/credit-cards/nectar-reward

Not a bad offer:
"Collect 10,000 bonus points when you use your card to spend a total of £400 or more at Sainsbury’s, Argos, Habitat or Tu Clothing during the 2 months after your account is opened"

sharsky53

The days of credit card rewards are over. Amex are the outstanding best but you have to live with the fact that not all stores accept, B&M, B&Q, Dunelm', Tui and Government payments etc to name but a few. The card companies are more in favour of people that are less credit worthy by offering favourable credit transfers etc. I have had an Amazon card for 6 months with a miserable credit limit of £1550 even though I own my own 4 bed detached house without mortgage, pay off each month total balance with DD and have a substantial guaranteed pension income. All this is oblivious to the robotic way they dish out credit limits as if you are new to the credit industry. How can I pay for a holiday with Tui who do not accept Amex with a miserly credit limit of peanuts. Anyway, I have cancelled the card due to their non-existent customer assessment. Added to this I had A Maximiles credit card giving points with a half decent credit limit and have just been informed this is ending on 31 May 2021. Oh dear, where do we go from here?

Sandtree

toomb86 said:

The rewards cards on the main website are mainly AMEX, which I already have so don't qualify for the bonus

All of them?

Intro bonuses from AmEx are by type so if you have a MR card you can still get an Avios or cash back or anything else.

Two large expenses can instead be seen as two different sets of 3 months of normal spending to hit bonuses. So get two cards and get two bonuses. Unfortunately fundamentally they want to create a behaviour of common use and so even the likes of the AmEx Platinum Chargecard pays out after "only" £4k of spend

Alex9384

HSBC Rewards CC gives you £25 back for the first purchase. Then 0.2% I think.

"Get 2,500 welcome points worth £25 when you make your first transaction. Plus, spend £10,000 or more on your card in a year and we’ll give you another 2,500 bonus points."