Earn 2,000 Easy Avios From British Airways & Avios UK

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The British Airways Executive Club and Avios UK are running parallel promotions that should offer a lot of people the opportunity to earn at least 1,000 Avios, possibly 2,000, without that much difficulty. Although for one of the promotions you have to be a member of the Avios UK Travel Rewards program there doesn’t appear to be anything in the terms and conditions that precludes non-UK based BAEC members from earning the bonus.

“Collect Somewhere New” Avios Promotion

The promotion is based around the idea of travelers earning Avios via a method they haven’t yet used in the past 12 months – you must collect Avios somewhere new between 3 October and 21 November 2016.

Here are the terms and conditions which will explain what you have to do a lot better than I can:

Earning 1,000 Bonus Avios via the British Airways Executive Club

• The promotion is open to existing British Airways Executive Club (BAEC) members who have collected and received Avios prior to the commencement of the Promotional period.]

• Register and collect Avios with a new partner during 3 October 2016 to 21 November 2016 the ‘Promotional period’ to receive 1,000 bonus Avios.

• Only one bonus award will apply regardless of the number of new partners collected with.

• A new partner is classed as a partner you have not collected with within the previous 12 month period i.e. since 3 October 2015.

• Avios collected through the new partner must be shown in your Avios account during the Promotional period in order to qualify for the bonus Avios award. Avios Awards through collection partners will be subject to the individual partner terms and conditions.

• Exclusions to the Promotional period credit date are;
  Gate 365 which has a 40 day delay from transaction to credit date. Customers who make an eligible purchase with Gate 365 within the Promotional period will qualify for a bonus.
  British Airways American Express / British Airways American Express Premium / British Airways American Express Premium Plus credit cards. Customers are credited after a statement has been issued. Customers who apply and are accepted for an Avios earning Credit Card during the Promotional period will be eligible for the bonus provided they have Avios credited to their account by 31 December 2016. Customers who start collecting using an Avios earning Credit Card which they have not used in the previous 12 months will receive the bonus Avios if their account is credited by 21 December 2016.

• All flight partners are classed as one partner regardless of airline. If you have not flown with a flight partner in the last 12 months you will be eligible for a bonus award if you collect Avios within the Promotional period.

• All Gate 365 partners are classed as one partner. E.g. If you have collected via Gate 365 with John Lewis in the last 12 months and then purchase with another retailer via Gate 365 you will not qualify for a bonus

• Each member within a BAEC Household account can qualify for a bonus Avios award

• Exclusions apply. The following collection partners are exempt from this promotion;
  Purchase, Gift or Transfers of Avios
  Survey Partners (E-rewards, Reward for Thoughts, Survey Sampling International)
  Member Get Member (MGM) referrers
  Shell Drivers’ Club
  Avios awarded for refer a friend

• All standard Avios collected will be awarded as per the individual Partner terms and conditions. All bonus Avios will be awarded by 30 January 2017.

BAEC Promotion – In Summary

If you have credited any flights to your British Airways Executive Club account since 3 October 2015 then any further flights you now credit, regardless of which airline you fly,  will not count as collecting somewhere new.

If you have purchased something from a retailer via the British Airways Gate365 shopping portal since 3 October 2015 then any further purchases you make will not count as collecting somewhere new…regardless of retailer.

How To Trigger The BAEC Bonus

If you haven’t credited a flight to the BAEC or purchased something via the Gate365 shopping portal then those are two pretty obvious ways of triggering the bonus…but there are other easy ways too (providing you haven’t used any of them in the past year).

1. If you have a UK TopCashback account you can transfer over some cashback into your BAEC account.
2. Transfer hotel points over from a hotel scheme like Marriott or Starwood (transfer over the minimum allowed so as not to waste any points needlessly)
3. If you haven’t transferred any Tesco Clubcard points to BAEC then that would work
4. If you have a HSBC Premier credit card you could transfer over some points to BAEC.

US BAEC Members

I can’t see anything in the T&Cs that stipulates that this promotion is only available in the UK so there’s a very good chance this will work for US BAEC accounts too.

• There is a US version of the British Airways Gate 365 shopping portal so that could be the cheapest and easiest way of getting the bonus.
• Any transfer from a credit card rewards program that you haven’t used for BAEC transfers in the past year may work.
• Just like for UK travelers a transfer from a hotel rewards program may also work

If none of those routes are open to you then perhaps you can make use of the parallel promotion being run by the UK Avios Travel Rewards Programme.

Earning 1,000 Bonus Avios via the UK Avios Travel Rewards Programme

The terms and conditions are almost identical to those for the BAEC promotion but I’ll reproduce them for completeness:

• The promotion is open to existing Avios UK Travel Rewards Programme (ATRP) members who have collected and received Avios prior to the commencement of the Promotional period.

• Register and collect Avios with a new partner during 03 October 2016 to 21 November 2016 the ‘Promotional period’ to receive 1,000 bonus Avios.

• Only one bonus award will apply regardless of the number of new partners collected with.

• A new partner is classed as a partner you have not collected with within the previous 12 month period i.e. since 3 October 2015.

• Avios collected through the new partner must be shown in your Avios account during the Promotional period in order to qualify for the bonus Avios award. Avios Awards through collection partners will be subject to the individual partner terms and conditions.

• Exclusions to the Promotional period credit date are;
  Avios eStore which has a 35 day delay from transaction to credit date. Customers who make an eligible purchase with Avios eStore within the Promotional period will qualify for a bonus.
  Lloyds Bank and TSB. Customers who apply and are accepted for an Avios earning Credit Card during the Promotional period will be eligible for the bonus provided they have Avios credited to their account by 31 December 2016. Customers who start collecting using an Avios earning Credit Card which they have not used in the previous 12 months will receive the bonus Avios if their account is credited by 21 December 2016.

• All flight partners are classed as one partner regardless of airline. If you have not flown with a flight partner in the last 12 months you will be eligible for a bonus award if you collect Avios through an airline within the Promotional period.

• All Avios eStore partners are classed as one partner. E.g. If you have collected via Avios eStore with John Lewis in the last 12 months and then purchase with another retailer via Avios eStore you will not qualify for a bonus.

• Only one bonus award of 1,000 Avios will apply for a household account.

• Exclusions apply. The following collection partners are exempt from this promotion;
  Purchase, Gift or Transfers of Avios
  Survey Partners (E-rewards, Reward for Thoughts, Survey Sampling International)
  Member Get Member (MGM) referrers
  Shell Drivers’ Club
  Avios awarded for refer a friend

• All standard Avios collected will be awarded as per the individual Partner terms and conditions. All bonus Avios will be awarded by 30 January 2017.

Maximising These Promotions

The rules say that you can only earn one bonus per household account but there’s nothing stopping anyone from earning one bonus with the British Airways Executive Club and a second bonus with UK Avios. That’s 2,000 Avios that should be pretty easy to collect.

Things to note:

• Don’t bother setting up new accounts to try to earn more bonuses as the rules clearly state that only accounts that have already earned Avios are eligible to earn the bonuses.
• If you have British Airways status you probably shouldn’t credit any flights to the UK Avios scheme as you would be forgoing your status bonus.
• Make sure you read the T&Cs carefully before you embark on a method of triggering the bonuses – you’re not going to feel too clever if you attempt to trigger he bonus via a method excluded by the T&Cs.

Bottom Line

I have both a BAEC account and an Avios UK account so I’ll be transferring the smallest amounts of cashback I have sitting in my TopCashback account to the BAEC and Avios UK to trigger both bonuses – I haven’t used either transfer process in the past 12 months so I should be in the clear.

These are the transfers I’ll be making:

So, if all goes well, £3.07 of cashback should earn me 2,307 Avios – essentially I’m buying Avios for 0.13 pence (0.17 cents) each.