A significant boost in points earned
Even Avios itself calls the Avios Shopping portal a “lesser-known trick”. It is the number one way to earn points without incurring any additional cost, and the number of points you earn can be significant. That’s hundreds, sometimes thousands of points for buying things that you were always going to buy.
What is the Avios Shopping website?
The concept is simple. Visit the Avios Shopping website, find a retailer, click a button and then make your purchase online. You’ll then be rewarded with Avios points. The price you pay is the same as you would have if you went directly to the shop, and the product and service are exactly the same.
There is no cost to earning points from the Avios Shopping website, but only buy items you were planning to buy.
The number of points you can earn varies for each retailer, and they typically operate on a per-pound basis. That means the more you spend, the more points you earn. An example is the Apple Store, where you can currently earn 3 Avios per £1 you spend. There are some restrictions, such as new product launches.
I wrote in detail about the Avios Shopping website, if you want to know more.
I also created a way to track the earn rates across every single shop on the Avios Shopping website. That’s useful if you want to understand if the current earn rate is the best, or worst, that is on offer. You can view all the historic and current earn rates for each shop, and see the earn rate on the competing Virgin Points shop.
Points don’t always land.
The Avios Shopping portal is usually reliable when it comes to your points ending up in your account. However, there have been times when I’ve followed the rules and ended up with the points being cancelled. Hilton, for a period, was especially bad (you can earn Avios points from hotel bookings, although it’s nearly always more efficient to use the Avios Hotels website).
You can hedge against these issues by transacting on the retailer’s website as soon as you land on it, from the Shopping Portal. Transactions can fail to track if you visit the retailer’s website from another source, even Google, after you have clicked on the Shop Now button on the Avios Shopping portal.
The Black Flyday offer
This same offer has run in the past, and it’s a very good one.
From now until the 28th December, you can get 50% extra Avios on selected retailers. Avios claims that over a thousand brands are participating in this offer, and a quick scan suggests that many big names are involved.
M&S, Apple, Selfridges and Argos are all listed. Examining some of the non-retailer brands on the Avios Shop, I couldn’t find any insurers offering the 50% discount, but this is a Christmas offer that’s more focused on shopping.
The quoted Avios on the site does not include the 50% uplift, so where you see the points rate on the page, the 50% will be on top of that.
Some shops already have strong earn rates, and you’ll find that these change throughout the year. During busy periods, like Christmas, earn rates tend to go up to allow retailers to capture more sales.
A good example is Harrods’ online store. They have a high earn rate of upto 6 Avios per £. This has now been increased to 14/£, and that would become 21/£ with the 50% offer. That’s a significant number of points.
M&S have increased their earn rate from upto 2/£ to 8/£. That then becomes 12/£ with the 50% bonus offer. The separate M&S Flowers website has an earn rate of 24/£, which means 36/£ with the 50% bonus. A £50 bouquet of flowers would therefore give you 1,800 Avios.
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