Amex finally starts delivering positive news in its “year of celebrations”
Bad news, frustrating news, then good news. That’s the order that Amex has delivered news to us this year, their 25th anniversary of partnering with BA. Thankfully, after the bad and the frustrating, this is the (fairly) good news.
What’s been announced?
Earlier this year, Amex announced that they would have a “year of celebrations” as their partnership with BA reached a twenty-five-year milestone. The problem was they announced something very negative (the earn rate drop) and then something that ended up being more of a frustration (the Avios-only flight to NYC in November).
Things have turned around. They have just announced three bonus points offers for people who hold the Amex Premium Plus card.
- Get 1,000 Avios when you spend £150 at the Avios Shop (seemingly not the Avios Shopping portal)
- Get an extra 5 Avios/£ when you book a hotel at Avios Hotels.
- Get 3,000 Avios when you spend £99 or more at the BA Wine flyer.
Those bonuses are reasonable, and at least one of those could be useful for most people. All three of these offers are visible in the Offers section of the app, and you have to opt in to the offer. However, they are not the most thrilling of offers.
The best by far is the 5/£ boost for Avios hotels, taking the earn rate to 15/£ (or 16.25 if you include the points you earn from the card directly). The wine flyer offer is certainly useful if you like wine (and there are many ways to earn Avios on wine).
The 1,000 extra Avios from the Avios Shop is probably the least interesting offer. I wrote recently about the Avios Shop: a way to use points, and earn points, from buying products online. This is not the same as the Avios Shopping portal, where you earn points from buying from third-party retailers.
You have until the 7th of October 2026 to meet the criteria and any bonus points will appear in your account within thirty days of the target being hit.
The caveats
This is a relatively straightforward offer, but there are a few things to consider. Firstly, on the Avios Hotels offer, your Amex has to be charged before the 7th October. That means a pre-pay rate, and not one that you pay for when you check out of the hotel.
On the Avios Shop offer, the T&Cs say that the offer excludes The Wine Flyer, Avios Hotel and car hire, LeShuttle, Pizza Express, and more. That’s confusing, as the Avios Shop is just Apple products, luggage and a few other things.
Finally, the Wine Flyer offer is just for orders delivered to the UK, and not the Channel Islands or Northern Ireland. Orders placed over the phone are excluded from the offer too.
Is this a good offer?
It’s not an outrageously good offer, but if you’re planning on buying wine, or booking a hotel, then it’s worth saving it to your card and getting some extra points. The highest value offer is the Avios Hotels one. There are no limits on what you could earn, so for example we had booked a five-night stay at the Pan Pacific in Singapore.
- At the standard Avios Hotels earn rate, we got 26,000 Avios. As we paid for it using our Amex card, we earned an extra 3,898 points (at a rate of 1.5/£)
- The boosted, extra 5/£, would have given us 39,000 Avios, plus the extra 3,898 by paying for it on our BA card.
That’s an extra 13,000 Avios for a single hotel booking. That’s not bad. On top of that, there are no limits on how many bookings you can make.
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