When you need points quickly, buying Avios is fast, but is it the best option?
Imagine you’re just a few thousand points short of what you need for a flight. The seats are available to book, you just need some more Avios. It’s a problem many of us face: how to get points quickly. This guide is focused on how to buy Avios, and where to buy them from. I also cover an alternative way to purchase Avios quickly.
What are my options if I need Avios fast?
There are a lot of ways to earn Avios, but most of them have a lag. That can be days, weeks or even months before your points land, and if you need Avios quickly then that won’t work. You can earn tens of thousands of points from hotel bookings, but they won’t be awarded until 30 days after you check out. You can also earn Avios from regular shopping online, but that can be unreliable (although it’s getting better) and even the fastest retailers will take a day or two.
One fast way to earn points is through Uber, as they will usually arrive within twenty-four hours. The low earn rate will mean you’d have to travel up and down the UK just to get a thousand points.
There is an alternative to buying Avios that is just as fast. Avios Boosts allow you to double, triple or quadruple the points you have already earned. Whether that’s from flights or a credit card, you can select one or more historic transactions (from the last thirty days) and pay to boost those points 2 to 4 times.
Looking back at my transactions over the last month, I have a transaction of 1,500 points from Barclays.
- For £14.40, I can get another 1,500 points
- Or pay £28.20 to get 3,000 points
- OR pay £41.40 to get 4,500 points.
It’s a simple process, and you are effectively buying points in the same way that you do when you use the original Buy Avios function. I wrote a much longer article on the cheapest way to buy Avios, which includes a breakdown of all the methods and the average price per point.
Boosting via Qatar
You can boost your Avios via Qatar up to six times; however, you can only boost your entire balance. That means the balance of points you have in your Qatar account. You cannot boost points from a linked BA account, but you can, of course, just transfer points from your BA account to your Qatar account.
You cannot boost more than 250,000 Avios per year, so the higher multiples of boost will only work if you have a smaller balance. I have 156,062 points in my Qatar account, and therefore I can only double it. The cost is £1,827.49, which works out at 1.17p per point. That is more expensive than the Avios.com boost, which is 0.92p per point.
Buying Avios – where is the best place?
If you want to buy Avios, then use the official airline websites or Avios.com. Do not buy points from eBay or any other third-party site. The risks are not just that you might lose your money, you may lose all the points in your account – or even access to your account itself. Buying from unofficial sites goes against British Airways’ terms and conditions.
The key sites to buy Avios from are:
- Avios.com – Purchase Avios page.
- Qatar.com – Buy Avios page.
- Finnair.com – Buy Avios page.
Note that you cannot buy Avios on the British Airways or Aer Lingus sites. You have to do it via Avios.com
Whilst the sites maintain similar pricing, give or take differences due to exchange rates, it’s worth checking each airline’s website in case they are running promotions. These happen more often than you might think, and they will be specific to that airline. They can be as high as 50% extra points for free, and the bonus is usually tiered, meaning the more points you buy, the higher the offer percentage.
Should you buy Avios?
Given that it is always cheaper to boost Avios rather than buy them, the only situation where you should buy Avios is when you don’t have any transactions to boost. That means no points earned from the Shopping portal, flights partners, Barclays, Amex or Uber within the last thirty days.
Remember that when you Boost avios you get the same points as when you buy them. The name of the process may be different, but the outcome is the same.
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