What is the Avios Shopping website?Is the Avios eStore fit for purpose?
There’s a sixteen page thread on Flyertalk entitled “Why is the Avios shopping portal such a disaster”. The reality is that when it works, it’s fine; when it doesn’t, it’s a real annoyance. It’s worked seamlessly for me for 98% of transactions, but should it have been fair, reasonable and worked for the other 2%?
What is the Avios Shopping website?
BA still refer to it as the Avios eStore, but it’s also called BA Shopping. It’s a great way to earn Avios by buying good or services. You get the same items, from the same retailer, but you earn Avios on the transaction. Sometimes that can be quite a significant amount of Avios – thousands of points if you buy insurance, or even more if you book hotels.
What’s the problem with Avios Shopping?
The main issue is that some transactions get cancelled months (and, in some extreme cases, years) after you’ve paid the retailer. Now, BA are up-front that it can take time for the awarding of points, especially with hotels (a whopping 90-120 “days after you have completed your stay”), but cancelled transactions are a real annoyance. In some cases, the Avios that has been awarded can be removed from your account.
Cookies can be an issue
The Avios Shopping website will drop a cookie that tells the retailer that your website visit originated from them. When a transaction is completed that should allow the retailer to see it came via BA, and then pay BA a commission for it. That money then gets turned into Avios, with BA likely keeping some money back for themselves.
It uses an affiliate scheme as a middleman, but for the customer, it doesn’t really matter. It’s just a really easy way to earn Avios.
If the retailer can’t track the transaction back to BA, then there will be no Avios coming your way. That’s why I use a “clean” browser – in my case Microsoft Edge – for high value transactions. I don’t use that browser day-to-day and I clear all the cookies and history before I make a transaction. That means there’s no other cookies that could confuse the retailer as to how I landed on their website.
I get all of my research out of the way on my main browser (Chrome) and then using Edge I jump straight from BA Shopping, to the retailer, to the product that I want and then I buy it. That approach minimises the chance that someone else gets the credit for my visit, and I lose out on the Avios.
I’m not going to repeat that process above for something I’ll earn 100 or 200 Avios on, so what I’ve found is that most of the time if I use my main browser on my desktop or mobile device it gets tracked perfectly.
Why is Hilton such a problem?
Hilton used to offer 4 Avios for every pound you spent. That was a great deal: you could earn HIlton points for your stay, plus Avios points and if you put the transaction through a points earning credit card you could earn even more points.
In the last year, things have just become strange. I’ve had a number of Avios Shopping transactions with Hilton turn to “cancelled” many months after my stay. These were genuine stays, and I made no changes to the booking.
In the last four years out of a total of seven Avios Shopping transactions that were cancelled, three of which were Hilton. In that same time I’ve had 216 transactions go through successfully. Looking back I realise that I have not successfully earned any points from any Hilton transaction during that period. That’s quite a coincidence and suggests a must deeper issue with Hilton. Am I alone in having every Hilton transaction declined?
What can you do when your Avios Shopping transaction is declined?
You can fill out the missing Avios form online. You’ll need details about your transaction such as the date and amount. You can usually get these from the confirmation email you get after you buy something. They also ask you to upload a receipt – this can be trickier for some online retailers, and for hotels you might find that their website does not give you receipts.
Once you’ve completed the missing Avios process then the only thing you can do is wait. I raised a claim for missing Hilton points back in August 2024 and I still have not had a response. Their original placeholder email says “We aim to review and respond to your case within 28 days.”.
The alternative, of course, is to not book direct with Hilton. Over the past few years I’ve had successful Avios transactions from Hotels.com and Booking.com, at decent rates. The Avios Hotel website is also a great way to earn Avios at a very healthy rate. If you’re a member of a hotel’s rewards programme, then you won’t get perks for booking through a third-party website.
This poses a classic points collection challenge: should I book directly for (what in theory could be, but often isn’t) 4 points per pound and get free breakfast via my status, or should I book via Avios Hotels and get 10 points per pound, but no perks?
It’s got so bad that Hilton has disappeared.
If you visit the Avios Shopping website right now you’ll see that Hilton is no longer listed properly. If you search for them, they’re returned as a link in the results, but that just takes you straight to the Hilton homepage. There’s no intermediary page that you get with other retailers, so there’s no points earned for a booking.
I looked for Hilton on TopCashback and they’re no longer listed. A search on the Virgin Atlantic Shops Away microsite (similar to BA shopping) also brings up nothing.
It’s possible that Hilton has decided that they no longer want to be part of any affiliate schemes, cutting off BA, Virgin and TopCashback. Or it’s also possible that Hilton has deep technical issues that cause the tracking to break – and thousands of people to go without rewards – and they’ve pulled themselves off to stop the pain.
