Tesco Clubcard and Avios

Staying on the topic of holidays, I thought I'd let you all in on a good thing. A bit like spreading the festive cheer or something like that. Well have you heard of Avios? No? What about Airmiles? Am I getting warmer? You must've heard of Tesco atleast otherwise where on Mars have you been?!

I have regularly collected Airmiles for the last two years and wished I discovered it sooner. I have been moving my Tesco Clubcard points over to Airmiles since I discovered that they are worth more than just spending it on rubbish at Tesco. Previously a £2.50 voucher used to get you 50 airmiles and all you needed was 1500 airmiles to get a return trip to Istanbul. That works out at £75 compared to a regular ticket which prices on average at £200.

Alas Airmiles is no longer Airmiles and has been rebranded by those bandits British Airways. It is now known as Avios. Now this was a huge devaluation of all those Airmiles I had been collecting for ages. They also stopped including charges for taxes and fees meaning we now had to pay that as a seperate charge on top of using our points. I could write forever about how unfair the UK airport taxes are but I'm sure I'll reach some kind of limit, be it Googles limit or the limit of my RAM on my computer.

Now even though things have changed, it is still by far the best way to spend those hard earned Tesco Clubcard vouchers. Right now Avios have a bonus offer of 1000 points for every £2.50 Tesco Clubcard voucher. This offer is valid between 26/01/2012 and 31/03/2012. So lets work this out and compare to before. Now all I need to get to wonderful Istanbul is £37.50 in clubcard vouchers as well as the damn tax of £27 which is actually discounted for Zones 1 and 2 on the Avios map. That makes it a total of £64.50. Now you're probably thinking isn't that cheaper than before the rebranding. You are indeed correct Sir Madam. However remember that this is only a limited time offer.

After the bonus period the offer returns back to normal which is 600 avios points for every £2.50 Tesco clubcard vouchers. On the calculations above it works out as £89.50. Now this is still less than half the price of a ticket were you to buy it using cash so it still works out good.

So my final thought is if any of you reading this shop in Tesco's then join start collecting Clubcard points and if you already are collecting then stop spending them in store and convert them to Avios especially during this bonus offer! Adios for now folks.

Too Good To Be True

Some would say that I go on too many holidays, I say you can never have too many holidays. So when I got back from my holiday to Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, I started looking for my next destination. Fast forward a few months and I was playing around with the Thomas Cook booking engine when to my amazement discovered a holiday too good to be true. It was a 4 star(don't get me started on the star rating abroad) all inclusive holiday to Greece for £109 per person. All excited thinking that I found the deal of the century, I decided to go ahead and book it for the family. I clicked next, declined all the other add on extras they try to flog you nowadays and when to the final total to pay stage. Lo and behold the price had gone up to nearer enough £600 per person. I thought I had made a mistake so went back and sure enough it was still showing as £109 per person.

Being a keen bargain hunter and not wanting to miss out on something that my children's' children will tell for generations, I gave Thomas Cook a call. Now the nice young lady on the phone instantly knew what deal I was talking about before I even finished my first sentence. It turned out that there was some error and they had received loads of calls about this. She told me to get lose and stop being cheap. OK that's not true but she said you can't get something for that cheap and this was one of those cases where it was too good to be true.