Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

One week left: Should you buy Membership Rewards points whilst you still can?

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The end of the next week sees a major change to American Express cards – the end of pro-rata fee refunds. We will look at this again in more detail tomorrow.

Today I want to look at another change which may have passed you by. American Express is stopping the direct sale of Membership Rewards points on 1st October.

Did you even know this was possible? The facility is mentioned in the Terms & Conditions for the Membership Rewards scheme, for anyone willing to wade through them.

How to buy Membership Rewards points

One of the lesser known features of the American Express Membership Rewards programme is the ability to buy up to 10,000 Membership Rewards points per year for 1.5p each.

Note that a lot of Amex call centre agents will never have done this and may deny it can be done.  You may need to hang up and call again.

Let’s have a look at whether this is worth doing in the few days you have left.

Why buy miles indirectly via Amex when you can buy them directly?

Over the last few years, pretty much every airline and hotel programme has brought in a ‘buy points’ option.  This is not surprising – it is easy money for the programme, and they are still charging you more than the marginal cost to them of redeeming the points.

Since American Express is willing to sell Platinum and Preferred Rewards Gold cardholders additional Membership Rewards points, you can use this method to buy yourself airline points for a discount on the price charged by the programme itself.

This method has got more attractive over the last couple of years for those airlines who sell miles priced in US$ or Euro, since the fall in Sterling has made them noticeably more expensive if bought direct.

American Express sells you Membership Rewards points priced in £ so the cost has remained constant.

Of course, many airlines have occasional mileage sales which bring down the price below what you will pay using this route.  Don’t use this method to buy miles speculatively which you don’t plan to use immediately.

This method does not really work for hotel programmes, based on my maths.

How much can you save by buying 10,000 Membership Rewards points?

Let’s take a look at a few examples, based on the points you get from converting 10,000 Membership Rewards points which you have bought from Amex for £150.

This is the full list of airline and hotel groups offering transfers from Membership Rewards in the UK.

Compared to buying 10,000 Membership Rewards points for £150 ….:

UK airlines:

  • Avios – 10,000 Avios cost £195 directly (see here), you save £45
  • Virgin Points – 10,000 points cost £165 directly (see here), you save £15

Other airlines:

  • Asia Miles – 10,000 miles cost £245 directly ($300, see here – can only be done at the point of redemption if already have 70% of the miles needed), you save £95 as well as getting around the ‘can only buy whilst redeeming’ issue
  • Delta SkyMiles – 10,000 miles cost £285 directly ($350, see here), you save £135
  • Emirates Skywards – 10,000 miles cost £245 directly ($300, see here), you save £95
  • Etihad Guest – 10,000 miles cost £160 directly, you save £10
  • Finnair Plus – 10,000 miles cost £110 directly (€129, see here), no saving via Amex at the current exchange rate
  • Flying Blue – 10,000 miles cost £223 directly (see here), you save £73 (although if you buy direct there is currently a bonus promotion running worth 50% to 100%)
  • Qantas Points – 10,000 points cost £200 directly (A$388, see here, points can only be purchased at the point of redemption to top up an existing balance), you save £50
  • SAS EuroBonus – 10,000 points cost £145 directly (SEK 2,000, see here), no saving via Amex at the current exchange rate
  • Singapore Airlines – 6,667 miles cost £205 directly ($267, you cannot buy online and can only buy 50% of whatever redemption you are planning), you save £55

Hotels:

  • Hilton Honors – 20,000 points cost £165 directly ($200, see here), you save £15
  • Marriott Bonvoy – 15,000 points costs £155 directly ($187.50, see here), no saving via Amex at the current exchange rate
  • Radisson Rewards – 30,000 points cost £170 directly ($210, see here), you save £20 – although it no longer makes sense to buy Radisson points now they have a fixed redemption value of under 0.2p

This method also gets around arcane rules in some programmes. Singapore Airlines, for example, only lets you buy miles directly if you are about to redeem and already have 50% of the miles you need. Asia Miles has a similar rule. The Amex points purchase route lets you get around this.  This method also gets around any annual caps on the amount of miles you can buy directly.

Conclusion

As you can see from the numbers above, there is a big difference between the airline and hotel schemes.

There is often a good saving to be made by NOT buying airline miles directly and, instead, buying up to 10,000 Membership Rewards points from American Express at 1.5p each and converting them. You need to do this by 1st October before the option is withdrawn.

This is not the case with hotel schemes, where buying Membership Rewards points to convert to hotel points rarely offers great value.


Want to earn more points from credit cards? – January 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current sign-up bonuses.

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and free for a year Read our full review

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

Get a 10,000 points bonus plus an extra 500 points for our readers Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.

Barclaycard Select Cashback credit card

2% cashback on all your business spend for 3 months (1% thereafter) and no annual fee Read our full review

Comments (10)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • NicktheGreek says:

    If you have multiple MR earning cards can you do this across each card (they allnshow doff MR balances), or is it once per member?

  • NicktheGreek says:

    Parenthesis meant to read (they all show different MR balances)

  • Gareth Jones says:

    Well so far no luck trying to do this
    Rob,do you have the line in the T&C so we can share this with Amex, when trying to do this?

    • Rob says:

      It will be in the T&C of your cards. It’s not in the current version since this reflects the post-2nd October world.

      Just dig out the letter Amex sent which says that you can still buy until 1st October.

  • QFFlyer says:

    “Qantas Points – 10,000 points cost (A$388, see here, points can only be purchased at the point of redemption to top up an existing balance)”

    Not sure where you’re seeing that? You can buy them as “top-up” points 4x per year (up to 150k per time), afaik you don’t need to redeem them at the time.

    Of course you’d be mad to spend $3,999 on 150k QF points when you can get that many from a credit card signup, but the option remains. They also count towards points club/PC+ (=status credits on redemptions), if you really need to get across the line (but bear in mind max 125k per transaction count towards PC/PC+).

  • Novice says:

    I have an odd number of MR points and I’m looking to shift them out and close account. Can I buy 174 MR points or is it only a drop down thing?

  • Iulia says:

    Do you need to call Amex to buy the MR points or is there a way to buy online?

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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