V-Flyer

With many many places not accepting AMEX transactions, I'm trying to decide what would be the best Visa/Mastercard option which could gain some travel reward..other than just passing payments through with no reward on a standard Visa card when they won't accept american express..

Tesco credit card allowing clubcard points into BA miles seemed one route..

Any others??

NH

Vote for the Tesco Mastercard here, interest free for 1 year too.

We have Marriott and Hilton cards as back ups.
The Marriott card is administered by Halifax and isn't too bad at all.

The Marriott card is great, as I am a Marriott whore as well.
If you want to convert to VS, then BAA used to do a card whose points could be converted, not sure if this is still available.

Nick

As a VS Amex cardholder, I use a BMI Mastercard as back up. The idea being that an occasion may arise where we can use both 'miles pots' to get rewards on the same flight, although when we tried to do this for our CPT trip it was far from successful...

I also use the BMi Mastercard but you cannot apply for it anymore (only their AmEx).

What is 'best' depends on what you want to get from the points but Tesco is a good bet as you can spend the points in many places. None are a fab match for VS IMO.

Don't forget though that Tesco have just halved the points earning on the card. It used to be 1 point for every £2 spent, now it is 1 point for every £4 spent.

Paul

pjh wrote:Don't forget though that Tesco have just halved the points earning on the card. It used to be 1 point for every £2 spent, now it is 1 point for every £4 spent.

Paul

I'm sure it was 1 point for every £ when it came out...

Also they are cutting the value of the points on things outside of tesco.

They are making a big fuss about how many points you get, but they are making them worth less.

I have the hilton hhonors card and it works well for me as i stay at hilton quite a bit, but even if i didnt the conversion of points back to fc points is why i originally got it, plus promotions like whats on at BA at the moment giving you 25% more value on converted points is a winner.
Thats why i have it and not the tesco card plus i hate tesco and everything they stand for!

cheers

alex

Hamster wrote:They are making a big fuss about how many points you get, but they are making them worth less.

Ah! The art of marketing. Make the bait appealing, but then ensure that you aren't actually giving too much away! 8D

Companion tickets anyone?? :w

Nick

Hamster wrote:

pjh wrote:Don't forget though that Tesco have just halved the points earning on the card. It used to be 1 point for every £2 spent, now it is 1 point for every £4 spent.

Paul

I'm sure it was 1 point for every £ when it came out...

Also they are cutting the value of the points on things outside of tesco.

They are making a big fuss about how many points you get, but they are making them worth less.

The Clubcard (that can only be used in Tesco stores) started out as 1 point for every £1, and is now 2 points for every £1.

The Credit Card started out at 1 point for every £2, and has recently change to 1 point for every £4.

To be fair to Tesco, the Credit Card rate was 1 point/ £2 for at around the last 9 years so the change doesn't really count as stealth marketing. Over the years we have had a very substantial amount of value of vouchers from them due to amount I spend on travel and accommodation.

That said I now try to put my travel costs against my Amex card.

The big disadvantage of all of these is the foreign exchange rate loading.
Will still use the I24 to have commission-free foreign exchange and also 1% cashback on everything while in or out of country. It is not worth paying 3.7%-4.2% extra just to get miles unless there is some additional incentive.

Amex where possible in the UK.

HighFlyer wrote:I also use the BMi Mastercard but you cannot apply for it anymore (only their AmEx).

I was not aware of that. No plans to change things for current cardholders, I hope?

HighFlyer wrote:I also use the BMi Mastercard but you cannot apply for it anymore (only their AmEx).

What is 'best' depends on what you want to get from the points but Tesco is a good bet as you can spend the points in many places. None are a fab match for VS IMO.

Online, you can only apply for the bmi Amex now. Following a tip on FlyerTalk, I have just successfully managed to open a new bmi Mastercard - received the card today. However, the earnings rate is only 1 mile per £ spent (2 miles per £ spent with bmi) - worse than the original rate I understand? The card also comes with 12000 destination miles when you spend £250 in the first 90 days.

To apply, just call MBNA on the phone number which appears on the bmi Amex site - they can do the application for the Mastercard manually by phone.

Apologies if a FAQ but I couldn't find a recent post.

I am wondering which would be the best VISA/Mastercard for earning FC points. I appreciate the rate might be tiny, but better than nothing.

The Marriot VISA offers 1 Marriot point per £ and exchanges at between 0.2 and 0.4 FC per MP. Is this going to be my best bet?

I see the paypal credit card seems to be no more - has anyone come up with any other inventive ways of earning FC miles?

Cheers,
Paul.

I have merged the two threads about the best points earning non-Amex credit cards to prevent duplicate discussions.

Nick

pmdpmd wrote:Apologies if a FAQ but I couldn't find a recent post.

I am wondering which would be the best VISA/Mastercard for earning FC points. I appreciate the rate might be tiny, but better than nothing.

The Marriot VISA offers 1 Marriot point per £ and exchanges at between 0.2 and 0.4 FC per MP. Is this going to be my best bet?

I see the paypal credit card seems to be no more - has anyone come up with any other inventive ways of earning FC miles?

Cheers,
Paul.

Think the bmi MC might be better than the Mariott - even at 1bmi mile/£. ISTR that you can spend bmi miles on VS flights or any *A airline?

Thanks for the advice. I just applied for a BMI Mastercard over the phone as suggested by MrT - Great tip, I saw that the only card they are advertising is the Amex and would have accepted that as gospel otherwise.

Looking through other messages, it looks like the only way I can spend BMI miles on a VS reward flight by booking it via BMI at the same rate as if I was using FC miles? Is there any way of moving the miles to my FC account?

Cheers,
Paul

pmdpmd wrote:Is there any way of moving the miles to my FC account?

Quick answer: No

They will end up being stand-alone,