Buy miles bonus

[Neil]

Just noticed that from today until the 20th November if you buy/gift some miles through the buy miles on the VS site then you get an extra 15% more miles free!

Neil

Damn lost out just bought mine on the 17th[:(!][:(!]

Jurgen and Sue

Yep, bought some today... 100 of the 150 bonus miles covered me to my 75,000 mile point, the other 1050 are just pure bonus.

S.

As someone who as yet to spend a single mile (or to bother to collect them really would perhaps be a good be a start for me!), I am just idly wondering if this sale represents good value for money ?

[Neil]

Originally posted by hackneyguy
As someone who as yet to spend a single mile (or to bother to collect them really would perhaps be a good be a start for me!), I am just idly wondering if this sale represents good value for money ?

Depends on your personal situation. I bought 2000 to get us up to 100k miles so we could get an UC reward round trip for just taxes, so it saved us money and worked well for us. Obviously the best way to get miles is 'for free' when you are spending somewhere you would normally (hotels/car hire/flights/on your cc etc) but there is obviously a demand for it otherwise VS wouldn't have introduced it/kept it going.

Neil

[Scrooge]

Strictly speaking no it does not, the common acceptable level is 2.5 cents per mile, through VS it comes out at 2.7 cents per mile.

However if you need to quickly bank some miles for a reward seat then yes this is the way to do it, or an avis car rental.

[Bazz]

Starwood used to give you a 25% bonus on transfer to FC not sure if that still applies as I haven't bought/transferred any for sometime. I think there was a minimum transfer amount to qualify, 20K springs to mind IIRC. This is still expensive particularly for GBP purchases given the (now) poor exchange rate.


PS. Just checked the SPG site, they still offer the 25% bonus and the points do need to be 20K to qualify.

[Nottingham Nick]

I think the whole issue of the value of loyalty points is very subjective. The value varies tremendously depending on the type of reward you book and the time of year you book it.

Money Saving Expert has a calculator to work out the value of a whole raft of loyalty point types here..

It values each 1000 Flying Club points at £9.40, which means that the 100K required to purchase an Upper Class round trip to SFO are worth £940 [?][8D][8D]

Nick

[Scrooge]

So that means they are calculating the value of 1 VS miles as 1.25 cents....MMM interesting, but clearly out of whack with the real world costs.

I think the calculator is not always that fair. When you look at FC reward tickets, they come with restrictions, but not as many restrictions as the 'Class (lowest)' flight tickets. So finding the value of a 'flexible' ticket and converting that into £/1000 points is much more accurate. I did that yesterday when I worked out how much my PE ticket would be, and it was a reasonable return.

S.