Help with Credit Card

[boxst]

I spend quite a lot of (to be honest other people's) money on my credit card and have an MBNA rewards card. Always pay the full amount and it has worked out relatively well, just got £1000 in vouchers to spend. They are stopping that card, and the replacement doesn't have any rewards associated with it.

Can anyone suggest a similar card? Just rewards or vouchers or something based on spend not special offers that are quite limited / limiting.

I have a Halifax credit card that I use for paying when I'm travelling as I just make money on the exchange rate, so this would really be a UK card.

Thanks for any help.

[bad company]

Lloyds Avios. £24 per year, good points and no FOREX fees.

[MrJuice]

I have heard good thing about BA amex if you spend upwards of 20k a year (and therefore qualify for the companion voucher)

[ellroy]

There's a couple of cash back credit cards out there, not sure if they'd be of use, Amex and Santander I think.

[iphonedyou]

MrJuice said:

I have heard good thing about BA amex if you spend upwards of 20k a year (and therefore qualify for the companion voucher)

Yep, or 10k with the premium (£195 per year).

[towser44]

iphonedyou said:

MrJuice said:

I have heard good thing about BA amex if you spend upwards of 20k a year (and therefore qualify for the companion voucher)

Yep, or 10k with the premium (£195 per year).

And there is an introductory promo, the free card is spend £2,000 in first 3 months and get 9,000 bonus AVIOS and the card with the annual fee gets 25,000 bonus AVIOS with a £3,000 spend in first 3 months. You can get a few more points if someone refers you ;-)

[boxst]

Thank you for your suggestions. I have quite a few Avios points so avoided the BA Amex. Although did manage to spend some last year.

[bad company]

MrJuice said:

I have heard good thing about BA amex if you spend upwards of 20k a year (and therefore qualify for the companion voucher)

Yes but you will be stiffed nearly 3% when you use the card abroad.

[sealtt]

MrJuice said:

I have heard good thing about BA amex if you spend upwards of 20k a year (and therefore qualify for the companion voucher)

Disagree, I have this card, spend well over £20k per year on it and it still has very little to show for itself. I've had 3 companion vouchers and not been able to use a single one as they are so restrictive. Spent more in credit card subscription fees than I've got back in benefits.

Oh and if that wasn't enough, I just booked some family vacation flights which cost a few grand on BA.com and they wanted to charge me £20 to use my BA American Express to pay for them!!!! What a joke.

Need to cancel the stupid thing.

[MrJuice]

sealtt said:

Disagree, I have this card, spend well over £20k per year on it and it still has very little to show for itself. I've had 3 companion vouchers and not been able to use a single one as they are so restrictive. Spent more in credit card subscription fees than I've got back in benefits.

Oh and if that wasn't enough, I just booked some family vacation flights which cost a few grand on BA.com and they wanted to charge me £20 to use my BA American Express to pay for them!!!! What a joke.

Need to cancel the stupid thing.

Oh dear. I was going to get one for the companion voucher alone.

I was planning on using it for me and m'lady only. Still restrictive for just two people? If so, I won't bother..

[sealtt]

MrJuice said:

sealtt said:

Disagree, I have this card, spend well over £20k per year on it and it still has very little to show for itself. I've had 3 companion vouchers and not been able to use a single one as they are so restrictive. Spent more in credit card subscription fees than I've got back in benefits.

Oh and if that wasn't enough, I just booked some family vacation flights which cost a few grand on BA.com and they wanted to charge me £20 to use my BA American Express to pay for them!!!! What a joke.

Need to cancel the stupid thing.

Oh dear. I was going to get one for the companion voucher alone.

I was planning on using it for me and m'lady only. Still restrictive for just two people? If so, I won't bother..

If you can be (very) flexible on dates and destinations you should be able to use the voucher, it's more like a 50% discount on economy flights as you still pay taxes, etc. I've seen a couple of amazing deals on business flights, like 2 people long haul for £1k albeit with a 150k+ avios (£1=1 avio so happy saving after the sign up bonus) but almost no chance of such a deal if you have vaguely specific dates or destination in mind.

You'd be better off with a cash back or voucher-back card any day and just get a good deal buying your flights normally. I had a NatWest card before which gave approx 0.5% cash back equivalent in amazon vouchers, not sure of anything similar now.

[iphonedyou]

MrJuice said:

Oh dear. I was going to get one for the companion voucher alone.

I was planning on using it for me and m'lady only. Still restrictive for just two people? If so, I won't bother..

Generally fine for 2 people if you're flexible. They only make 4 first seats available per flight generally, so anybody hoping to take the wife and kids up front during school holidays would have always been on a hiding to nothing.

The premium companion voucher lasts two years and requires a 10k spend to trigger. Quickest way to rack up points is to take out the gold card which is free for the first year - 2k spend in 3 months and you get 20,000 points. You need to cancel for six months, then rinse and repeat - which they're totally fine with (having just done it again yesterday).

As I look here now there's plenty of 787 availability LHR - DBX in September, business class, return - £1k total, return, with 100k points and companion voucher. First is pretty restricted as the 787 first cabin is tiny, but is the same £1k total, return, with 136k points.

Edited by iphonedyou on Tuesday 10th January 12:57

[okgo]

My two pence here -

I've got both the Premium BA Amex & the Gold Charge Card

I got the former as I put quite a lot through mine (probably about £50k a year of expenses/personal purchases) and it meant I would quickly get the intro bonus (got the Gold one to get that one too and have now left it, and will cancel before I get charged a fee, it was free for first year).

It seems to me that its worth doing if you are going to go long haul, somewhere you've picked in advance, as rewards flights have to be booked some way in advance, and are going business or first class.

There is no point to my mind going economy as taxes make up most of the fare, if two people (one using companion) fly first to New York or whatever it will cost a fair few avios, but taxes and such amount to a tiny fraction of what it would cost you as a man on the street to buy two first class tickets. That is where the value is.

Occasionally I use a few to knock a hundred quid off short haul stuff, but generally I think saving them and using them on long haul, high value ticket is the way to get something from it. That said, with lower spends it might not really make sense as it would take some time to get the 100,000 you'd need to get a half decent first class flight somewhere with companion.

[boxst]

I have over a million Avios points, so not looking at BA cards. I did manage to get four people business class to LA and then to Hawaii last year (which was an amazing £15/person I think), but apart from that don't really have much luck finding the flights I want even with the extra seats supposedly shown with a gold card.

[okgo]

boxst said:

I have over a million Avios points, so not looking at BA cards. I did manage to get four people business class to LA and then to Hawaii last year (which was an amazing £15/person I think), but apart from that don't really have much luck finding the flights I want even with the extra seats supposedly shown with a gold card.

Fair enough. That's a serious amount!

I think I would probably look at which ever supermarket I used had the best offer. I think John Lewis card is ok, and obviously means you can use it for food or most other items that they sell (which is most things these days!)