How can I spend on BA Amex to earn a companion voucher?

[seaninog]

A friend and I are looking to take a trip to Australia next year and as I have a lot of Avios/BA Airmails built up, I thought we could do this is style in Business Class using a companion voucher from BA Amex.

The challenge is to spend £20,000 on Amex and my query to the community is how can this be done in a way that doesn't see me buying rubbish I don't need or paying over the odds for something.

For example, can you buy prepaid vouchers for Sainsbury's or some supermarket where I know we would use them over time? What other prepayments could be made on Amex?

Anyone got any suggestions?

[Saleen836]

pay for everything (everyday purchases fuel/food even utility bills where possible) with the card, surprising how quickly it mounts up

[nickd01]

Upgrade to the Premium card, then you only need to spend £10k and you earn more miles doing it. You can always downgrade the card later and you keep the voucher if you don't use it.

[The Leaper]

I agree with Saleen. If you use your BA Amex card as much as possible then you can achieve the minimum spend quite quickly. And the minimum can be lower than you quote depending on precisely which card you have signed up to.

By the way, just because you spend the minimum and get a companion ticket does not mean that you can use it with your accumulated Avios/BA Miles when you wish. There's only a very small number of seats per plane available with Avios/BA Miles and you will be needing two of them. Best advice I can give is to book your flights as far ahead as possible (I think seats are released about 350 days ahead) once you have your companion ticket and sufficient Avios/BA Miles, and be flexible on travel dates.

R.

[The Leaper]

I agree with Saleen. If you use your BA Amex card as much as possible then you can achieve the minimum spend quite quickly. And the minimum can be lower than you quote depending on precisely which card you have signed up to.

By the way, just because you spend the minimum and get a companion ticket does not mean that you can use it with your accumulated Avios/BA Miles when you wish. There's only a very small number of seats per plane available with Avios/BA Miles and you will be needing two of them. Best advice I can give is to book your flights as far ahead as possible (I think seats are released about 350 days ahead) once you have your companion ticket and sufficient Avios/BA Miles, and be flexible on travel dates.

R.

[anonymous-user]

Three bang on responses above.

Getting award seat returns to Australia is notoriously difficult. You really will have to be on it 350 days before departure, probably buying the outbound legs as singles as soon as they become available, then later picking up the return legs the day they become available and adding them to the booking over the phone to BA call centre in Japan (this sounds worse than it is. BA releases seats at about 1am in the morning, so to get the inbound pair you need to be on the phone the moment they are released. The only BA call centre that is then open is the one in Japan, but thankfully they have people there who know exactly how to add a return pair of seats to an existing one way outbound using Avios and a 241).

[seaninog]

Thanks guys.

The flight I want to take is October 2019 so I'm aware how restrictive the flights are and trying to be prepared.

I am already using the card for household purchases but that isn't going to get me to where I need to be as quickly as I need it to. Are there any ideas for prepaying where I could buy something that I can use over time?

[iphonedyou]

seaninog said:

A friend and I are looking to take a trip to Australia next year and as I have a lot of Avios/BA Airmails built up, I thought we could do this is style in Business Class using a companion voucher from BA Amex.

The challenge is to spend £20,000 on Amex and my query to the community is how can this be done in a way that doesn't see me buying rubbish I don't need or paying over the odds for something.

For example, can you buy prepaid vouchers for Sainsbury's or some supermarket where I know we would use them over time? What other prepayments could be made on Amex?

Anyone got any suggestions?

Pay £195 for the premium card and only spend £10k, as above.

[DSLiverpool]

Guys slight hijack, we manage peoples adwords spend and currently we are on £30k a month can I just use a AMEX card instead of bank debits or do they have a rule about not using for Google etc?

Cheers

[James_B]

DSLiverpool said:

Guys slight hijack, we manage peoples adwords spend and currently we are on £30k a month can I just use a AMEX card instead of bank debits or do they have a rule about not using for Google etc?

Cheers

Google is free.

[trowelhead]

DSLiverpool said:

Guys slight hijack, we manage peoples adwords spend and currently we are on £30k a month can I just use a AMEX card instead of bank debits or do they have a rule about not using for Google etc?

Cheers

I put adwords and fb ads on amex no issues.

As above, the BA specific card is a £10k spend to get the companion voucher

I got mine a few months ago but had no idea it was so complex to use!

Is i worth "saving" for first class or would business be a good experience long haul?

I've only ever flown economy

[trowelhead]

Oh, this podcast was what first put me onto all this:

https://omny.fm/shows/mark-my-words/3-3-how-to-acc...

[anonymous-user]

James_B said:

DSLiverpool said:

Guys slight hijack, we manage peoples adwords spend and currently we are on £30k a month can I just use a AMEX card instead of bank debits or do they have a rule about not using for Google etc?

Cheers

Google is free.

Lol. Adwords certainly isn't free.

DSLiverpool - yes you can switch your client's Adwords account from payment via bank transfer to payment via Amex instead. Just get an Amex corporate account and settle at the end of the month.

One point to bear in mind though is the potential bad debt risk i.e. if you pay your client's adwords bill in order to accrue the Amex points, what happens if your client decides not to reimburse you for some reason? You will end up paying Google and will then be left trying to recover the costs from your customer. Worth considering as a risk imho.

[anonymous-user]

trowelhead said:

Is i worth "saving" for first class or would business be a good experience long haul?

I've only ever flown economy

Definitely always worth travelling first on BA if it is available. Heathrow first lounges are also far better (and MUCH less crowded).

Issue will be finding the availability when you want to travel rather than additional points.

[trowelhead]

EddieSteadyGo said:

trowelhead said:

Is i worth "saving" for first class or would business be a good experience long haul?

I've only ever flown economy

Definitely always worth travelling first on BA if it is available. Heathrow first lounges are also far better (and MUCH less crowded).

Issue will be finding the availability when you want to travel rather than additional points.

Thanks, i'll wait until i have enough points for first then. I have no destination in mind yet, i'm flexible to going anywhere with availability as strange as that sounds.

[QuartzDad]

The BA forum on flyertalk.com, everything you ever wanted to know about Avios, 241 vouchers and redemptios.

[James_B]

trowelhead said:

I put adwords and fb ads on amex no issues.

As above, the BA specific card is a £10k spend to get the companion voucher

I got mine a few months ago but had no idea it was so complex to use!

Is i worth "saving" for first class or would business be a good experience long haul?

I've only ever flown economy

In my opinion business is worth it, but first (on BA) is not. Even flying to California the extra service just is not different enough to justify the huge extra cost for thirteen hours in the air. You still get a flat bed in business, nice service and so on, just lesser quality wine and a bit more food choice.

[anonymous-user]

James_B said:

trowelhead said:

I put adwords and fb ads on amex no issues.

As above, the BA specific card is a £10k spend to get the companion voucher

I got mine a few months ago but had no idea it was so complex to use!

Is i worth "saving" for first class or would business be a good experience long haul?

I've only ever flown economy

In my opinion business is worth it, but first (on BA) is not. Even flying to California the extra service just is not different enough to justify the huge extra cost for thirteen hours in the air. You still get a flat bed in business, nice service and so on, just lesser quality wine and a bit more food choice.

Wrong end of the stick I'm afraid. He isn't asking if it is worth spending extra money on first. The thread is about using Avios and companion vouchers. The "cost" of an avios long haul business class flight depends whether it has been categorised as high or low demand, but it is safe to assume the return cost is circa 150,000 points + £600'ish. The first class equivalent is 200,000 points plus about the same of pounds (from memory).

So the question is whether it is worth around 50,000 avios to fly first rather than business. If you assume the value of 1 avios point is about 1p, and you can also use a companion voucher, the extra cost is the equivalent of around £250 per ticket. Hence why it is a no-brainer imo.

But as I say, the problem is finding availability. On that topic, I can recommend this tool. Makes life much easier than using the BA website to find scarce availability.

https://baredemptionfinder.com

[James_B]

EddieSteadyGo said:

Wrong end of the stick I'm afraid. He isn't asking if it is worth spending extra money on first. The thread is about using Avios and companion vouchers. The "cost" of an avios long haul business class flight depends whether it has been categorised as high or low demand, but it is safe to assume the return cost is circa 150,000 points + £600'ish. The first class equivalent is 200,000 points plus about the same of pounds (from memory).

So the question is whether it is worth around 50,000 avios to fly first rather than business. If you assume the value of 1 avios point is about 1p, and you can also use a companion voucher, the extra cost is the equivalent of around £250 per ticket. Hence why it is a no-brainer imo.

But as I say, the problem is finding availability. On that topic, I can recommend this tool. Makes life much easier than using the BA website to find scarce availability.

https://baredemptionfinder.com

Fair enough.

[seaninog]

EddieSteadyGo said:

Wrong end of the stick I'm afraid. He isn't asking if it is worth spending extra money on first. The thread is about using Avios and companion vouchers. The "cost" of an avios long haul business class flight depends whether it has been categorised as high or low demand, but it is safe to assume the return cost is circa 150,000 points + £600'ish. The first class equivalent is 200,000 points plus about the same of pounds (from memory).

So the question is whether it is worth around 50,000 avios to fly first rather than business. If you assume the value of 1 avios point is about 1p, and you can also use a companion voucher, the extra cost is the equivalent of around £250 per ticket. Hence why it is a no-brainer imo.

But as I say, the problem is finding availability. On that topic, I can recommend this tool. Makes life much easier than using the BA website to find scarce availability.

https://baredemptionfinder.com

No, I wasn't asking any of this I'm afraid. This thread has gone way off in a tangent.

For business I put all AdWords and Facebook ad spend on Amex and that earns points/Avios and I recommend anyone to do that.

But the Business Card can't earn you a BA Amex Companion voucher so I need to find personal spend to do that.

Yes, I am putting as much personal expenses through my personal card as I can but my question is, what else could I be putting on the card by way of pre-payments? The two rules I'm trying to follow are 1) not buying stuff I don't need or won't use and 2) not paying over the odds for something.

So far I've come up with:
- paying for next year's family holiday 12 months in advance
- Booking other travel arrangements far in advance
- Buying large quantities of small-sized, relatively expensive, non-perishable household items to store

And the suggestion about paying to upgrade to the Premium card is a good one as I checked with Amex today and any time I do this the miles I've already earned will be allocated to that new account so I can lower my target to £10k for just £195

The trouble here is that I have just 2-3 months to hit that target. That's why I'm looking for other ideas of vouchers or something that I can buy and use over the next few months or years.

Any thoughts?