American Express Membership Rewards - Best use for UK Membership Rewards points

This is my first post.

I have a UK Platinum charge card and have accured 35,000 points. Any ideas for the best use for travel, I have no air miles accounts or similar but could open one if need be, is it better to convert than to take offers from AMEX website?

I was thinking about using them (all!) to get a business premier return on Eurostar, but that seems an inadequate reward for spending over £35K!!

Thanks

This is my first post.

I have a UK Platinum charge card and have accured 35,000 points. Any ideas for the best use for travel, I have no air miles accounts or similar but could open one if need be, is it better to convert than to take offers from AMEX website?

I was thinking about using them (all!) to get a business premier return on Eurostar, but that seems an inadequate reward for spending over £35K!!

Thanks


Transfer to BMI mate 1-1 . You can almost get a miles + Cash business to most destinations , South Africa USA etc, ( cant remember the exact amount , around 37,500 + £300... someone will confirm).

If you take out a 2 BMI credit cards ( read how to do so on the BMI board) you also can get another 40,000 miles.

Not an area I am to strong on. Do a search or check out the BMI board.

Definitely BMI. Whilst BMI doesn't fly far, you can redeem across Star Alliance - ie Lufthansa, Thai, Singapore Airlines, US Airways, United, South African Airways, Swiss, Austrian etc etc.

37,500 BMI miles plus £210 plus tax gets you business class to the US, 37500 + £255 gets you to Africa or the Caribbean.

For full details go to here: http://www.flybmi.com/bmi/en-gb/frequentflyers/waystospendmiles.aspx

and click on the 'click here' link in the last line of the text. This brings up a pop-up. Scroll down and you will see a table. This table shows you how many miles you need for an ECONOMY flight between two parts of the world. The figures in brackets are how many miles you need if you pay partially in cash. So, for example, the UK to USA (Zone 1 to Zone 5) is either 45,000 miles plus tax in Economy, or 25,000 miles plus £140 plus tax if you go 'part cash, part miles'.

For BUSINESS CLASS, add 50% to all of these numbers. So, UK to US is 67,500 miles, or 37,500 miles plus £210. For FIRST CLASS, double the number of miles and the cash part shown in the table.

You also get 20,000 miles by getting the free BMI Classic Mastercard by going to: http://www.flybmi.com/bmi/en-gb/frequentflyers/diamondclubpartners/bmicreditcard.aspx

For my next trick, once you've got your first 20,000 miles safely in your account, apply for the BMI £60 annual fee Mastercard by going again to: http://www.flybmi.com/bmi/en-gb/frequentflyers/diamondclubpartners/bmicreditcard.aspx You will get another 20,000 miles once you make your first purchase!

Do this and you will have 75,000 miles - enough for 2 people to get business class flights to the US, South Africa etc etc. This is at least £3,000 of value compared to the cheapest heavily discounted business class tickets available, which is not bad use of your points.

And welcome to FT! If you stick around you'll hopefully find more little tricks like this one which can make your life so much more pleasant!

(PS. To prove I practice what I preach, I just transferred my remaining 46,000 MR points to BMI to top up my account so I can book 2 First Class tickets to Asia.)

Hi,

You can also now use your points to pay for travel directly through your Platinum Travel service. It's worth giving them a call, as you can get great value through this route for flights or travel packages

Good luck

M
This is my first post.

I have a UK Platinum charge card and have accured 35,000 points. Any ideas for the best use for travel, I have no air miles accounts or similar but could open one if need be, is it better to convert than to take offers from AMEX website?

I was thinking about using them (all!) to get a business premier return on Eurostar, but that seems an inadequate reward for spending over £35K!!

Thanks

If you do this, you'll get AT BEST 1p per point of value - so £350 maximum of free travel. Whilst you can get what you want this way, it seems poor value compared to redeeming for a business class ticket to the US.

Hi,

You can also now use your points to pay for travel directly through your Platinum Travel service. It's worth giving them a call, as you can get great value through this route for flights or travel packages

Good luck

M


Totally agree with Raffels on this one . At 1p a mr reward point , very poor value, against a 1-1 BMI exchange.

Many thanks - I now have the BMI card and reckon that a couple of business class return trips with my wife to NYC are in sight!

(bit better than one return to Paris, however much I love that city!)

And for those of us residing outside the UK, even though I have my bmi account registered in Spain, I'm not able to do the transfer.. :confused:
But: As a second: SN-Brussels provides a fairly good value with Business tickets within Europe including Istanbul running at 25.0000 miles; 1:1 ratio.

You also get 20,000 miles by getting the free BMI Classic Mastercard by going to: http://www.flybmi.com/bmi/en-gb/frequentflyers/diamondclubpartners/bmicreditcard.aspx

For my next trick, once you've got your first 20,000 miles safely in your account, apply for the BMI £60 annual fee Mastercard by going again to: http://www.flybmi.com/bmi/en-gb/frequentflyers/diamondclubpartners/bmicreditcard.aspx You will get another 20,000 miles once you make your first purchase!

D

Excellent tip. thank you :)