Iberia and Avis had a deal for 18k Avios for renting a car over a Spanish holiday weekend last year. They also had a deal for 9k Avios per weekend rental which ran for almost 2 months earlier this year. I rented a car for 3 of those weekends when the rates were cheap...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/iberi...vios-deal.html

There was also a convoluted route to earn 2400 Avios per HP printer cartridge purchased earlier this year and I got some good mileage out of that.

Also, 250 miles per ebook purchase earlier this year. The point is that these deals do still crop up from time to time but often don't hang around for long...