The UK Chase debit card currently offers a 1% cashback on certain purchases. I assume there are other cards that have similar deals
I am due to top up my electricity account. If I were to use my BA Barclaycard and pay £100 this would earn me 100 Avios. However, my Chase card would earn me cashback of £1. I can then use this exact amount to triple boost 132 Avios that I have in hand to earn myself 108 Avios. The purchase itself would generate another 1p cashback.
This makes even more sense overseas, where the Barclaycard has a mark-up of 2.99%. Thus, a purchase costing the foreign currency equivalent of £100 comes effectively to £99 using the Chase card, but to £102.99 with the Barclaycard.
I suppose the only advantage of using the Barclaycard (for UK purchases at any rate) is that there is a minimum of month's grace before it needs to be paid off. Thus, the £100 could be sitting in a high interest savings account for that period: at 5%, this would earn 42p. I am not sure the trade-off would be worth it.
What do others think? Is there a flaw in my reasoning somewhere?
(By the way I am able to use small amounts of Avios to boost by earning 2 Avios a time for NOT taking Avios for Thoughts surveys! Thus I am able to boost the correct amount to reach 132, as in the example above)