wemyss

Yes still going strong.Electric plug is one of those large round head pins, but I'm sure it's safe enough?
Went to New York.

SA100

What was the Birds Eye promotion people mention? Free flights with Fish Fingers?

Fraser

If it's the one I think it is then back in the early and mid 2000s Tesco had some ridiculous Clubcard earning deals, one of which was this low rent microwaveable beef dish. At the time I was a student working at a high street bank and one of my regular, daily customers had a Jack Russell Terrier and I decided to donate it to the pup. I subsequently felt bad as I watched the guy put on a few pounds during the course of the promotion!

The best earning was palmier biscuits...can't remember the actual ratio of points earned (if you search for the word you'll no doubt find the link to the thread from around 2004) but it was certainly lucrative enough to buy anything you could find. I had a Tesco Express across the way from where I worked, where I'd clear them out at lunch, then clear out the bigger Tesco on the way home every single day. I had hundreds of boxes....some smarter people would buy the same boxes over and over again I gave mine to the swans in the canal where I worked (although a coworker noted the high saturated fat content wasn't good for them in bulk quantity so I donated them to a church group!)

The best earner for me was Tesco Finest Coffee as it earned a pretty decent bonus but I was able to resell this back to my employer at face value.

I also did some other crackers things for BA miles through Tesco in that era. I recall buying broken mobile phones on eBay because Tesco had some huge promotion for phone recycling...then there was huge earning on Clubcard vouchers that came when you signed up for the " Tesco Baby Club" except you had to name a child...my parents were horrified when, whilst at University, all this promotional baby material referencing a child they had no knowledge of started showing up at their house.

At one time there was a "Premium" level whereby you could earn 800 BA Miles for every 250 Clubcard points you transferred over to BAEC so some of the quarterly Tesco earnings quoted by people were eyewatering.

Edit: Tesco and BA The Palmiers earned 100 Clubcard bonus points for £2.18 spend.

There was also an American Express prepaid travel card that you could load up from a miles earning credit card and withdraw at face value minus a tiny ATM fee. That turned me into a borderline money launderer moving tens of thousands of pounds a month through various bank accounts as I'd pay the cash in and then use that to pay my credit card....and one month when Travelex at Gatwick were doing a flat £2 commission regardless of how much you obtained, so I took tens of thousands in cash and bought Sterling travellers cheques which I then paid back into my bank account. Of course for every £1 exchanged at Travelex I earned something like 20,000 BA miles for £2.

All this madness ended for me when I emigrated to the US out of University in 2005 so didn't keep up with what happened after that...

EMA ON BA

A niche one for me was learning that UK Tesco Clubcards worked in Ireland. They went through a spell of offering a 50% rebate on all purchases of alcohol which proved very lucrative!

So €100 spend on beer, wine etc. equalled 5,000 Clubcard points = 12,000 miles.

Raffles

I used to do the Travelex thing. Go up to Midland at lumchtime (now The Ned) and withdraw £9000, tube to Heathrow after work, buy 3 x £3k travellers cheques at different Travelex, pay in at the bank the next day (no longer allowed by most banks).

LSunbury

I remember some mobile phone contract at Tesco which involved signing up for a year, getting afree phone and a huge number of points. I sold the phone immediately, which just about paid for the contract, then waited the 45 days or whatever for the points to arrive.

They didn't arrive so I phoned Tesco and eventually got them added manually. Then they were added again a couple of weeks later!

The result was our first upper deck 747 experience, to Vancouver.

I do miss the Clubcard points offers!

DYKWIA

ISTR one version of this was limited to £2.5k per month, but you got 3 Avios per £ spent - so 7500 a month. Order online via a debit card, and then pick up at the airport. The main issue was that they'd give the cheques in low denominations (£25 & £50), and you then had to sign each one.

The girl that worked in the bank would roll her eyes as I walked in to pay them back into my account

The bonus Avios didn't tend to post automatically, so I'd email Mr McDermott (I think) at Travelex to sort it out - which he generally did very quickly.

DYKWIA

There was another Tesco offer which was 1000 points for buying a particular Nokia phone that was locked to the Tesco network.

I went round all the local Tescos buying them up, and then spent the evening unlocking them so they'd work on any network (the was a code generator available on the web).

Then sell them on Ebay for about the same price as I'd bought them.

After a few rounds of this, I got a tap on the shoulder from security at St. Helens Tesco and told I would not be allowed to buy any more phones, as there were never any available for other customers

DYKWIA

Of course, this all then became irrelevant when somebody pointed out that if you booked a BA fully refundable flight, you still got the Avios and tier points if you subsequently cancelled over the phone.

Book a refundable flight LHR-SYD return for the following day, cancel, and get 800 TPs (I think) posted a couple of days later. Do it twice for Gold status.

I found this out by accident. I cancelled a short haul flight and the points posted. I posted it on here, and had *loads* of PMs telling me to remove my post... So, I must have been late to the game

HIDDY

And they had the cheek to complain about the Monopole!!

Jimmie76

There was a mother at my school who bought Hoovers and then had the call centre try and fob her off. She was told the only available flights were from Glasgow when she said she lived in London. They were at the crack of dawn and on a Wednesday or something like that to make it extra inconvenient. She said she'd take them and got her free flights. My memory isn't great on this but I think it may well have been BA she flew with. I remember her bragging about getting the flights and possibly that she had to start the trip in Glasgow and then fly to London, switch airports and then do the TATL trip.

Jimmie76

I had so many of those biscuits that I didn't know what to do with them. Eventually gave a few boxes to friends and the rest went to the Salvation Army who were delighted with them.

no longer atc

I got my flights, and so did my parents ! I was working for BA at the time, and wondered how in hell Hoover were gonna pull this off, so as I needed a new Hoover anyways went ahead and bought one, as did my folks. After the initial fobbing off with an offer of 2 seats ex GLA (rather than the requested LGW) on a sunday morning, I did a bit of digging. Spoke to friends who worked on the BA tkt desk, and they "let slip" that Unijet, were administering the scheme-if I recall this correctly! They (naughtily) gave me Unijets number, and after a quick conversation with them, they offered me 2 seats on my preferred date ex LGW- same for parents ex MAN . On the day, the flight was oversold in Y and they were looking for "SFUs"...ended up in J to NYC. Great flights.

SA100

I was helping my friend clear out their parent's house yesterday - we found 4 of these Red Hoovers in the loft, Boxed unused. The whole Hoover Free Flights still makes me LOL. We can only prey for another Marketing disaster to fall in our laps. I feel this maybe a once in a century event tho...