Virgin Upper from Manchester

[YorkshireT]

Originally Posted by eaglesrest

As stated, points are only credited for flights flown and then to the specific flyer. Your wife and kids should have their own VA accounts to maximise this.

You can't transfer miles between accounts without paying a ridiculous fee so don't do that. When it comes to redemption some agents will let you take miles from multiple accounts but it's not officially allowed so needs some patience.

For flights flown/upcoming you can get miles boosters which tend to work out good value. They are even better value during a VA miles booster sale so watch out for them. You can get the booster anytime up to when the flight departs and up to 6 months after I believe, so it's all about buying at the best time. They won't be credited until after the flight is flown. Miles boosters can also be earned on reward flights which is really useful when you only ever fly on reward flights.

Amex platinum rewards is the best option for a miles bonus. Get the card, meet the spend criteria then cancel for a pro-rata refund of the fee. You then need to wait another 2 years to reapply and get the bonus, or 6 months if applying for a business credit card. Your wife could also apply once every 2 years.

Next, get the VA credit card+. Wait until the intro bonus is at a decent amount as they fluctuate throughout the year. Use this for all purchases, especially VA purchases which are 3 miles per pound spent.

The value of a mile varies depending on what you use it for - if you are getting a full reward seat redemption in UC it's worth more than if you did the same in Eco. Generally speaking I've worked it out at 1.5p per mile if redeemed in PE and 2-2.5 in UC, but varies depending on route and cash cost of the equivalent seat bought with real money.
In reality your AMEX cashback card wont beat the value of using the VA CC so you could dump that, although cash is always more flexible.

I have the costco tru earnings card which used to give 2% cashback for travel and 3% for restaurants, 1% everything else. That has just been cancelled by AMEX - too good to be true I guess, so now I'll use AMEX reward card if trying to get the intro bonus, and then VA for everything once AMEX bonus achieved.

Tesco clubcard points are another good option - just get fuel and some points will be transferred regularly. This also stops miles from expiring which would have saved your 35k points. Not really an issue if you have the VA CC though.

When it comes to spending that's a whole other topic. Your goal for maximum savings is to get full reward flights ideally in PE or above, and there are various strategies to do that. You can't just ad-hoc login and hope to bag a peak hols reward. It wont work and that's why people get discouraged and say they cant use the miles.

You can't upgrade Eco Light or PE K class tix but everything else is fair game. Best value use of points is full reward rather than upgrade, unless you can spy a really cheap cash tix and there is reward availability in the next class up.

I book rewards every other year, sometimes every year, for our family of 4 and an extended 'family' of 3, so 7 tix in total. We travel over easter, May half-term or Summer hols (late August) and have always managed to bag everyone a full reward seat from MAN. It was tougher than ever this year but we still managed it with a little flexibility.

The savings are well worth the effort, and with DVC encouraging frequent trips and VA racking up the cash fares, it almost becomes a necessity.

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Thanks- it sounds a hell of a lot of work. I looked yesterday at booking miles seats and every day I tried it said no availability. We are not flexible at the moment in that I need to book school hols, and have my DVC booked 7 months out. So if I’m left with Miles, I’d rather I think stick with my £500 cash a year I get roughly. Also this putting the miles on separate accounts- they didn’t used to do that I’m sure? If I could be guaranteed all these deals then I could make a decision to dump the 1% cash back card but seems I can’t?

[eaglesrest]

Originally Posted by YorkshireT

Thanks- it sounds a hell of a lot of work. I looked yesterday at booking miles seats and every day I tried it said no availability. We are not flexible at the moment in that I need to book school hols, and have my DVC booked 7 months out. So if I’m left with Miles, I’d rather I think stick with my £500 cash a year I get roughly. Also this putting the miles on separate accounts- they didn’t used to do that I’m sure? If I could be guaranteed all these deals then I could make a decision to dump the 1% cash back card but seems I can’t?

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There's a bit to it, but no more complex than getting the best value out of DVC points. Walking BCV for both a 1 and 2 bedroom for 2 weeks over memorial weekend in 2019 was way more effort than getting the flights For reference we got 2 x UC return, 2 x UC out/PE in, 3 x PE return for £3.3k on that trip.

Once you have the idea it becomes routine, and the savings are potentially huge.

You have more flexibility than you think. Reward seats can be cancelled and amended for a minimal fee, as can DVC (for free), so forget 7 months, book at 11 months when flights are released.

If you know your dates in advance then why wait until a specific hotel is available at 7 months? Work DVC hotel around the flights. As you know 1 bedroom DVC is easy, and you'll always get something at SSR/OKW.

There are hidden costs to offset against the headline reward flight price, like credit card annual fees, and cost for purchasing miles via booster, but ultimately you will be saving 10's of thousands over a few trips assuming you can outlay enough to get the amex bonuses.

[THOscar]

I'm not going to pretend I'm the most efficient with our airmile collecting as I know there's a lot more ways to get them than we use. Saying that, we started collecting miles in October 2015 when we (2 of us) paid for VA flights. Since then we've had reward flights for our honeymoon in June 2017 (PE both ways) and then UC out/PE return in November 2019.

The main way we've collected miles beyond the ones for our original flights (you don't get miles for reward flights unfortunately) is from the VA credit card. Since using all our miles in December 2018 when we booked our November flights we're back up to nearly 40k miles again. We shop in Tesco mostly and convert club card points too. Occasionally I'll see an easy way to pick up some extra miles but don't go out of my way to do this.

Each time I've wanted flights for a specific date due to time booked with work etc and never had a problem getting them. You do need to check every day from release as there's no predicting when exactly seats will become available.

As another poster said, if you can wrap your head around DVC, airmiles and reward seats are a doddle.

[stanleycamel]

Originally Posted by YorkshireT

4- its always 5k each. I dont know about the points issue, lost 35k points a while back as could never use them. I get £500+ back on my Amex each year, no points though.

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I agree with the various ways to collect points without flying but one simple way to keep your Flying Club account current is by using the "Shopping Partners" facility once a year. For instance, buying something online from M&S or John Lewis using the link on your FC sign in. It really is worth it - 35K was a lot for you to lose so hopefully the hints given here will help.

It really is worth putting in a little time to get to grips with the basics of how things work and it will pay dividends for you in future.

[eaglesrest]

Originally Posted by THOscar

I'm not going to pretend I'm the most efficient with our airmile collecting as I know there's a lot more ways to get them than we use. Saying that, we started collecting miles in October 2015 when we (2 of us) paid for VA flights. Since then we've had reward flights for our honeymoon in June 2017 (PE both ways) and then UC out/PE return in November 2019.

The main way we've collected miles beyond the ones for our original flights (you don't get miles for reward flights unfortunately) is from the VA credit card. Since using all our miles in December 2018 when we booked our November flights we're back up to nearly 40k miles again. We shop in Tesco mostly and convert club card points too. Occasionally I'll see an easy way to pick up some extra miles but don't go out of my way to do this.

Each time I've wanted flights for a specific date due to time booked with work etc and never had a problem getting them. You do need to check every day from release as there's no predicting when exactly seats will become available.

As another poster said, if you can wrap your head around DVC, airmiles and reward seats are a doddle.

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Spot on, but you can technically get miles from reward flights using the miles boosters.

During the booster sale we paid a total of £493.80 for just short of 70,000 miles on an upcoming reward trip in Summer this year. While not free, the cost is about 0.7p per mile, offset against a value of 1-2.5p per redeemed mile making it a reasonable purchase.

Key is to get the boosters during the booster sale.

While purchasing miles isn't the best option, rewards can only be used if you actually have enough points and this is another way of building that big point balance. The value from cheaper options like Amex bonus ultimately dilutes the cost of these miles significantly.

[PoohBears#1fan]

Do you all find the VA credit card better than Amex? I put everything through Amex and clear it each month which adds up nicely, haven't looked into the VA card, I don't like to have too many credit applications - I was a CC free zone prior to collecting air miles!

[THOscar]

Originally Posted by eaglesrest

Spot on, but you can technically get miles from reward flights using the miles boosters.

During the booster sale we paid a total of £493.80 for just short of 70,000 miles on an upcoming reward trip in Summer this year. While not free, the cost is about 0.7p per mile, offset against a value of 1-2.5p per redeemed mile making it a reasonable purchase.

Key is to get the boosters during the booster sale.

While purchasing miles isn't the best option, rewards can only be used if you actually have enough points and this is another way of building that big point balance. The value from cheaper options like Amex bonus ultimately dilutes the cost of these miles significantly.

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Didn't know that! Wish I had done as definitely would've used it on our last trip. One for the future!

[THOscar]

Originally Posted by PoohBears#1fan

Do you all find the VA credit card better than Amex? I put everything through Amex and clear it each month which adds up nicely, haven't looked into the VA card, I don't like to have too many credit applications - I was a CC free zone prior to collecting air miles!

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I actually didn't realise there was an Amex you can get airmiles with, as we just automatically swapped to the virgin money one when they stopped the MBNA partnership.

Do you get the companion voucher on the amex, as we've found that helpful with the VM one.

[PoohBears#1fan]

Originally Posted by THOscar

I actually didn't realise there was an Amex you can get airmiles with, as we just automatically swapped to the virgin money one when they stopped the MBNA partnership.

Do you get the companion voucher on the amex, as we've found that helpful with the VM one.

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I don't know the answer to that, I purely convert the Amex Avios to VA flying club points, the bonus is that if it's money spent abroad or with Virgin Atlantic then it's 2 miles for every £, never explored the companion vouchers.

I'm still very new to properly collecting airmiles myself after advice in Oct '18 to get an Amex to put a purchase through specifically for the airmiles, up until then I'd only ever collected them very slowly after flights and only ever had enough for the occasional upgrade. Since getting into them properly we've had 2 x UC reward flights & 2 UC upgrades and are back up to over 100.000 miles again, so will boost our reward flights next month then should have enough for 2 more UC reward flights for next year.

[YorkshireT]

Oh I’m at expert at DVC, far from expert at this. So I spend around 40k+ a year on my credit card (never buy anything cash, put all holidays on it, DVC dues, business expenses etc) would I be better doing this than getting 400-500 cash back? This would take some ‘selling’ to Mrs YT. Which credit card would I get and how many points would I get for this and what could I get for those points for flights in summer holidays and/ or Xmas? Sorry for so many questions. I’ve just been looking at this £120 pa Virgin card.
Still angry with myself for losing 40k Miles if I could have used them. But I gave up and then forgot.