Buy Avios for 1.26 Cents Each by Stacking Two Deals

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Note: Some of the offers mentioned below may have changed or are no longer be available. You can view current offers here.

• Groupon Spain is having a sale on Iberia Avios, offering them for 1.38 cents each.
• Iberia has a portal that allows you to earn 8 Avios per euro on the purchase of Groupons.
• Those extra Avios bring the effective purchase price down to 1.26 cents each.
• You can freely transfer Iberia Avios to British Airways Avios if both your Iberia and British Airways accounts are 90 days old.
• Both types of Avios are worth well more than 1.26 cents each.

Preparation

The only three things you need to make this deal work are a credit card that charges no foreign transaction fees, the Google Chrome browser, and Iberia and British Airways accounts that have preferably been open for 90+ days. If you don’t have those three things, get them for this and future deals.

My favorite credit card with no foreign transaction fee is the Citi Prestige® Card because it offers 50,000 bonus points after spending $3,000 in the first three months, 3x points on hotels and airfare, a $250 Air Travel Credit each year, lounge access, and 2x points on restaurants and entertainment.

Occasionally deals or useful information related to our hobby are only available in a foreign language. Chrome‘s built-in translator is awesome.

You can open an Iberia account here and a British Airways account here. Once both are 90+ days old, you can freely transfer miles between the two. The programs have slight differences, so this is very useful. Sign up now for the many future deals when you will want to transfer between the two, and put your log in information in your Award Wallet account, so you have it for the next deal.

Execution

1. Go to the Iberia Plus portal.

2. Search for Groupon. This deal is based on Groupon offering 8 Avios / €1.

Keep clicking through until you get this final confirmation and click “Continue.”

You can now be confident that the portal is tracking your shopping with cookies, so that you will be awarded 8 bonus Avios per euro.

3. Go to the Avios Offer on Groupon.es

4. Make your purchase with a no-foreign-transaction-fee card.

You have four options: 4,000, 8,000, 12,000, and 20,000 Avios. (Unfortunately 2,000–the best deal–sold out.) You can buy five total packages, meaning you are limited to buying 100,000 Avios. The 4,000 to 12,000 point packages are almost identical in price, while the 20,000 point package is a few hundredths of a cent more expensive.

If you buy only the 4,000 packages (ie you buy 4,000 to 20,000 Avios), you can get Avios for 1.12 cents each.

You pay 49 euros for each package, which is $55.31 at current exchange rates. In exchange, you get 4,000 Avios plus 392 Avios (8 times 49) for buying through the portal. That’s like getting each of your 4,392 Avios for 1.26 cents.

5. Redeeming Groupons for Avios

One Mile at a Time has actually redeemed the purchased Groupons for Avios and like most people on FlyerTalk got errors before the redemption actually went through:

In a new tab/window, open this page, which will let you validate the Groupon. Enter the security code, the coupon code, and the email you used to register for Groupon.

Because this is where the fun starts, you’ll most likely receive an error message [that says your coupon has been used.]

Obviously your coupon hasn’t been used yet, and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why this fails.

Just keep entering your information until it actually works (for me this was 15 times, by which point I thought I was going completely crazy, because it’s not like this is a complicated form).

6. Optional: Transfer Iberia Avios to British Airways Avios

Once you have all the Avios, you can determine which program offers the better deals for your dream award. Usually, but not always, that is British Airways Avios. See Basics of British Airways Avios to learn more.

Here’s how to make the transfer.

Bottom Line

I value British Airways and Iberia Avios at 1.6 cents each. I normally say not to buy miles without an immediate use in mind, but 1.26 cents is on the border where I might buy Avios speculatively for myself.

This deal ends April 29 at 6 PM ET.