In late 2015 Iberia sold Avios points cheaply through Groupon Spain, selling bundles of points which allowed you to cheaply get your hands on a number of Avios. That deal is now back, and running until 27th April.
Avios are easily and cheaply redeemable into Qantas domestic and trans-tasman flights, most cost-effectively in Business Class.
Buying heaps of Avios in this promotion is not for the faint hearted. It will require you to go through multiple frustrating steps to buy points which may then not be fulfilled properly. But if you have patience and are not risk-averse, then it’s worth a look, as the returns could be high.
I didn’t post about the original deal prominently (it featured in the deals section quickly) due to the complexity.
Groupon is essentially allowing you to buy up to 60,000 Avios at around 1.3c AUD per point, which when redeemed via British Airways would have you flying in Business Class between Sydney and Melbourne with Qantas for around $120.
Once purchased and showing in your Iberia account, you’d then get most value by transferring the Avios into a British Airways Executive Club account where Qantas flights can be redeemed online.
Others have already written very comprehensive guides to how the Iberia deal works. Here are the best:
- Head for Points: It’s back – buy up to 60,000 cheap Avios, from 0.7p, via Groupon!
- One Mile at a Time: The Most Bizarre Mileage Purchase Deal I’ve Ever Seen
Make sure you read those guides thoroughly before going for it. Why Iberia Plus are not selling Avios directly instead, I don’t know, for some reason Groupon has to be involved which makes things a lot more complex.
I took this offer up last time around and got lucky – all my Avios credited without any issue. But I have heard of many who haven’t and resorted to Paypal or credit card chargebacks.
If you do decide to go for it, good luck. I won’t be dipping my toe in this time around!
Hypothesis proved: You can set-up multiple Groupon accounts to get multiples of the best-value coupons.
There’s still 304 points owing from the Iberia PluStore referral, but Given how long it takes places like CashRewards to unshackle referral rebates, I’d expect the PluStore points to take the full 40 days to clear (or more).
Sounds like the “Multiple Groupon account” hack could benefit from World Traveller’s referral discount too (Which seems to be here: https://www.groupon.es/visitor_referral/raf)
I make no assertions about the morality of all this – I just did it as a hacking exercise (I suspect my 4000-ish points are just going to rot on the vine).
Last time this offer was running I clicked the ‘Invite your friend to Groupon’ link, and setup my partner’s account. When buying Avios today I had a very pleasant surprise of seeing the purchase being discounted by €6 which is the ‘refer a friend’ bonus.
We’ll see if either or both of my coupons actually results in points in the account, or if I get thrown out of the temple.
I’m at the “Wait up to 30 days for the points to credit” phase, so I’ll give y’all an update in a month or less as-to how it goes.
I’m wondering what it is that prevents purchasing more than 1 x 2000-point coupon. It looks like you might be able to register using multiple email addresses to get around this.