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!
Right, the 304 Avios from IberiaPluStore have cleared into the main Iberia account. So FWIW it takes “40 days-ish” to clear the points. This is not unusually long, in my experience (Compared to some Australian shopping rewards sites).
Update: Checking around about 40 days after the purchase, the 304 Iberia PluStore referral points are still sitting in “Pending” state.
4000 Avios have cleared in my Iberia account. So it took 9 days for the vouchers to go through. I wasn’t around for the last promotion, but it sounded like a real shamozzle – this time it seems to be going swimmingly.
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).
I’ve bought Avios for both my partner and myself in the last promo and again this week – the whole process from start to finish was quick and easy. I checked on Iberia Plus Store and can see my click to Groupon today has tracked ok – you can see this in the ‘transaction & clicks history’.
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.
So far so good: Less that 24h later The IberiaPluStore has sent confirmation of the referral points from the 2 purchases. The bonus is 8 pointer per €, not the 5 points indicated in one of the articles, so that’s 304 extra points pending approval. The downside is the pending period is “up to 40 days” for these referral points, so… y’know… time passes.
Yup, With multiple groupon.es accounts/email addresses you can purchase 2+ of the 2000-point coupons.
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 just initiated a purchase for 2000 points for laughs. It seems the roadblock the One Mile at a Time article mentioned is nolonger the case (i.e. The continual failure to ?decode? the security-code and coupon code prior to entering your IB+ account ID).
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.
I never received the avios I bought on Groupon early January.Did anyone have problems? I emailed Iberia but never heard anything.
Several other folks I have spoken to ended up not getting some or all of theirs either, and ended up initiating chargebacks or paypal disputes. All successful in getting their money back from what I understand.
If your buying more than the 2k avios package your paying ~1.3 USD per point not AUD