Buy Avios for 1p each with this Iberia 50% bonus promo – but be careful!

Iberia Plus are running a 50% bonus promo when you buy Avios until 28th February.

You could get 300,000 Avios for 1p each, but you have to be careful and do it the right way. If you do it wrong, you could be paying a lot more than 1p.

Avios you buy at Iberia can easily be moved to your BA Executive Club account with the Combine my Avios function, but you can only transfer when your Iberia account is older than 90 days. A good reason to register for an Iberia Plus account now even if you have no plans to use it.

Is it worth buying Avios at 1p?

You can certainly get much more than 1p of value per Avios. If you have a specific redemption in mind, or you regularly redeem for better than this, then go ahead.

Buying speculatively is never a good idea. If you don’t have a definite plan then you risk wasting your money.

You have until the 28th to look at any trips you were thinking of, checking the price, checking availability, and making sure you will come out ahead. The Avios will be added to your account instantly.

Iberia often runs these promos but 50% is as good as it gets.

How to do it right

First, you need a credit card with a 0% foreign exchange fee. Regular credit cards typically have a 3% charge and you would have to factor that in to your value calculation.

You could use a card like Revolut which gives favourable exchange rates. You can get a free Revolut card and a £5 bonus after you make your first payment if you join through this link.

You can also use the Curve card for fee-free foreign currency transactions. Use the promo code WZJLW when you sign up for Curve and get £5 free after your first purchase.

Second, although the 50% bonus applies on the smallest purchase of 2000 Avios plus 1000 bonus, the pricing gets better when you buy more. The table below shows what you will be paying for each amount purchased.

Buy 2000 and you’ll pay 1.5p. Buy 15000 and it’s 1.08p. Buy 100k and it’s down to 1p.

Third, and here is the really important part – If the prices are in $ you will be paying much more.

If you visit the Iberia plus buy Avios page and the country is set to United Kingdom then the prices will be shown in US dollars and are much higher.

You must set the country to Spain (you can leave the language as English) and then you will see the € pricing which is much better.

It’s possible that they haven’t updated the USD costs yet, but right now buying 100k Avios with 50k bonus will cost you $2775, or if you switch the country to Spain it will cost €1800.

In GBP, that’s £2135 versus £1800.

You need to go to this page, then make sure that the country in the top menu bar is set to Spain.

With the country set to Spain, here’s what you will be paying per Avios according to the exchange rate I’m seeing on Google and not including any card fees. The best rates kick in at 100k Avios, but anything from around 25000 is reasonable and gives a cost that can easily be recouped if you have a plan.