A reader reached out to me on Instagram last night to share an incredible offer found within the Capital One Offers login: spend $1,000 or more at British Airways, earn 50,000 Capital One miles. That’s a pretty amazing return on airfare, though you might need to make sure that you spend $1,000 before taxes.
The Deal
- Capital One Offers has a new offer out for some Capital One cardholders that provides the chance to earn 50,000 miles after $1,000 in purchases with British Airways
Key Terms
- Spend requirement must be met in a single transaction
- Not eligible for short-haul flights
- Not eligible for Gold Guest List, Gold, Silver, and Bronze club tiers
Quick Thoughts
The merchant terms here seem to stipulate that the total purchase must be $1,000 “before taxes”, though it is unclear to me whether Capital One even receives a breakdown of fare vs taxes when you make an airfare purchase (unlike a merchandise purchase, where the reported amount is usually the amount before tax).
Still, a return of what is 50X on $1,000 worth of airfare is pretty wild. Given our Reasonable Redemption Value for Capital One miles, that’s like $725 worth of miles — a huge return on that level of spend. And that’s just the RRV — 50,000 miles could be enough miles for a one-way business class award flight to Europe in some cases, so it could certainly be worth more than the cost of the purchase if you maximize the use of the miles.
Keep in mind the short-haul exclusion. It is also interesting that it seems this offer is not valid for British Airways frequent flyers, since Bronze, Silver, and Gold tier members appear to be excluded. That is interesting, though I suppose it would make sense that British Airways would like to incentivize new customers to come on board.
This is but one of many terrific new offers out today via Capital One Offers. As a reminder, Capital One Offers are a shopping portal-like set of offers that you can find within your Capital One credit card login (not to be confused with Capital One Shopping, the public portal that offers rewards redeemable for gift cards).
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
Just saw a 30,000 points offer for 1K spend at CheapCaribbean
Some things I found interesting about these spend x, get y offers:
They’re not card linked offers – you have to click through the link provided. So in that respect it’s more like a portal offer, just in the area where you would usually find card linked offers. That also presumably means that’s how they can monitor the transaction and determine the status of the customer and what they purchased to limit payouts on transactions that are just taxes.
What’s not clear to me is that BA’s high surcharges are mostly NOT taxes. Even in the receipt that BA sends out, redemption fees are broken out into “Government, authority and airport charges” which includes all taxes, and “British Airways fees and surcharges” which are usually the more substantial charges. By using the word “taxes” in the terms, that should mean that the fees are eligible. But who knows what they will actually reward in the end if your fare shows $0.00 and that was their intention.
I am not targeted for any of these spend x, get y offers. British Airways for me just shows 2x. But P2 has tons of these, and some of them have both spend x, get y and the standard card linked offer.
For some of the offers there’s both an online and in-store offer. When you click to activate, it takes you to the website of the merchant, but also adds the card linked offer to the account. So you can’t stack, but you get the online offer if you click through from the “portal”, and get the in-store offer using the card at the store.
I got the same offer, additionally, i also had ABT.com offer to spen $950 and get 45000 miles and Lenovo to spend $1000 and get 50000 miles.
I got 30k and need to book some BA flights! If I book round trip from BOS-GLA via LHR, will the LHR-GLA portion be considered a short haul and void my offer?