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Bits: get 4500 Avios with Times Literary Supplement, Virgin Trains competition

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News in brief:

Get 4,500 Avios with a Times Literary Supplement subscription

Avios and the Times Literary Supplement have teamed up, offering 4,500 Avios points with a 12 months subscription.

Times Literary Supplement is published on a weekly basis and the annual subscription costs £115 with Direct Debit and £120 with Debit Card or Credit Card. This is 35% less than the newsstand price.

This offer is obviously not as generous as the Sunday Times Travel magazine subscription for £30 with 4,500 Avios points (which we managed to close down early!) but it may make a classy gift for someone.

The website to buy a subscription is here.

You can give either an Avios or BA Executive Club account to receive the 4,500 Avios points.  Select the programme you want to add the points to from the drop down menu and enter your number.

Virgin Trains

Virgin Trains launches a competition

Virgin Trains is running a silly but quick-to-enter competition until tomorrow.

Simply play Sants’s Slot Machine on this page of the Virgin Trains website and win one of three prizes:

A pair of First Class return tickets anywhere on the Virgin Trains West Coast network
£150 voucher for Virgin Experience Days
A year’s worth of wine (worth over £500) from Virgin Wines (four deliveries in total, first one for Christmas)

Select the prize you’d like to win and fill out your details including email address and date of birth.

The winner will be notified by 21st December.


How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards

How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (April 2025)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Virgin Points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.

You can choose from two official Virgin Atlantic credit cards (apply here, the Reward+ card has a bonus of 18,000 Virgin Points and the free card has a bonus of 3,000 Virgin Points):

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

18,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

3,000 bonus points, no fee and 1 point for every £1 you spend Read our full review

You can also earn Virgin Points from various American Express cards – and these have sign-up bonuses too.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for a year and comes with 20,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 20,000 Virgin Points.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 30,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with 50,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 50,000 Virgin Points.

The Platinum Card from American Express

80,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Small business owners should consider the two American Express Business cards. Points convert at 1:1 into Virgin Points.

American Express Business Platinum

50,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Virgin Points

Comments (41)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Cate says:

    My points arrived almost the same week. Still waiting the bonus points from Avios/BA’s shopping with a new partner initiative.

    • Pug 106 says:

      How often do you get the travel mag pls? I signed up September time and had one mag come thru quick but none since then. I thought it was monthly. No points tho’ 🙁

  • Alex W says:

    OT. I’ve just tried 4 different Amex in 3 different shops to buy stamps. 1 shop doesn’t take Amex, the other 2 shops do take them but they wouldn’t go through on the card machine. Anyone else having the same problem?

    Unless I go to a pub, restaurant or beauty salon, it looks like Shop Small has been another waste of time for me again this year.

    • aliks says:

      My freezer is now overflowing after 25 separate ShopSmall transactions – most have already credited the £5 back.

      • the-very-real-arry says:

        I think I only managed about 75 transactions this year, mostly stamps & some beer when they didn’t have stamps – not enough time what with other stuff going on

        couple of pub lunches

        • mark2 says:

          I am retired so plenty of time to faff about.
          I have managed 148 with no problems in payment except one shop which I have had to claim for. I even got a surprise one for a large payment at a very un-small chain of seven new car dealerships.

          • the-very-real-arry says:

            That makes you King of Shop Small so far this year 🙂

            O/T just got back from collecting my wife @ the airport – out at our place for Xmas – minor nightmare journey with fog her end, an hour’s delay then awful fog this end – big smiles all round as opposed to scowls as we got here/ home safely etc – feel very sorry for people who have had holiday plans ruined today and there’ll be more what with the strikes

    • Fenny says:

      There are so few places where I live that take Amex and even fewer I’d actually want to spend money in that it’s always a waste of time for me.

  • Bob says:

    My 4500 STTM points posted 30 Nov, after having complained a few weeks earlier (asked to confirm BAEC account number and name) and also received the “we are having difficulties, hold on” email that many others got.

    While they did eventually post, the apparent fragility of their operations would make me reluctant to take part in any offer from then again.

    OTOH I might now cancel my subscription for a partial refund, given the rough process so far I find it likely that they don’t have a mechanism in place to claw back avios.

  • rams1981 says:

    I did a spend online with my first years which had a £10 off £50 Amex offer. It also credited £5 for shop small. Nice little bonus

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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