53754 Miles Later, I’ve Taken British Airways Avios By Storm

When two of my favorite drugs come hand in hand (miles and shopping), it’s really hard to say no to temptation, especially when Valentine’s Day is right around the corner and I have some bargaining leeway with Kevin (just kidding- I’m self-sufficient, I swear).

Last Friday, The Points Guy posted an insane offer – Triple Points at Nordstrom through British Airways e-store using promo code NORDX3 (P.S. – reader Joseph just told me that now you might have to manually type out the promo code letter by letter if code doesn’t work via copy & paste). Since the normal earnings-rate was 12 points/$1. Multiply that by 3 and you have a lucrative 36 points per/$1 spent at Nordstrom! You can sense my excitement about this offer by seeing the text message conversation I had with Kevin in my previous post.

With that said, it was time to go shopping! I decided to go through with purchasing a designer bag I’ve been eyeing for a year or so. When I think about the price, I feel an anxiety attack coming on, so I’ll pretend it didn’t cost $1,395. I’ll have to keep thinking about the free flights that come along with it, and frankly, that makes me more excited than the bag.

The purse I chose was the Chloe Ethel satchel.

Seeing this many pending miles makes my heart flutter <3.

When British Airways changed their miles program last year, the program received a lot of harsh criticism because there was a significant and obvious devaluation of the miles when redeeming for some major International routes (thank God we booked our upcoming first-class Hong Kong trip literally days before the program changed).

However, there is an obvious ribbon of hope when it comes to using Avios with short-haul domestic flights, which I decided would be great for some last minute getaways (I love those), or if I should need to travel on the spur of the moment for an audition or work.

For example, traveling from JFK to Toronto only “costs” 4,500 Avios each way plus minor taxes. A flight to Miami or Chicago from JFK is 7,500 Avios one way, and getting to Cancun from JFK is only 10,000 Avios each way. You get where I’m going with this.

Just when you though you’ve had the best, another easy offer of 3,000 Avios comes through. Thanks again to The Points Guy, you can now earn 3,000 additional Avios just by signing up with a free trial of RealtyTrac and canceling before 7 days (they will bill you after your trial is over).

Since 5.3 million other travel blogs have already covered the breakdown of the deal, I won’t go into specs. I’ll leave it to Brian, The Points Guy to explain.

[EDIT] Feb 9 11:42 AM EST: As of last night, we found out that the RealtyTrac BA offer was actually unauthorized by RealtyTrac. Take a look at TPG’s very recent post about this matter here.

For now, I’m crossing my fingers that I book this Samsung Galaxy commercial that I’ve been put on first refusal for (acting lingo defined: client’s strong consideration). I mean I do have to pay for the purse somehow…