Secret saving on London travels with Network Railcard
If you live in the UK you should be familiar with the railcards, as they give you a discount of 34% on the (ridiculously) expensive train tickets. I was once young too and had the 16-25 / 25-30 railcards, but those good times are gone.
A less useful or known one is the Network Railcard. It is available to anyone, but has tougher restrictions. It is valid only in Southeast England, and there’s a £13 minimum fare for travelling on weekdays.
It still has value though, as it covers a few major cities including London, Birmingham, Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol and Brighton. The reduction also works on airport trains to/from Luton, Stansted and Gatwick.
Even if you don’t travel outside London, the Network Railcard can buy you a discounted weekend Travelcard for London too, although it needs a workaround which I only found out by accident recently.
You can’t just buy the Travelcard straightaway, instead you need to search for a day return ticket between two London stations. This is what LNER offers for London Waterloo – Hampton Court with a Network Railcard:
As you can see, there’s a £10 Day Travelcard option which is valid for Zone 1-6. For comparison the regular price is £15.2, and Oyster daily cap is £14.9. Note that you must collect your paper ticket at a train station, as there’s no facility to do that in a tube station. The ticket is valid for tube / bus travels within Zone 6 and you don’t have to commence your travel at the station you selected.
A Network Railcard usually costs £30, but there are always some sales going on. Trip.com tends to offer it for less than £20, although do check the restrictions as you may need to buy a train ticket to activate the railcard.
£10 / €20 off all flights, every time, via Trip.com
Ctrip ( 携程 ) is the largest travel agency in China who owns Skyscanner and Trainpal, to name a few that our UK readers are familiar with. They bought the trip.com domain (which must have been pricy) a few years ago and Trip.com is now their international trading name.
Unlike Trainpal which makes frequent appearances on Hotukdeals etc and is now somewhat known to the British public, I don’t think Trip.com has been very successful in improving their international presence. It drives them to throwing in money on marketing to attract new customers.
There is a very good offer for flight bookings at the moment. You can see the details here.
- Book on the Trip.com mobile app
- £10 off all airfares of £100+
- £5 off all other airfares
- ANY flights excluding Mainland China domestic are eligible
Simple as that. Anyone can get at least £5 off any flight and there’s no limit on how many times you can claim it. The offer doesn’t currently have an expiry date.
The promotion has a similar version for the France / Spain market. In the app if you change the settings and switch to France / French / Euro this offer pops up:
You get €10 off on all tickets costing €13 – €300, or €20 off above that. On paper it works out slightly better than the UK counterpart.
Intuitively you get the heaviest discount on cheap budget airline tickets. Milan – Tirana is priced at €9.99 on Ryanair, or €6 on Trip.
London – Lyon is priced at £12.99 on Wizz Air, or £6 on Trip.
Kuala Lumpur – Singapore is priced at £12.72 on Scoot, or £6 on Trip.
The saving is less impressive on more expensive tickets. It’s worth pointing out that although the France version offers a better discount, I find the pricing frequently more expensive than the UK version.
I have purchased flight tickets on Trip.com a few times, most recently Norwegian to Stockholm last month and I find them quite good. They have decent 4.1 star rating on Trustpilot.
If you don’t have a Trip.com account yet, my referral link will give you £15 vouchers, although I’m not sure how those vouchers work.
15% off Uber gift card (and more) via Amazon
The offer is back! Amazon just launched a sale on certain third-party gift cards, and most importantly Uber is participating.
You have two options. You can order a physical gift card here which arrives by post, but I’m only allowed to purchase one. It’s much easier to buy the digital gift card instead. Note that the discount applies automatically at the check-out page.
I used to hoard a lot of Uber gift cards via stacked Morrisons promotions, which have unfortunately died out at some point. It’s nice to see another decent offer finally and I’m not hesitating to jump on board.
Uber gift cards can be used for ride, takeaway (Uber Eats) and train/bus tickets (Travel), but not on grocery orders. Note that Uber Travel has extended the 10% back offer till the end of this year.
Note that there’s a daily cap on the amount you can purchase (£400?). Many other merchants are participating, including Apple, lastminute.com, Cineworld, Vue and Bella Italia.
Nectar / Avios bonus via Daily Mail subscription
MyMail, the membership program of Daily Mail, is to cease its partnership with Nectar on September 14. Interestingly however, they’ll still be running Nectar promotions, and there’s currently a very good incentive.
If you purchase a Digital Annual subscription now for £20, you will earn 4,000 Nectar points as a bonus, which is equivalent to £20 in return.
The 4,000 points can be spent at Sainsbury’s, Argos and Ebay amongst other shops. You can also convert them to 2,500 Avios, which effectively means buying Avios at 0.8p.
It’s unclear when the promotion ends. There doesn’t seem to any restriction on how many times you can avail the offer either.
BA sale: £600 Premium Economy deal, Silver for £800
British Airways has launched their end of summer sale, and as usual you can use the low fare finder to dig out the best deals.
I can’t see any particularly good Club World or First destinations, but there are genuine savings if you don’t mind travelling in premium economy. Here are some headline prices:
- Beijing £743
- Shanghai £721
- Tel Aviv £618
- Doha £636
- New York £636
- Toronto £747
And a couple of examples for China in Skyscanner:
- Beijing 03/10 – 24/10 £683
- Shanghai 23/01 – 05/03 £717
When it comes to Club Europe flights, we no longer see as many low prices as we used to. Here are some examples:
- Basel £198
- Bucharest £288
- Dublin £176
- Istanbul £312
- Luxembourg £148
- Pisa £198
- Sofia £212
The destinations in bold earn you 80 tier points per return whereas the rest earn only 40. Sofia is the one standing out (example 07/03 – 10/03), as you’ll earn BA’s Silver status after four returns which costs around £800.
BA’s Silver status, or in other words Oneworld Sapphire, comes with priority check-in and boarding, fast track, additional baggage allowance and business class lounge access.
My review of Leeds Marriott Hotel
This is a quick review of the Leeds Marriott Hotel. I was half-way through my £100 off £300 Amex cashback offer and needed to find a participating Marriott property to fulfil the spend requirement. I didn’t want to travel far, and Leeds Marriott came to my attention.
The hotel sits in front of the Trevelyan Square. It is very close to the train station and Trinity shopping centre.
The lobby and restaurant:
I received an upgrade to an executive room on the top (sixth) floor, which is actually a corner room.
The room is bright with large windows on two sides of the walls.
Here’s the problem though: noise level here can be really bad. The rail tracks are 50-ish yards away. And as if that’s not enough, there are many bars and pubs just around the corner.
I complained the next morning and they moved me to a double-double room which is sort of interior facing. It is a lot better.
Set-up of the executive lounge is a bit strange. It’s like another boutique lobby inside the lobby area.
Presentations are nice, but it is a very small lounge. You can imagine it being very busy in the evening.
Soft drinks, fruits and coffee machine are available throughout the day.
Happy hour is hosted between 5.30pm and 7.30pm. Two hot dishes and a decent spread of canapes are on offer.
Breakfast in the main restaurant isn’t comp’ed, but you can have it in the executive lounge.
It is an average Marriott hotel you expect in this country, and there’s nothing particularly good or bad. If you are a light sleeper and sensitive to noises though it may not be for you.
£4 off your next Amazon pickup order
Amazon has a new iteration of its Click & Collect offer, and you may be eligible if you haven’t taken advantage of the offer recently.
You can check your eligibility here. The offer runs until December 31st, but is limited to the first 50,000 redemptions only.
If you are eligible, claim the offer for a £4 reward to be added to your account. Place a pickup order of £12 or more and the discount will apply at checkout automatically. As usual only items sold by Amazon (i.e. excluding third-party resellers) are eligible for the offer.
Other Amazon offers:
- £10 off your first Amazon App purchase
- £20 off your first Amazon Fresh and Morrisons order
- Get £10 Amazon voucher for using its Photos app
- Amazon Pickup £7 discount offer
- £5 Amazon bonus when topping up £60
- £5 Free Voucher for Streaming Amazon Music
- £5 Free Voucher for Streaming Amazon Podcast
- Earn £5 voucher for using Amazon Pay
- Free £5 Amazon voucher to claim
- £5 voucher for watching Amazon Prime Video
- £5 reward for creating an Amazon wish list
- £15 free money to spend at Amazon Fresh stores
- Amazon Warehouse £5 free voucher
Buy a Marriott bed or mattress and earn two free nights!
Marriott, or more precisely Shop Marriott has launched an interesting promotion.
The headline says “2 Free Night with Bed Purchase”, whereas here are the terms:
Marriott Bonvoy Members receive two 35,000 point Free Night Awards* with the eligible purchase of a mattress set. Exclusive to Marriott Bonvoy Members purchasing mattress and base sets between August 10th and August 20th for beds that are delivered in Europe. Marriott Bonvoy Number must be entered at checkout. Free Night Awards will be issued up to 4 weeks after mattress delivery.
If I understand correctly, you can buy either a bed or mattress to qualify.
The two free night awards are worth at least $400 so it’s a good rebate. Remember that you can top up as much as 15,000 points, so each free night award can be redeemed at a 50K property.
However they are not an average mattress you see on Ikea or Amazon! The cheapest mattress (British Model – Double) costs €1595 or $1435.
When you’ve accrued 50 or 75 night credits in a year, one annual choice benefit you can pick is $100 off a mattress purchase, which makes the deal much more reasonable. However, I’m not confident that the two offers can stack, although there’s no evidence that suggest otherwise.