Some links to products and partners on this website will earn an affiliate commission.
Joe wrote in detail recently about why transferring TopCashback credit to Avios might no longer make much sense from a ‘value’ perspective.
The crux of the argument made was that transferring TopCashback credit to Avios is the equivalent of buying Avios for 0.95p, and that while that is a reasonable deal in itself, better options exist. If you take the credit as cash instead and then use that to buy more valuable types of Miles cheaply (via one of the regular SPG Starpoints discount offers), you can often do more luxury flying for less money than if you transferred to Avios.
He also went on to mention that you can potentially do even better by transferring cashback credit to Zeek rather than simply taking the cash. Zeek is a gift card reseller with a huge range of options that you can choose to spend your credit on. The standard transfer bonus from TopCashback to Zeek is 15% and the gift cards sold on Zeek are also discounted, though for the most popular/’cash-like’ options (supermarkets etc) it tends to only be 1%-5%.
Until 1st April 2018, the transfer bonus is boosted to 20% – which makes things very interesting if you normally transfer TopCashback credit to Avios.
For example, £1 of TopCashback credit could either get you 105 Avios, or £1.20 in Zeek credit. Even if the gift cards for the retailer you actually want/need to buy from only offer an additional 1% discount, you’re looking at getting £1.21+ in value by transferring your £1 TopCashback credit to Zeek (assuming you only purchase things you’d definitely be buying anyway!).
£1.21 is therefore the ‘real cost’ of opting to take the 105 Avios instead. At that rate, the Avios would really be costing ~1.15p each, not ~0.95p.
Given that our rule of thumb valuation of Avios is about 1p each, buying at an effective 1.15p+ rate is expensive, particularly when Groupon offers regular opportunities to stock up on Avios for considerably less.
1,575 Avios (£15) bonus for all new members
Even if you don’t win the main prize, all new TopCashback members can bag an exclusive 1,575 Avios (£15) bonus with the first purchase via TopCashback, just for signing up through the InsideFlyer link.
Conclusion
Transferring TopCashback credit to Avios isn’t a bad deal in its own right, but when you look at the alternative options, the situation is more complicated. With the temporarily boosted 20% transfer bonus to Zeek now available, I think that’s where I’ll be sending my cashback this week.
What do you think – Is transferring to Zeek great value or would you rather just stick with Avios?
Slightly annoying. I just cashed out my TCB at 18% a few days ago as I thought that was already the maximum bonus for Zeek…
Word of warning: once you have Zeek credit you can’t use any Zeek “new customer” discount codes (e.g. £5 off £50 spend, or referral discounts). Once you have Zeek credit you’re no longer considered a new customer even if you haven’t purchased any gift cards yet. They harvest your personal data including email and phone numbers and their system is very good at detecting multiple accounts for the same person and detecting them!
So for new zeek users – make use of the new customer offers and referral bonuses BEFORE transferring Topcashback to Zeek.
As an aside – do we think Topcashback will ever do 20% bonus on Avios conversions again?
Good tip! – I’d wondered about that myself and was going to ask James (the Deal Daddy) to investigate.
Re TCB Avios transfer bonus, I asked our contacts at TCB a couple of months ago and there certainly didn’t seem to be anything planned then. I wouldn’t say definitely never again, but probably not.
That said, despite the fact I obviously totally agree with the argument that the 20% Zeek bonus is better value than Avios, I haven’t transferred all my tcb credit balance over to Zeek (I’ll do some but not all). I like to retain the option of buying quite large amounts of Avios at what I consider to be a ‘reasonable’ price quickly and easily whenever I want via TCB – rather than waiting for an Iberia Groupon deal or something to come around. I’ll leave enough for an ’emergency’ Iberia off-peak Biz Class one-way I think.