15,000 Miles&More points for €111 ($150) – inc. NY Times subscription
Through Miles&More’s “Subscription & Books” offers, you can currently purchase a six month international NY Times subscription on the M&M website.
UK subscribers pay £190, while customers based in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden or Switzerland (Malta is not an option, unfortunately: but see below) will pay somewhere around €250, depending on the particular country. Crucially, in addition to your NYT subscription, you’ll also get 15,000 Miles&More points as a “thank you”.
There is, however, a cunning method by which you can subscribe for just €111 ($150), and still bag the 15,000 points.
Wherever you’re based, the subscription payment you will get you:
- an international New York Times newspaper delivered daily (but only delivered to the above-listed countries, plus Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand: see further below)
- unlimited access to NYTimes.com, including the international edition
- free access to the NYTimes apps for your smartphone and tablet
If you are interested in this subscription anyway, then obviously this is a great option for you. You are paying 1.2p (or in the region of 1.7 Euro cents) per M&M point, but you’re also getting the subscription, which is really what you are supposed to be paying for anyway.
If you’re not interested in the subscription, this is still worth thinking about. If you buy M&M points directly they cost €290 for 12,000 – here you are getting much better value than that (15,000 for around €250), plus a newspaper subscription for a “quality” daily. However, there is a far better option for you in these circumstances.
Now onto the really interesting part…
If you log in to your Miles&More account and change the country (top right) to Thailand (although the following link should take you there directly), you can then subscribe to the same package for 5000 THB (roughly €111/$150). €111 for 15,000 M&M points is a very competitive deal.
Unless you live in Thailand (and while I’m very happy to welcome a number of new US-based readers since the move to BoardingArea, I believe my Thai readership is somewhat limited), you will have to give a “fake” Thai address, to which a daily NY Times international paper will be sent. With this in mind I suggest you just give the address for a small downtown Bangkok hotel – after all, they will presumably rather appreciate a daily NYT, and just put it in their lobby for guests. You will of course be able to access the online element.
[update – we even have a permitted Thai address – see the comments below this post]
As noted above, Malta-based readers cannot get the M&M points bonus on subscriptions in Malta – so the deal here is really limited to the Thailand option.
Warning
1) While there is no apparent breach of the terms and conditions, if you do use the Thailand option, you are obviously providing an address which is different to that with which you are registered with M&M. I do not anticipate this being a problem, but it should be borne in mind, not least given the below. There’s nothing fraudulent here – you are simply nominating a delivery address, and you can give a different billing address, in a different country. If you’re really concerned, you could always change your M&M address to a Thai one until the points have posted.
2) While the 15,000 bonus M&M points quite clearly relate to a six month subscription (the headline sales pitch is “Subscribe for the 6-month home or office delivery to the International New York times … By way of thank you, you will receive 15,000 award miles“), for some reason the terms and conditions state “No cancellation or refund on the subscription order for 12 month [sic], once the award miles are being credited or subscription started; whichever comes first“. However, I have spoken to Miles&More and the New York Times international subscription helpdesk, and the latter have confirmed that this is a typo in the terms and conditions: it should read “6 months”.
Can you check about 6/12 months discrepancy with M&M?
I am certainly trying – the problem is that the M&M Service team is difficult enough to get a straightforward answer from when it’s a mainstream M&M query. When it’s a request for confirmation on the terms and conditions of a little-known partner offer, it’s substantially trickier.
I will certainly let you know, when they tell me.
Miro – per today’s post, the 12 months has been confirmed as a typo – it should be 6 months.
Seems to only allow “Western Europe” on the NY Times signup page.
Nevermind – got it working.
Good stuff Dave. For anyone else having problems, the key is that you need to change your country to Thailand when you log in.
Alternatively, this link (which is the same as the link in the original post) should take you directly to the offer.
Wait so US members of miles and more and eligible?
It appears so – but you’ll need to change the country (in the top right, once you log in), to Thailand (from the USA). Then click on “earn miles” and you should see the offer there when you click on the “subscriptions and books” link.
Alternatively, you should simply be able to get the offer directly through this link.
Credit card not working so I have to call in…anyone else getting the same credit card billing state error? Guess we have to call. Anyone have a US # of NYT Intl?