Several retail shops and online merchants in the UK award nectar points. Most prominent of these is Sainsburys, a large food retailer.

Several years ago Sainsburys awarded British Airways AirMiles. However, these were switched to Tesco, a competitor and so now Nectar has an arrangement whereby you can redeem their points via Expedia.co.uk. The redemptions are not available for straight flights, but must be used in conjunction with a hotel or car hire. In addition, the web site does not allow the use of the points on Business Class or First Class tickets. 500 nectar points (about £250 of shopping) gives £2.50 off.

I thought it might be interesting to see whether it was possible to use nectar points against the recent Business Class ticket sale I have covered on this Blog.

The only way to do this was call Expedia. The agent who answered the call could not help but passed me through a specialist who explained that she could make the booking. A few things to note:

• You must have a valid name and address in your Nectar Account and it must match your Expedia account
• You must book a hotel or car with the flight
• It is best to know which flights you need as often the agent doesn’t quite get what you want to book
• Remind the agent as often as necessary that you need book a business class ticket

The agent obtains access to your Nectar account and creates a voucher in Expedia. They then apply this to your booking. The balance is paid by credit card as normal.

In addition, Expedia charge a £10 fee.

The whole transaction took 41 minutes. So allow yourself time!