Confused by TSB's 6-month switching Rewards? So was I, so I found a hack to claim both

I recently received the reward email from TSB, and had no idea what to choose, because there's almost no information on what these rewards actually entail. And I'm not the only one, MSE forumites have been left confused too.

What and where are the activities on the 12-month activity ticket? And seeing as the £120 hotel voucher is usable only on Expedia’s Travel Credits site (which you can’t view until you claim the reward), what choice of hotels is on offer? I even read murmurs that hotel prices are marked up from the main Expedia site.

So I decided to investigate, and found out everything you need to help you decide which offer is best for you (plus a trick to access both rewards instead).

Now, onto the rewards...

Here's what you need to know about the 12-month activity ticket:

• Each ticket claimed via the National Activities Network site gives only one person entry.

• Only one person per group can use a ticket claimed via the network (which you could probably work around by queuing to enter an attraction separately).

• You can claim as many tickets as you like in a 12-month period, but there are some restrictions:

  • Category A venues. You can claim a ticket to one Category A activity every 30 days.

  • All other venues. You can claim as many of these as you want, but if you want to claim tickets to the same venue more than once, you need to wait seven days.

You can read the full Terms and Conditions here.

Some users have complained about price markup compared to Expedia. However, of the 13 hotels I compared across both sites on like for like dates, I found that prices were mostly cheaper via Travel Credits (even before factoring in the £120 reward).

There were some exceptions however. In Bangkok, for example, one of the hotels I looked up was significantly cheaper through Expedia (and fully refundable too, whereas Travel Credits' variant wasn't). I also found that while Travel Credits rooms were usually cheaper like for like, Expedia tended to offer more cheap entry-level rooms than Travel Credits (which would be cheaper than Travel Credits' cheapest offerings). So it's always worth comparing prices, not only with Expedia but with multiple sites. See our Cheap Hotels guide for tips.

Here are some examples of the price differences between the main Expedia site and Travel Credits, with like-for-like rooms booked for four nights:

... why not get both rewards? Here’s how

As mentioned earlier, the 12-month activity ticket is run by the same company as MoneySupermarket's Free Days Out, and is very similar – though a few venues are different, and what TSB calls ‘Category A’ venues, MoneySupermarket calls ‘Hot Picks’. You can see the full Free Days Out Terms and Conditions here.

You can get access to Free Days Out by joining MoneySupermarket's SuperSave Club via its Credit Score tool, then from your MoneySupermarket dashboard (in the app or in a browser) going to the Free Days Out attractions page.

To help you see whether there are any activities near you, here's a screenshot of the activities map from MoneySupermarket's Free Days Out.

As you can see, London and north west England are well covered, but if you live elsewhere you may need to hit the road before you find something to do.

There are a few differences between TSB’s and MoneySupermarket's offerings. Both offer over 100 activities, most of which are listed here, but here are the activities each scheme offers that the other doesn’t.

Check out other switching bonuses

There's nothing stopping you switching bank account again, after you scoop up all the rewards TSB throws at you. See which current accounts offer the best switching bonuses.