If you’re a Flybuys member and shop at Coles every week, you might be disappointed with the lack of meaningful rewards. Sure, you might score $10 off your shopping every once in a blue moon. But there is so much more to be gained from the Coles Flybuys loyalty program with some clever points hacks!
In this guide, we’ll explain how to supercharge your Flybuys points and redeem them for valuable rewards like flights on Virgin Australia and its partner airlines. With these Flybuys tricks, you could earn enough Flybuys points for a reward flight by spending as little as $400 on groceries at Coles – an amount which would ordinarily earn you a discount of just $2 off your shopping.
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How to earn Flybuys points
As the loyalty program of Coles supermarkets, you can earn 1 Flybuys base point for every $1 spent at Coles supermarkets. You’ll earn an extra point per dollar spent at Coles if you’ve purchased a Coles insurance policy.
You can also accrue Flybuys points for shopping at any of the program’s many other retail partners. These include:
- Kmart
- Target
- Liquorland
- First Choice Liquor
- Officeworks
- Bunnings Warehouse
- AGL Energy
- Shell Coles Express petrol stations
Flybuys credit cards
You can earn additional Flybuys points from your everyday credit card expenditure with a Coles credit card. A popular option is the Coles Rewards MasterCard which awards 2 Flybuys point per $1 in eligible spend (up to $3,000/month). It also has no foreign currency transaction fees, making it a good credit card for online shopping. This credit card has a $99 annual fee.
Flybuys Travel
You can earn 1 Flybuys point per $1 spent on Flybuys Travel bookings, but the real value lies in the regular and generous bonus-point offers. This portal offers flights, hotels, car hire and cruises. Flybuys Travel doesn’t have any booking fees, so it’s a handy earner when booking travel.
Supercharge your Flybuys points with targeted bonus offers
There are many ways to earn Flybuys points in Australia, but the trick to really maximising your points is the targeted promotional offers from Coles.
Coles regularly emails personalised offers to its members. These are automatically generated and tailored to (what Flybuys thinks are) your normal spending habits. The point is to incentivise you to spend more and to shop more often than usual – and not to reward your loyalty!
Loyalty programs want you to scan your card every time you shop. That way, they can collect personal information about you and your shopping habits. This data is then what’s used to create the personalised offers, so the trick is to make the supermarket think you’re spending much less than you really are!
If you’re a loyal customer, the supermarket doesn’t need to send you valuable offers as an incentive to come back. But if the supermarket thinks you’re spending money with a competitor, it will send you much better offers.
A common Coles offer from Flybuys is “Spend $x each week for 4 weeks to receive $50 or 10,000 bonus Flybuys points”. What varies with these offers is the personalised spend target, which could be as low as $50 per week if you don’t usually spend much at Coles – but could be much, much higher if you scan hundreds of dollars worth of groceries through Coles checkouts on a weekly basis. (By the way, always choose the Flybuys points if you get an offer like this!)
With an offer like this, you would earn 10,000 bonus Flybuys points on top of the usual 200 points you would earn for spending $200 at Coles (over 4 weeks). That’s 51x the normal Flybuys earn rate!
Spend targets will increase as you spend more
As you take up each offer and increase your average spend to meet the given spending targets, these targets will slowly increase in response. If your spend targets continue to increase, it’s best to start ignoring the offers temporarily. If you stop using your card for a little while, or start putting through smaller transactions, the targets will eventually decrease again. Keep in mind that there may be a lag period of a few weeks, up to a month, for the spending targets to adjust.
How to get better targeted offers
Here are 6 expert tips for getting better targeted bonus point offers from Flybuys…
1. Make sure you’ve opted-in to email communications
If you’re not getting any offers, make sure you’ve opted in to receiving Flybuys promotional emails.
2. Open multiple Flybuys accounts per household
With each family member having their own Flybuys account, alternate which cards you scan when you shop and/or split the shop between cards. If later transferring points to Velocity, you can use family transfers (or family pooling) to transfer all your family members’ points back to your own account… or not. Using this strategy, the supermarket will think you each spend less – and you’re also more likely to get a good offer on at least one of the accounts.
3. Spend less per transaction
Once again, this is to make Coles think you spend less per shop. This could involve doing more frequent but smaller shops. Or, just split your transactions half way through. Pay for the remaining groceries with cash and/or a different card, and scan a different loyalty card (or no card) on the second transaction. You will forgo some Flybuys points initially, but remember that the true value is in the bonus offers!
4. Split your shopping between supermarkets
With supermarkets, being loyal doesn’t pay! Spread your shopping across the major supermarkets so that each thinks you spend less in total on groceries. It also gives you the flexibility to shop with whichever supermarket sends the best offer that week. (Woolworths’ Everyday Rewards also sends targeted offers!)
5. Don’t scan your Flybuys card for a while
Some of the best offers are the “we miss you” offers that get sent if you haven’t shopped for more than a month.
6. Alternate payment methods
Supermarkets may track your spend without you even scanning your loyalty card! If you’ve ever scanned your Flybuys card and paid with a credit card in the same shop, Coles has already linked them. So the supermarket could still track your purchases if you pay with your usual credit card but don’t scan your Flybuys card.
If you have multiple credit cards, keep one card aside that you never use to pay for purchases when also scanning your loyalty card in the same transaction. Alternatively, just pay cash if you don’t want your spending tracked when you don’t scan your loyalty card.
How to redeem Flybuys points
There are several ways to redeem Flybuys points, including:
- Convert to savings at the checkout at Coles (2,000 points = $10 discount)
- Gift cards (2,000 points = $10 voucher)
- Merchandise from the Flybuys store (2,000 points = $10 credit)
- Flights and hotels via the Flybuys Travel portal (2,000 points = $10 credit)
- Convert to Virgin Australia Velocity points (1,000 points = 500 Velocity points)
You may have noticed that Flybuys points are worth exactly 0.5 cents each with all redemptions except for transfers to Velocity Frequent Flyer. By transferring to Velocity Frequent Flyer, you could get much more value from your Flybuys points… but it depends how you plan to redeem them.
Transferring Flybuys points to Velocity Frequent Flyer
1,000 Flybuys points can be converted to 500 Velocity Frequent Flyer points on the Flybuys website. Transfers are typically instant and an annual transfer limit (previously 138,000 flybuys points) no longer applies. You can manually transfer points as you need them on the Flybuys website. Or, if you opt in to Auto Transfer, you’ll automatically receive 500 Velocity points every time you earn 1,000 Flybuys points.
There are also regular promotions where you can receive bonus Velocity points or other rewards when transferring points from Flybuys.
Outside of these promotions, you’re effectively paying 1 cent for each Velocity point transferred over from Flybuys. Is this better value than redeeming Flybuys points for vouchers or merchandise? Well, it is if you’re getting more than 1 cents in value from each Velocity point…
This graph shows the average value of 1 Velocity Frequent Flyer point, depending on how it is spent: As you can see, Velocity point redemptions for things like gift cards give you less than 1 cent per point of value. But, in general, transferring Flybuys points to Velocity Frequent Flyer is a good idea if you want to use your points for flights, or for upgrades on Virgin Australia.
Redeeming Velocity Frequent Flyer points
It costs 7,800 Velocity points (plus taxes and carrier charges) for a Tier 2 reward flight with Virgin Australia on domestic routes like Sydney-Brisbane, Melbourne-Adelaide or Canberra-Gold Coast. Business Class flights on these routes cost 15,500 Velocity points (plus taxes and carrier charges). The full points tables are available on the Velocity Frequent Flyer website.
If you were to use two of those “spend $50 per week for 4 weeks and receive 10,000 Flybuys points” offers, you would end up with over 20,000 Flybuys points for a spend of just $400. That’s equivalent to 10,000 Velocity points, which is more than enough for a one-way reward flight with Virgin Australia using Velocity points (excluding taxes)!
It’s also possible to redeem Velocity Frequent Flyer points to fly with Virgin’s partner airlines including Singapore Airlines, Etihad, Qatar Airways and United:
You can also convert those Velocity points to Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles at a 1.55:1 rate, and redeem them to fly across the Star Alliance network.
For lots of discussion, tips & tricks on targeted Flybuys offers, visit the Australian Frequent Flyer forum!
