10,000 bonus points per 20 transactions

[pauly7]

Re: Well... Its not over till is over.

Whilst QANTAS is cutting *some* ties with Amex, this is entirely so that QANTAS can control the flow of points back to QANTAS (remember all cards that credit directly to QANTAS remain - delivering more points to QANTAS). Cards where the cardholder has a *choice* about where their points are going (e.g. to QANTAS or maybe to Singapore Airlines, or MH, or AirNZ) - QANTAS is cutting those off.

.

just to be crystal clear the *choice* you mention can still be redeemed for all the normal AMEX MR merchandise range etc while in Spirit but Qantas is just the exclusive travel partner. It isn't a direct sweep so people do have a choice, but just not on the travel partner which is only QF if you migrate to Spirit.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Re: Well... Its not over till is over.

I dont know If you understand that Frequent Flyer Programs are made as a reward for people who Fly Frequently and not for people to go trough a All you can eat Points bonanza via a partners program and jump infront of those earning points by flying


It is True Qantas Gets some money from the Re-sellers of their program But The aim of the program is to incentive Flying in Qantas. And they will not be happy giving away $1000's of dollars in free seats ... specially now that Amex and Qantas are splitting their partnership.... Remember ? In the near future only QF Amex cards will be able to redeem points to QFF program

I think your idea of how FF programs operate....is a lot different than my understanding.

1/ This will not affect QF or indeed other FF programs...or indeed Hotel programs etc that people may transfer points to from MR.

Why?/ for the very simple reason that when points transfer to an airline or a Hotel Group or whomever....Amex has to pay for the points.

This means that the other company makes money....in your example QF.

Qantas will not be giving away free seats...but rather will be getting a large income from Amex at a rate obviously satisfactory to Qantas.


2/ Where did you get the amusing idea that FF was only about rewarding flying????

Points are gained from may sources...car hire, hotels, buying flowers, wine.... hotel rooms etc etc etc... You even can get the from SNAP Printing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Two decades back I was a Diamond with Ansett and used to fly a lot....but despite the frequent flying MOST points that I earned back then were not from flying....but from Hotels, cars and my Diners Card.

Now some people may get in from flying....but many gain points in many ways.

However having said that Airlines do also reward frequent fliers...as in flying in other ways. ie QF with its Status Credits.

PS FF programs today are mainly about making money for the airline, rather than rewarding loyalty.

PSS No doubt too that some Amex MR points are also redeemed with MR with their various reawrd options.

 

[simongr]

Re: Well... Its not over till is over.

I dont know If you understand that Frequent Flyer Programs are made as a reward for people who Fly Frequently and not for people to go trough a All you can eat Points bonanza via a partners program and jump infront of those earning points by flying


It is True Qantas Gets some money from the Re-sellers of their program But The aim of the program is to incentive Flying in qantas. And they will not be happy giving away $1000's of dollars in free seats ... specially now that Amex and Qantas are spliting their partnership.... Remember ? In the near future only QF Amex cards will be able to redim points to QFF program

You seriously don't read any of the responses to your posts to you do you?

I can not believe how incredibly arrogant and rude it is to join a frequent flyer website and then tell the people there that they know nothing about frequent flyer programs. You have added nothing to people's understanding of frequent flyer programs - just misinformation about the relationship between QF (that is an abbreviation for Qantas if you weren't sure) and Amex.

One of the major bugbears that actual frequent flyers (i.e. people that really fly a lot - say 150K miles flown for me last year as an example) have is that people charging heaps of business expenses to their Amex (and other cards) are grabbing all the "free" flights as they have millions of points to burn. It is actually hard to earn points flying - if you flew SYD-MEL (that is Sydney to Melbourne for clarity) return every week day, in a year you would only earn 500K points (roughly) - whereas a tradesperson could charge $1 million easily and never set foot on an aircraft.

Next time post something factual rather than a critique of other people's understanding of things that they demonstrate a great deal more knowledge of than you.

 

[Masonic Phantom]

Re: Well... Its not over till is over.

I think your idea of how FF programs operate....is a lot different than my understanding.

1/ This will not affect QF or indeed other FF programs...or indeed Hotel programs etc that people may transfer points to from MR.

Why?/ for the very simple reason that when points transfer to an airline or a Hotel Group or whomever....Amex has to pay for the points.

This means that the other company makes money....in your example QF.

Qantas will not be giving away free seats...but rather will be getting a large income from Amex at a rate obviously satisfactory to Qantas.


2/ Where did you get the amusing idea that FF was only about rewarding flying????

Points are gained from may sources...car hire, hotels, buying flowers, wine.... hotel rooms etc etc etc... You even can get the from SNAP Printing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Two decades back I was a Diamond with Ansett and used to fly a lot....but despite the frequent flying MOST points that I earned back then were not from flying....but from Hotels, cars and my Diners Card.

Now some people may get in from flying....but many gain points in many ways.

However having said that Airlines do also reward frequent fliers...as in flying in other ways. ie QF with its Status Credits.

PS FF programs today are mainly about making money for the airline, rather than rewarding loyalty.

PSS No doubt too that some Amex MR points are also redeemed with MR with their various reawrd options.

Here!! Here!! Well said,I concur.

 

[netjock]

Does anybody actually wish this promotion never happened?

Life would be just fine with out 1pt per $1 (or more depending on your program)

 

[Mal]

Does anybody actually wish this promotion never happened?

American Express?

 

[diesmile]

American Express?

lol good one

 

[simongr]

Does anybody actually wish this promotion never happened?

Life would be just fine with out 1pt per $1 (or more depending on your program)

Well I am getting 1.5ps per dollar and think this is a great promo. Why would you wish it never happened?

Worst case - no change
Best case - heaps of points

Not seeing a downside

 

[simongr]

Re: Well... Its not over till is over.

PS FF programs today are mainly about making money for the airline, rather than rewarding loyalty.

PSS No doubt too that some Amex MR points are also redeemed with MR with their various reawrd options.

For the record it is PPS rather than PSS. Sorry that was just bugging me

 

[oz_mark]

From the amended T&C

To ensure that as many Cardmembers as possible benefit from the offer, we have amended the terms and conditions to better reflect its original intent.

Now seriously how can Amex argue that?

The original promtion was no limit and clearly was an offer for the recipient to gain multiple lots of the bonus.

With the amended T&C some members will only gain ONE lot of bonus points (ie 10,000 in one hit) which will ten be the new monthly max of 10,000.

Now perhaps way maybe could mounta case the say that no limit was realy meant just imply a high number rather than unlimited (even though the no limit part was CLEARLY re-emphasised and when you rang up where it was repeated).

But how in any way shape or form could now imposing a limit of one, and only one bonus , be now interpreted as "to better reflect its original intent."

Clearly this is false.

Amex may wish to alter the T&C...but to do it based on this claimed basis is just clearly wrong and cannot be reasonably argued.

I disagree, and I don't really see that your argument addresses the issue of what Amex intended to do. While only Amex can be certain as to what they intended, there are some hints in various statements etc that give some idea of what they intended.

I think the new T&C's address this intention. If I go to the URL mentioned on the Postcard that they sent me, I discover the name of the offer is now "Membership Rewards Everyday Spending Bonus Points Offer".

Both sets of T&C's (the original postcard and the revised T&C's exclude Corporate cards, so from that we can conclude that it was intended for personal use. So putting these things together we can see that the intention was where the card was used for personal use for everyday shopping.

We also know that they divided the personal groups into low, medium and high transactors and sent promotion offers to those groups of people. Now realistically, how many transactions get made on personal cards for everyday personal shopping. Iwould suggest a card made for purely personal everyday expenses would not have hundreds of transactions a month. The word 'unlimited' is a powerful marketing term, but I would think that if they had accurately targetted the promotion and there had been no leakage to people that have high volumes of transactions that more than 10,000 points a month would be an exception rather than the rule. Sure there may be some that got maybe 200,000 points over the promotion, but they would have accounted for this.

Now that would appear to have been the intention - the implementation resulted in something that clearly was not intended. Things seem to have gone wrong on several fronts:
1) The opt-in process allowing non-targetted people from enrolling, allowing people to enrol in muliple promotions, and even targetted people from enrolling in a promotion better than the one they were targetted for.
2) People working transactions in creative ways to maximise the number of transactions.

But all of that reflects implementation issues rather than what Amex originally intended. Perphaps if there hadn't been such issues then the need for the rvised terms to include a cap would not have eventuated.

 

[simongr]

My understanding is that lovestravellingoz or lovestotravel averaged 200 trans/month and got targetted...

 

[straitman]

Re: Well... Its not over till is over.

I dont know If you understand that Frequent Flyer Programs are made as a reward for people who Fly Frequently and not for people to go trough a All you can eat Points bonanza via a partners program and jump infront of those earning points by flying


It is True Qantas Gets some money from the Re-sellers of their program But The aim of the program is to incentive Flying in qantas. And they will not be happy giving away $1000's of dollars in free seats ... specially now that Amex and Qantas are spliting their partnership.... Remember ? In the near future only QF Amex cards will be able to redim points to QFF program

rodgerbranch,

I was going to answer in detail but it appears that several have jumped in ahead.

Suffice to say that I don't believe that you have any real understanding what the QFF program is or how it works. As you say there is more to the scheme than points BUT the selling of points is a huge business for QF aside from the system status that people can obtain. Remember that without the status it is actually harder to use the acquired points.

You seriously don't read any of the responses to your posts to you do you?

I can not believe how incredibly arrogant and rude it is to join a frequent flyer website and then tell the people there that they know nothing about frequent flyer programs. You have added nothing to people's understanding of frequent flyer programs - just misinformation about the relationship between QF (that is an abbreviation for Qantas if you weren't sure) and Amex.

rodgerbranch,

I agree entirely with these comments from simongr :!:

 

[Soundguy]

Poor sooky ambulance chasers

I am so confused I suppose like the rest of you what can we do as a group to Help get more Media exposure on their great promotion...... Financial Review, Telegraph, Today Tonight, ACCC / Dept of Fair Trading, Slater and Gordon....... blah blah blah

Let me know what you think

I would like to let you know but it would probably be deleted. So let's be sweet about this - boo, hoo, hoo I really feel for your predicament and personal suffering only getting a few tens of thousands of bonus reward points instead of a few hundreds of thousand.

It must be a constant stress for you and your litigious buddies here to live with, especially knowing so many other folk around the world are getting no bonus points at all as they find out they have lost their job, or lost their house in a hurricane, or found they are terminally ill, or are struggling to find enough food to live on with their average income of $1.00 per day, or just had their young children kidnapped and sold as slaves.

Come to think of it this is a frequent flyer forum, so why not get a cheap flight somewhere, go and meet some folk with real problems and get your life into some sort of perspective. How about Africa, it's a nice place? A friend of mine from there saw most of his village machine-gunned in front of him - which perhaps wasn't so bad as when the murderers then started to eat some internal organs of their victims.

Now he is living safely in Australia so, like you, he puts his efforts into suing companies that don't give him all the bonus points he feels he deserves and stuff like that. As you can imagine.....

 

[oz_mark]

My understanding is that lovestravellingoz or lovestotravel averaged 200 trans/month and got targetted...

But targetted with which promotion? The 20T:10000 point promotion is only half as rewarding as the 5T:5000 point promotion, and registering on the more lucrative one doubles Amex exposure. And that is one of the implementation issues. Amex may have calculated 100K points a month, not 200K points a month.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

My understanding is that lovestravellingoz or lovestotravel averaged 200 trans/month and got targetted...

Do you care to enlighten me on your source for your understanding??

Particularly as as far as I am aware I have not been targetted.....indeed yesterday when I rang Amex they still had me down as a valid registrant as per my postcard.

I rang them as points had stopped being posted....and they informed me that this was nothing to do with my personal situaton, but rather was a general ceasing. I would not that everyone has reported that points have ceased.

I would also note that my normal MR bonus points have posted both yesterday and today.

I also have had no points deducted

So again why are you stating falsely on a Public Forum that I have been targetted?

PS I am not and have never been lovestotravel

 

[lovetravellingoz]

that more than 10,000 points a month would be an exception rather than the rule. .

I don't follow your maths.

My postcard was 5000 for 5 transactions.

That is I only need 15 to have earnt 15000 points.

Over say 4 weeks with virtually no effort...

One week transactions without going out of ones way too much (except that one does not use their Citibank and instead seeks out Amex)

Groceries twice a week = 2
Other food stores = 2
Fill my car and my wifes = 2
Friday Pub lunch = 1
Dan Murphies = 1
Bill ) insurance, rego, rates whatever...see to always have something to pay = 1
weekend shopping trip = 5 transactions
take away or restaurant = 1
luncjes midweek = 4


So that is 20/ week without doing anything special ( except using Amex instead of Citibank or cash) based on just my normal spend= say 100 per month.

So on the 5 for 5 that is 100,000 points..

On the 10 for 20 that would be 50,000

I think that for many that well in excess of 10,000 per month would be achieved just by people not using there other CC and using amex where they might have used cash.
fpr example I have boughta Pie at 7/11 for lunch rather than a Pie at my normal bakery (who only take cash).


The above examples are without any extra spend. How many people ina normal moth would not have more than 10 or twenty transactions if you add up all your normal Amex, VISA, EFTPOS and cash transactions?

Personally with this deal current I have been making extra purchases. One would be mad not to IMO. ie i have already bought my daughters Birthday presents even though her birthday is not to November. why did I not wait? Beacuse I thought the offer was too good to last.

It is the most generous points award promotion I have ever seen or heard of and IMO whomever at Amex dreamed it up got their decimal point in the wrong place.

ie it should have been say 500 points per dollar and should have hada minimum spend of $10-50. Having no mimimum spend with such a high transaction award was just crazy.

 

[gibspmuh]

Do you care to enlighten me on your source for your understanding??

Particularly as as far as I am aware I have not been targetted.....indeed yesterday when I rang Amex they still had me down as a valid registrant as per my postcard.

My understanding was he was saying you were targetted for the promotion - as you say, you received the postcard. I didn't infer from what he wrote that you had been targetted in any other way by AMEX apart from this.

 

[lovetravellingoz]

But targetted with which promotion? The 20T:10000 point promotion is only half as rewarding as the 5T:5000 point promotion, and registering on the more lucrative one doubles Amex exposure. And that is one of the implementation issues. Amex may have calculated 100K points a month, not 200K points a month.

I think simongr meant that I had been targetted by Amex as in banned etc.

If so he is completely making this up and the Mods should take him to task about writing falsehoods about another forumite.

 

[simongr]

Do you care to enlighten me on your source for your understanding??

Particularly as as far as I am aware I have not been targetted.....indeed yesterday when I rang Amex they still had me down as a valid registrant as per my postcard.

Apols - my implication was that one of the two of you had been in the original target market - so assumptions that it was low users that were targetted were false.

I in no way was implying that Amex targetted you for dodgy behaviour.

I actually couldnt remember who was the 200 trans per month user.

 

[oz_mark]

One week transactions without going ot of ones way too much (except that one does not use their Citibank and instead seeks out Amex)

If they have achieved moving you from Citibank and cash to Amex then they have achieved their goal, and if this was what people did then Amex would have been happy. I actually think they made the promotion profitable point wise on purpose, but it the other shenanigans that has gone on that has resulted in the change.