Bankwest Transaction account [General Discussion]

[Big John]

Very sad to see this cap imposed.

Was a good place to park surplus cash in a low interest rate environment.

Will have to look at the Qudos offering soon.

 

[Danger]

I spoke with Bankwest yesterday and after a bit of back and forth I was able to convince them to pause the transfer of points to my Qantas account. I'm at a point in my QF membership year where it's much more beneficial for me to defer earning until my new membership year rolls over.

 

[Kangol]

A few days to go. Has anyone applied for the Qudos bank account?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

A few days to go. Has anyone applied for the Qudos bank account?

Yup! Took all of three minutes Ready to go from 1 November.

 

[Duffa]

BOQ specialist accepts doctors, dentists vets and accountants and students thereof.

 

[Kangol]

Interesting.

Based on this:

https://www.boqspecialist.com.au/content/dam/boq-specialist/files/products/bank-accounts/everyday-plus-account/terms-and-conditions/BOQS001527-Everyday-plus-account-terms-and-conditions.pdf

Rate of accrual:
1 Qantas Point for every whole amount of $10 making up the average daily balance calculated at the end of each calendar month. If the last day of a calendar month is not a valid Banking Business Day, your daily account balance on the last valid Banking Business Day of that month will be used for calculation of your average monthly balance. Any transactions between the last valid Banking Business day and the next valid Banking Business Day of the following month will be posted as adjustments at the end of the next month.

BOQ 50k: 60,000 points per year (5,000 per month)
BOQ 1k: 1,200 points per year (100 per month)

No cap on BOQ that I can find.

As a reference:

BW 50k: 54,750 points per year
BW 1k: 1,095 points per year

Qudos 50k: 20,038 points per year
Qudos 1k: 396 points per year

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Yes, the BOQ specialist account is very good for earning points, but such a limited eligibility criteria. (Would signing up to an open university course on accounting be sufficient?? )

 

[ChrisMars]

Yes, the BOQ specialist account is very good for earning points, but such a limited eligibility criteria. (Would signing up to an open university course on accounting be sufficient?? )

I think it definitly should
In case your spouse happens to qualify, that should be enough for you to apply, as "spouse of..." is an option in the application process.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

So have I got this right... with Qudos you can 'set and forget'? There's no minimum deposit of $2000 (or whatever) per month like Bankwest in order to escape account keeping fees or anything?

 

[awaywithfairies]

Received a letter from BankWest today saying they'll be closing my Qantas Transaction Account in January "pursuant to the account terms and conditions".

I opened the account in June 2018 after seeing discussion about it in these fora. Since then, I've kept a couple of thousand dollars in the account and made a few transactions per week (maybe about 5) - a few cents each time, usually when buying groceries at the supermarket and splitting the payment.

Probably earned a 250-350 points per month. Chickenfeed compared to some of the points-earning stories I've seen in this thread!

While the bank's not being specific about the reason, the only one I can find in the terms and conditions that might even vaguely apply is that the account is used "in a way that might cause you or us to lose money". ie the points awarded are somehow costing them more than my account's worth.

Will be sad to see it go. Even though the points earned weren't very much, they took virtually no effort to earn. Will have to go back to bumbling around even lower on the points earning ladder!

 

[Dr Ralph]

Received a letter from BankWest today saying they'll be closing my Qantas Transaction Account in January "pursuant to the account terms and conditions".

I opened the account in June 2018 after seeing discussion about it in these fora. Since then, I've kept a couple of thousand dollars in the account and made a few transactions per week (maybe about 5) - a few cents each time, usually when buying groceries at the supermarket and splitting the payment.

Probably earned a 250-350 points per month. Chickenfeed compared to some of the points-earning stories I've seen in this thread!

While the bank's not being specific about the reason, the only one I can find in the terms and conditions that might even vaguely apply is that the account is used "in a way that might cause you or us to lose money". ie the points awarded are somehow costing them more than my account's worth.

Will be sad to see it go. Even though the points earned weren't very much, they took virtually no effort to earn. Will have to go back to bumbling around even lower on the points earning ladder!

Welcome to the club

 

[33kft]

I believe it's the "a few cents each time" part that led to the termination. They tend not to like smaller transactions from what I understand.

 

[awaywithfairies]

I believe it's the "a few cents each time" part that led to the termination. They tend not to like smaller transactions from what I understand.

Perhaps I should clarify. My split payments involved something like a $20.05 grocery shop where the $20 was paid with one card and the remaining 5 cents paid with the BankWest card. So just a single Bankwest payment for that transaction. But I acknowledge your comment about smaller transactions.

I understand that, in the past, there were accounts closed after large numbers of, say, 1c transactions were made to pay a single bill. Certainly not what was happening in my case.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Perhaps I should clarify. My split payments involved something like a $20.05 grocery shop where the $20 was paid with one card and the remaining 5 cents paid with the BankWest card. So just a single Bankwest payment for that transaction. But I acknowledge your comment about smaller transactions.

I understand that, in the past, there were accounts closed after large numbers of, say, 1c transactions were made to pay a single bill. Certainly not what was happening in my case.

The general rule of thumb is that banks and other businesses pay airlines 1c per point. So your 5c transaction, netting three points (or five points previously) would almost have been costing them money.

 

[33kft]

It's an interesting one. Despite having worked in the industry for half my career (but admittedly not recently) the BWW QF Transaction account is the one product I've never truly understood from the bank's perspective.

My guess is that as a smaller player they wanted better leverage in interchange arrangements by encouraging greater numbers of transactions but the account cancellations say otherwise. Whilst @MEL_Traveller's point about transaction value vs cost is a good one, that would matter much more for a credit card product (where you are "banking" on a proportion of customers carrying over a balance plus interest).

It could be a reputational move, after Telstra and others got hit with millions of dollars of 1c charges which cost real money, perhaps at that point businesses saw it as BWA mobilising their customer base to cheat them out of transaction fees by incentivising this, but why hone in on @awaywithfairies who has barely utilized it? (Answer most likely from my experience is... Grad bus analyst was told to pick off accounts with repeat low value transactions, sorted in excel from least to most and is making their way down the list)

It could also be simply a ploy to get people to use the account as their primary transaction account as a lead-in to profitable products. The issue there is the reward at 3 ppt is low enough to make almost no impact. They could have worked around this by tiering it so the larger the txn the more points up to a total of a handful of points but they never did so that doesn't seem to be it either.

It gets even weirder when you consider the parent is CBA, I am not sure you'd even need the leverage for interchange if you had CBAs leverage however more than likely the separate banking licenses would mandate separation there and so it still could possibly be the reason.

Would love to hear any ideas on what we think it is about. I was stunned recently when BWA dropped the ceiling for deposits... That seemed insane to me. Money in reserve is a super tangible and valuable asset for banks, especially if you convince people to deposit beyond government guaranteed sums, transactions seem less so, yet transactions weren't capped at the same time.

 

[Danger]

My balance in January never fell below $50K but I only earned 4200 QFF points. Does this seem right?

 

[Coops1]

Max of 50k counts for points..you were paid for 28 days?

 

[Danger]

Max of 50k counts for points..you were paid for 28 days?

Shouldn't I have been paid for 31?

 

[Coops1]

Shouldn't I have been paid for 31?

I agree

 

[MEL_Traveller]

On my account it tends to fluctuate… some months over, some under. Seems to average out though. Someone posted the reason why last year.