Qantas Cash Points bonus email received

[Vic]

Remember it is *up to* 20000, you need to load AU$20K to get that amount of points. If you load AU$2500 you will only get 2500 points.

Oh. Thanks. I missed that.
you saved me a phone call chasing 20000 points. lol

 

[burmans]

Yes yes yes. You and others trot this out every time the subject comes up. And then I bring up the fact that I have $10K in USD on my QC card that I bought at 0.94 and strangely everything goes quiet.

Different products. Different purposes. Not directly comparable...

Absent a time machine, the ability to load USD at 0.94 for most people is somewhat limited. For those who cannot predict the future of foreign exchange ( and lets face it, that's almost everyone) Mel_Traveller's advice to people to investigate the Citi Bank card is a good piece of advice. One data point, such as you have proposed does not make a pattern.

Sure you have a different point of view, and perfectly entitled to it, but touting a single success and ignoring the fact that in general the fees on this card are a killer seems to hold little value to most readers, and only as a vehicle to boast of your own success.

 

[Sdtravel]

Which fees are you referring to? The ones i am aware of are the ATM withdraw & reloading via debit card.
I load using BPAY so dont incur a fee.
Last time i was in the US i dont think i used cash very much. All on card during the one week i was there. I got a little bit of cash at a currency exchange several days before i went away.

In this situation im unclear how your getting killed by fees? Or are you talking about the exchange rates being the killer?
I do agree the rates could be better and when the card first came out were much better than what you can get now.

Using this promotion though you would get 1 point for the load and 1 point when you spend. Thats better than my ANZ QF Black amex.
Not sure what point the Citi Bank card has and how that rates.

 

[opusman]

touting a single success and ignoring the fact that in general the fees on this card are a killer seems to hold little value to most readers, and only as a vehicle to boast of your own success.

Clearly that's not what I'm doing. All I'm pointing out (and all I've ever pointed out) is that pre-paid travel cards are a different product, with different benefits, to other options like the Citibank card. One of those benefits (the major one) is the ability to lock in your exchange rate. And yes, I have a good example of the benefit of locking in the exchange rate.

I really don't see why this point is so hard to grasp. If you want the ability to lock in your exchange rate, to protect against the dollar going down while travelling, the prepaid cards are a good option. Nothing more than that.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I really don't see why this point is so hard to grasp. If you want the ability to lock in your exchange rate, to protect against the dollar going down while travelling, the prepaid cards are a good option. Nothing more than that.

And that's exactly how the cards are marketed. But it's not quite as simple as that. I doubt for the vast majority of pax, buying currency now for a trip in a few week's time, would see the sort of currency movement that would make a travel card worthwhile over the prevailing rate of the day for a 'no fee' card.

Looking at the currency chart there would have been two very short periods in the last year where there might have been a slight advantage locking in a rate for the USD early (ie when it went down to 71c). For the rest of the year - 11 or so months, the advantage would have been with a no fee card.

 

[opusman]

Looking at the currency chart there would have been two very short periods in the last year where there might have been a slight advantage locking in a rate for the USD early (ie when it went down to 71c). For the rest of the year - 11 or so months, the advantage would have been with a no fee card.

Hindsight's a great thing. Where are the currency charts showing future exchange rates?

For some people, reducing the risk may be worth an extra percent or two in the rate.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Hindsight's a great thing.

True! And if the mining boom was still going your 94c may have been a bad deal!

 

[JohnK]

I've also received a few of these emails. Poor value in my opinion. The thing that gets me the most is lousy exchange rate and then fees to use the balance on the card. A lot of small purchases is going to increase the fees paid.

 

[Sdtravel]

I started loading a little less than i will likely need but also load some AUD on the card. Once i run out of USD it just uses AUD on the rate of the day. Which i can live with. Saves having left over currency.

 

[burmans]

Hindsight's a great thing. Where are the currency charts showing future exchange rates?

For some people, reducing the risk may be worth an extra percent or two in the rate.

Your second sentence would seem to contradict your first. Yes, there are no currency charts showing future exchange rates and therefore there is no way of knowing whether pre-loading is increasing your exchange rate risk or decreasing it.

 

[opusman]

Your second sentence would seem to contradict your first. Yes, there are no currency charts showing future exchange rates and therefore there is no way of knowing whether pre-loading is increasing your exchange rate risk or decreasing it.

I take it then you have no insurance policies of any sort?

 

[DontGetMeStarted]

I'm off to HK next week and need to pay my hotel bill which I was going to do via ANZ Amex Black, 1.5 points and a foreign trans fee, wondering if I should just buy HK dollars on this card and earn at least the two points per $
1 for the bonus $2500.00 and 1 for the overseas spend....its not a lot but wonder if its worth it.

 

[PineappleSkip]

Also mulling over the offer. Looking to travel OS on holiday from late May to early July . Previously put off Qantas Cash by the howls of outrage here over the forex rates. I was thinking of taking money parked in the bank now, and putting it on a card. About 40% of my expected spend.

My aim for using it is to pay for some of my CC spend. Not hold it and speculate on forex gain. That's not for me. Zero sum gain less fees and (i'f I'm lucky) taxes. Mind you, I'm enough of a punter not to be excited by the lock-in feature. Again could win or lose. C'est la vie.

The rates on Qantas Cash don't look outrageously bad to me, in relative terms. If I purchase €, the OANDA mid rate right now is 0.6857. On my 3% fee visa card (yes I know I could do better), VISA suggests an indicative rate of 0.6630 and OANDA reckons much the same factoring in a 3% fee, and Qantas Cash reckons a rate of 0.6524. The rate differential, about a 5% fee equivalent according to OANDA, doesn't strike me as awful for two points per dollar. The net-of-tax interest foregone by not leaving the money in the bank for a few months is about 0.23% of the load, neither here nor there really.

Non-financial positive for me of having QC are having a third card; a couple of occasions OS for some reason I've been able to use the MC, but not my Visa or Amex card. Strange things happen sometimes with foreign POS machines.

However I'm still not certain (better make up my mind soon). The big downsides for me are the small sums leftover in forex when you return (I have HKD 93 and AED 16 laughing at me in my QC wallet), and the alternative of truly awful cross rates when drawing from another currency to make up a last transaction in say €. Probably no more awful than having some € change in my pocket when I get home though.

One question though. The offer is 1 point to load $1, and 1 more point as usual to spend $1. The previously announced changes suggest that my spend from May onwards would yield me 1.5 points per $1 equivalent spent, and total 2.5 points per dollar loaded tips the scales a bit in favour of QC. However I smell a rat in any and all claimed QF enhancements, and the current offer has me thinking that the 1.5 points per dollar spend might only apply to money loaded after 1 May. Anyone have fine print, goss or a punt on this proposition?

Cheers skip.

 

[Dr Ralph]

The rates on Qantas Cash don't look outrageously bad to me,

There are very poor.

 

[neil37]

are the current exchange rates so good that you want to spend 3 - 4 percent to lock them in? If not, a Citibank debit card will do everything you want but cheaper. Of course you don't get the points, but unless you get at least 4 points per dollar you're losing out.

 

[PineappleSkip]

are the current exchange rates so good that you want to spend 3 - 4 percent to lock them in? If not, a Citibank debit card will do everything you want but cheaper. Of course you don't get the points, but unless you get at least 4 points per dollar you're losing out.

Thanks, you convinced me.

As per my earlier post, I don't give two hoots about locking in. You lock in, you make a punt. You don't lock in, you also punt. It's spending money, not speculative investment. The incremental cost to me of using Qantas Cash is two percent, not five percent, because NAB is already charging me three percent for a visa card. So two points per dollar for two percent premium sounds OK.

I also found I could transfer my token AED (enough to buy a cappucino) across, and lost $0.24 on the deal. I could live with that.

Thanks for the various offers to get a citibank debit card. I had uninspiring experiences with citibank in the long ago past, and resolved long ago to deal with them no more.

Cheers skip

 

[neil37]

As for paying three percent for an overseas Visa card (I assume a credit card), that's also unnecessary. You can use 28 degrees (which is a Mastercard, not Visa, and is fee-free) or an ANZ Rewards card (which is Visa but has an annual fee). Neither of those has an overseas transaction fee. The way I figure it is that banks are making plenty of money anyway and don't need that contribution!

 

[PineappleSkip]

... banks are making plenty of money anyway and don't need that contribution!

Indeed so. Cheers skip

 

[downloadingdata]

In the end it comes down to: do you want to pay 4 cents / point? There are much cheaper ways to earn QF points.