Have you ever been waiting in line at a supermarket self checkout frustrated at how slow people are paying for their groceries? Lately, there might be a good reason why. It seems some of our members prefer to pay for their purchase in small increments!
Regarding Coles & Woolworths …I’m now doing 99 – 149 transactions per day !…..I found, I can do 49 – 50 ( per card ) at say Woolies, then go down the road to Coles, and do another 49 – 50, and my cards still accept the $0.01 transactions ??
Tomorrow I’m going to attempt 200 transactions per card …
Many people would probably find it awkward, if not embarrassing, to be spending so much time at a supermarket paying for just a few items. For some, picking the wrong time or place has resulted in unwanted attention, and almost aggression from the vendors.
Today I was at Coles, two of us using card only machine doing the 1 cent thing. Then “help” came and slowed the process by asking questions, pressing buttons, etc. Then this mouse or cat face (Halloween) girl got really into it, then she called the Manager. All in all we got about 60 transactions thru in 25 minutes. (Normally we manage 100 in less than 10 min.) On top of all this, the Manager threatened to call Security and told us we are banned from shopping here! Even though there’s still empty machine not being used.
So why are our members risking bans and sheer embarrassment by paying their bills in 1c transactions. The answer is a newish product from Bankwest, the Qantas Transaction Account, that pays points when using a debit card. Unlike most credit cards that pay in a ration of points per dollar value purchased, this product has a number of different ways to earn points.
The first way is payment of points on the average monthly balance of the account. For every $100, you will receive 12 points. The other way is where the small transactions come in, for every transaction made using the master card facility of the debit card, you will get 5 Qantas Frequent Flyer points. It doesn’t take an expert to work out 5 Qantas points for 1c is not a bad deal, thats 1000 for $20 of spend.
While the initial offer of 10,000 points for signing up is gone, there seems to be a number of ways to still land a good haul of points. Like the promotions in the past which offered points per transaction, rather than a tie in on spend, people tend to get creative when it comes to maximising value. Not only do we have reports of loitering at the supermarkets, others are using their technical skills to write macros to pay utility bills in 1c increments. Thus avoiding any possible embarrassment physically, and creating a long receipt in the process.
Have you found a way to get the most out of the offer, why not share your experiences and tips HERE.
