Ozzidoc

It's free.

longreach

Think its still free

BecciJ

I tried as a UK resident a few weeks ago and Qantas were going to charge me. Let me know if you do get it free and how you did it!!

Darren_Karen

Can you accumulate 'miles or points' if you book on behalf of a relative coming to visit you? so if I booked for my parents to come, on my credit card, could i claim their travel miles?

also, how do these rate with the credit card schemes? I was thinking of transferring from HSBC to Commonwealth to start gaining points, but which is the more favourable? can you link the two?

Karen

Possums

Hi no you can't we have relatives with us at the moment and I tried to get their points added onto ours but FF said no. In fact you cant even put your partners on have to both register.

cant help re the credit card

IvanM

$89 at the moment for residents.

bcworld

If you need a new credit card sign up for an Earth card......spending earns points into the Qantas FFP and they also pay your $82.50 membership fee! There is no credit card fee for the first year so you could get rid of the card once enrolled in the Qantas programme if you like.

http://www.earth.com.au/benefits/default.aspx

BrisbaneBound2008

Excellent! We hate credit cards but would be silly not to gain FF points if we can! Will just pay balance each time so no interest! Thanks for that!

TrickyTree

We use an AMEX card which gives us 1.5 FFP per $ spent as others have said we put everything on the card to save the points. We just used our points to return to the UK last christmas for about $1100 so it proved very worthwhile.

DadAgain

Dont you get annoyed by vendors who refuse to take AMEX - and by others who charge you extra 2% to cover the high cost of handling AMEX from the retailer?

I used to have AMEX - but this frustrated me so much I decided that the 1.5 points deal wasnt sufficient to make up for the number of points I missed because vendors wouldnt accept it! It didnt seem worth paying 2 credit card annual fees just so I had a 'backup' for vendors who didnt take Amex - so I dropped it in favour of Citibank visa ($1-1pt) which is universally accepted.

ANZ visa seems ok until you realise that theres a monthly limit and once you've spent $2000 in any month you dont earn any more points!! (DUD!). ANZ do however, every now and then run a promotion "sign up and get 20,000 points" I did this (paid the $90 fee) and didnt use the card. When I asked to cancel it 2 months after getting it the customer service rep offered me 8000 points to hold on to it for another 6 months - I called 6 months later and cancelled without any hassle. 28,000 points for $90 - seemed like a good deal!!!

bcworld

Many of the cards now give you Amex + something else. For example, my Earth Card comes with 2 cards, one Amex + one Mastercard, both attached to the same account and with one annual fee. I also got an NAB Velocity Card (just to bag 15000 Virgin miles) and it came with an Amex card + a visa card, same type of deal. The Velocity card I have used once to buy a Big Mac to trigger the 15000 miles, never used it since and will close it before the annual fee is due...first year was free!

Centurion

Completely agree on the Amex points.

Interestingly in the new Australian Ascent catalogue the points transfer to frequent flyers has changed for some airlines:

Now Singapore Airlines FF points 1 to 1 Amex points. Now that makes it all worth while. No other frequent flyer program will offer you 1 point on one of the most generous ff programs about for each 66c spent.

You aren't locked into a FF program. You can simply blow the points on a 10,000 points for $100 on any travel booking you care to make if worst comes to the worst.

And frankly when you put all your weekly woolworths shopping on it, fuel and other bits and bobs it really cranks up.

The car salesman for my new pathfinder argued the toss when I said I wanted to pay the balance of my car payment on it after trade in. I explained that would be a deal breaker and a few thousand points later...

PS - Happen to think that the Qantas FF program is perhaps the most stingy and crap FF program out there. Compare them to SIA and Malaysian. That said Virgin is the pits, you can earn points no worries but try to get a flight using FF points and you will be sadly disappointed.

TrickyTree

We dont run into that problem a great deal (although it does happen every now and again - once a month maybe) for those instances we just stick it on our CBA Mastercard which is 1 FFP per $ and no annual fee.

Darren_Karen

OK, so just to make sure I've understand right (as I'm a bit thick), the best way for me to get discounts on flights back is to:

- sign up to Qantas FFS (i can fly with other airlines with this)
- get an earth card to earn points into
no need to pay fee, and i'll get option of both amex and mastercard through the same account

I just want something that will help us to fly back to UK as we're a family of 4, that's a lots of bums on seats needed!

Thanks

Karen

bcworld

If you sign up for Qantas FFP you will be able to redeem points for flights back to the UK with Qantas, BA, Cathay or JAL. To get one 'free' seat you'll need to have 128000pts....to earn that many points from flying alone you'll need to fly rtn Aus - UK on Qantas 6 times. Even then 'free' doesn't mean free....you still have to pay all the taxes and fuel surcharges so free really means about $600 - $700 for the seat.

As other's have said Qantas FFP is pretty crappy....as far as I know there isn't the option to pay part with cash part with miles as there is on other airlines....there are very few points special offers & from what I hear seat availability is pretty poor.

You'll need to check with Earth / Westpac as to whether the card fee is waived in the first year...it was for me.