- Mar 11, 2018
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Why are Qantas points useless? I fly to Tasmania regularly a few times a year and I've calculated that I'd earn a few "free" trips, without considering some of the sign-up bonuses that would pay for themselves in terms of value.
There's a couple of things Qantas have a bit of form with fiddling with here:
- $spend to FF points conversion to flight points conversion. I think they're down to $1 = 0.6pts or thereabouts
- The allocation of seats able to be booked with points
So do the math and see where you end up.
See how you go "pretend" booking return flights to Tassie with points - do you seem to be able to get tix when you want? Fridays / Sundays you might struggle. School holidays, etc. See what the points quote is. Figure out loosely how much CC spend you'd need to generate that. Cross reference against your monthly living expenses if you transitioned them all onto CC. Add on the annual fees and see if it's worthwhile. If you end up with a card that is $160 a year, and it takes you two years to get enough to fly to Tassie midweek, might not be worth it. But if you've got a lot of expenses you can transition through the card, maybe it is?
There are definitely scenarios where it can work (or so I've been led to believe). But most of the time it's a bit of a false economy. IMHO YMMV