Hello brains trust, I’ve taken my first step in travel hacking and signed up for the Velocity Flyer Credit Card. Being new to this, I asked Virgin Money why haven’t we received our bonus points for the first month since we’ve met the requirements. We were told that the points would be credit up to 60 days AFTER the qualifying period.
I know there are some purchases that aren’t “eligible transactions”. How would we know if we spent enough on eligible transactions? I fear that after all these “work” we didn’t meet the requirements and don’t get the sign up bonus points - which is the very reason we signed up for the card in the first place!
This is a good question Miss Average! It’s an issue when the bonus points are credited after the period in which you had to meet the eligible spend has since expired, so you can’t just fix it by making a few more purchases. You will be right so long as you’ve watched the exclusions (Government and semi-government transactions in particular). I’ve never not received bonus points. If you’re concerned, you can always just ask them if you’ve met the spend requirements for the bonus points and get the operator’s name. Hopefully you get the correct answer, but if you didn’t, you would be able to say “Virgin told me I had met the requirements”. The way I read the Virgin offer, “20,000 bonus Velocity Points will be awarded for every month $1,500 or more is spent on Eligible Transactions for 3 months from card approval”, you should receive 20,000 points within 60 days of the first month’s spend, another 20,000 points within 60 days of the second month’s spend, and then another 20,000 points with 60 days of the third month’s spend (or at least that’s the way it reads). Your question is a good one, because by the time 60 days has passed, you can’t fix it. But give them a ring is my advice for peace of mind.
I received the same Virgin Money CC yesterday. I’ve read the terms and conditions and they’re a bit vague as to how they determine what is a ‘special promotion’ or a ‘semi-government’ entity. I will be paying my rent on the CC (through DEFT) and my understanding is that this will be deemed an eligible transaction (I understand I will receive a CC fee). My next concern is that I don’t know when the statement period is for this CC and from my understanding and based on another CC I have (non rewards) that the banks and CC companies just randomly determine when a statement period is. The banks and CC companies like to promote rewards points though at the same time try every trick to make sure you don’t accumulate as many points as you should.
In regards to still not receiving your points after a a month or so, this is normal I think, considering points from 3rd parties are a manual process of verification. It appears there is a semi-manual procedure where someone actually looks at some of your transactions to consider if it eligible or not.
As an example of not receiving points in a timely manner, I’ve recently acquired 10,000 velocity points (thanks to bonus points) worth of purchases through partners on the Virgin Velocity eStore (items I actually needed). It’s been a month since the first transaction and still no points in my account. I think I will contact Virgin Velocity after the second month of waiting if the points don’t start to enter my account.
Be aware that Virgin starts the statement period from the date of card approval, not the date you physically get the card and activate it. You could lose a week in the mail. Then the statement period differs EACH month. My first statement period was 9/5/18 to 10/6/18, then my second month I assumed would end 10 July but no, it ended 8 July and the Virgin bill date was issued 6th July and purchases I made on 6th July to get me over the limit were not processed until 9th July leaving me $27 short of my required spend. I complained and told them they would have to include as my statement period was cut short by 5 days. I told them I would take it higher if they didn’t give me the points as this was the only reason I took the card. They came back and said they would give me 20,000 bonus points as a gesture of goodwill which would be added to the August bill. The last statement period ended 8th August and I did get both the 20,000 points for August plus the “goodwill” points from July - and they were credited to my Velocity account immediately.