I have a close friend of mine who has a heap of CBA award points. I am not very familiar with their reward point system, and I have noticed that there are no write ups/reviews on any of their CC’s.
Is this because CBA is typically not FF friendly?
Its not like the Amex MR system where you can transfer points into a FF program right?
I did a bit of quick research and noticed that you can transfer CBA points into Flight Centre vouchers. Surely this would be a below average burn rate for points?
My friend is asking me (as apparently I am the ‘point guru’ - which I am most certainly not!) what he should do with his points. He (and his wife and daughter) is wanting to meet my wife and I in California in August. Happy to fly Y.
Your friend can transfer their CBA points to Velocity or Qantas by clicking on the “Redeem Travel” tab on the CommBank Awards site and selecting “Velocity and Qantas Frequent Flyer”. The transfer rate is 2.5 CBA points to 1 FF unless they are a Diamond/Platinum cardholder where it is 2 to 1 for Velocity only. To transfer to Qantas though, they have to have “opted-in” which charges an annual fee and doesn’t include points earned before the opt-in. Looks like Velocity is the way to go for them.
I transferred all my CBA points to Velocity a few weeks ago when they had the 15% bonus and I’m still waiting for my account to be credited, so make sure they do it early.
We do have a guide to Commonwealth Awards here. To your point - yes, we cover it much less because there are rarely great offers, the transfer partners are limited, and only the high-end cards are worth considering (and even then only if you get them with a discounted fee).
Best option in your friend’s situation is to transfer into Velocity during the 15% bonus period noted by natascha.
From there they can redeem for flights to LAX in Y with decent availability for 44.8k points one way. If they need to connect from LAX to somewhere else I recommend they call Virgin as some of their partner airline flights eg Virgin America aren’t always shown on the website. Virgin will normally waive the phone booking fee when that happens.