The qantas cash bonus for june of 50k just for loading your card. Has anyone looked into this?
The only “fee” on this would be international exchange differences wouldnt it?
Load money, put to international currency and then transfer back to your bank account.
Easy 50k right?
Woah! Not so fast! Those “international exchange differences” you speak of are massive!
I’ve just done a quick “dummy run”. Transferring A$1 into US$ on Qantascash gives me US$0.73c on my card. If I were to transfer that US$0.73 back to my bank account, Qantascash would deposit A$0.90 into my account. So the “international exchange differences” are losing me 10 cents per dollar.
Let’s say you want to transfer A$20,000 into Qantascash to get the full 50,000 Qantas points. You’d get about US$14,600 in your Qantascash account. Then you’d end up with about A$18000 in your bank account after transferring it back.
So those 50,000 Qantas Points have effectively cost you $2000 – a whopping 4 cents per point. To be honest, unless you were absolutely desperate for quick points, no-one in their right mind would pay that much for a Qantas point. You’re better off using the $2000 you save to pay for a flight outright.
There are 10 other currencies which I haven’t looked at. And exchange rates do vary, but I’m sure the final result would be basically the same: ie. you’d be massively out of pocket for not much return.
Accumulating Frequent Flyer points is great fun. But you have to be hard-nosed about it. Sometimes it’s best to pass on the points and keep the cash. This, to me, is clearly one of those times.
dang, indeed it does. thanks for such a thorough response 