Questions on credit rating impacts and strategy of maintaining airline status

Hi Guys,
great website, love the reviews.
Still relatively new to this whole game, but here is my situation and question.
in 2017, flew ALOT for work (70+ flights), im gold on Virgin and silver on many other carriers (not Qantas). This may sound silly, but it is due to work conditions, so outside of my control.

  1. Best way to keep gold or how to ‘convince’ Qantas to status match (will this reset the 12 month period?)

  2. I have successfulyl signed up for and attained 100k points from AMEX Explorer thorugh your website (thanks!). I have just applied for ANZ FF Black Qantas - I assume I will be approved. So looking forward to that. Question 2 is - how does all this applying and then eventually cancelled cards effect my credit? I know you would not be able to answer specically, but did you have an overvall view of the impact?

  3. my partner has just moved to MEL (we were both syd based) and my work has allowed me flexibility to work between two cities and will grant me a travel budget to help with this cost - best advice for maximising the benefits I can get from this? Will do SYD-MEL return on avg 3 times per month, have enough budget to fly QF/VA so long as i am well planned and take the cheaper fares. Lounge access is important to me.

Please note I much prefer VA domestically and have had a few negative experiences with QF, so prefer VA.

Appreciate your wisdom!!

christian

There will be no impact on your credit rating.  In reality,  there is no such thing as “credit rating” in australia.   So dont even worry about this.

The new positive credit reporting system which sees many companies publishing a credit score is a load of BS, just to suck you into applying for credit through their own referral links.  Any lender that you apply for credit will be do its own credit assessment and ‘rating’ internally, and they wont tell you.

For those people who are chasing credit card points,  the worst thing that can happen to you is that you apply for too many credit cards,  then eventually you will not get approved for more credit cards.  Your ability to get a home loan or phone contract will not be impaired.

 

The good news is that Virgin makes it relatively easy to keep your Gold status once you have it. To retain Gold you will need 400 Status Credits in each year after you first attain Gold (as opposed to the 500 SC’s you needed to reach Gold in the first place). You also need to fly on at least four Virgin flights in those 12 months.

There are three main “hacks” you can use to reach those 400 SC’s more quickly:

  • Family pooling. If you have family who live at the same address as you, you can have their status credits given to you.
  • Shopping at Coles (also Liquorland and a couple of other places) and using Flybuys. If you swipe your Flybuys card when you shop at Coles and have Flybuys linked to your Velocity account, you will earn 1 Status Credit for every $100 spent at Coles, up to 10/month. This gives you a theoretical maximum of 120 SC's/year -- I say "theoretical" maximum because once per year Coles has a "double status credits" promotion, and also this month there's a promotion whereby if you transfer at least 10,000 Flybuys points to Velocity, they'll give you another 10 SCs. So if you spend $1000/month at Coles then quite possibly you could earn up to 140 SC's/year.
  • If you have one of the AmEx Virgin credit cards (I can't remember which one) and you spend $50,000 in 12 months, Virgin will give you 100 SC's. But you need to spend the full $50,000. If you spend $49,999 you'll get nuthin'.
In my case, this year I'm getting about 100 SC's from Family Pooling and another 135 from Flybuys (I don't have a Virgin AmEx) ... meaning that only need another 165 from my own flying to retain Gold! Easy!