Hi there. I have a HSBC Premier credit card that receives Qantas points. HSBC are saying that school fees are ineligible to receive Qantas points as it is classed as a payment and not a purchase. Seems odd to me as I pay council rates and other bills using the card. When looking at several websites, including Qantas Inside Traveller it mentions accruing points on school fees. There seems to be a discrepancy here. Anyone have any knowledge of if this is correct or not, or advice? TIA
Hi @brian.gould
This is intriguing! I have three comments:
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First, credit card companies have every right to set their own terms and conditions regarding what qualifies for “eligible spending” that earns points. Every credit card company does it; every CC company has their own T&Cs and, yes, they all differ. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with one CC company having different T&C’s from the others.
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Second, I did have a close look at the HSBC Premier World Mastercard T&Cs and, indeed, they state that “fees and charges” do not count towards “eligible purchases” as far as earning points go. This is, needless to say, very unusual. Many, in fact most, CC companies exclude government fees and charges. To my knowledge no other CC company excludes all fees and charges. But the bottom line is that HSBC has every right to do this, just as customers have every right to vote with their feet if they don’t like it.
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If you believe that HSBC is behaving, or has behaved, in any way illegally or unethically (eg. by advertising one thing and then contradicting that in the fine print) you have the right to lodge a complaint with AFCA (though you need to try to resolve your complaint with them directly first, or AFCA won’t accept the case).
If HSBC is giving you Qantas points on your council rates etc, according to their T&C’s then that’s a bonus which they don’t technically have to give you. Certainly I think that clause about “fees and charges” being excluded is very unimpressive: all I can do is reiterate that you, as a customer, have every right to ditch HSBC in favour of another CC company with more favourable T&Cs.
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Another train of thought I had is whether the process involved a third party payment processing entity, which may lead to the transaction being flagged as another category (fees). At this stage, I can only speculate.
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OK thanks both. I’ve tried a small transaction amount to see if I receive the points. I understand that it depends how the recipient processes the transaction as to whether it is considered a payment or purchase.