$75,000 for a one way ticket to London
June 1, 2009
Today we read that Woolworths and Qantas have launched a combined partnership, in offering shoppers frequent flyer points ie shop at earn points! Well I’m going to tell you why the Woolworths and Qantas Frequent Flyer partnership is a real basket case for the customers.
So Woolworth and Qantas have announced that they are giving you points to shop in their stores this is great news we will all be flying the family away just for shopping! Wrong assumption, unless you are spending over $200 a week on your shop at Woolies you could be waiting a long time to get enjoy the fruits of your shopping trips with a one way trip that costs 8000 points like Sydney – Melbourne.
members of the airline’s frequent flyer program will receive one point for every dollar over $30 spent at Woolworths and some of its other chains.
Lets put some Numbers in the basket
For every dollar you spend after $30 you will receive 1 Frequent Flyer Point. A Sydney – Melbourne flight is going to cost you 8000 Frequent Flyer Points. This means if you were to spend only $31 on your shopping its going to cost you $248,000 at the check out! Lets say you spend an average $200 a week on your grocery bill for the family, its going to cost you $9,411 at the check out to get that one way ticket to Melbourne.
Our Verdict – save on the Arnotts Shapes and Chocolates and you could buy the ticket with the money you saved in less time, and also saved your families waist line! The concept is a marketing trick to get you to buy in the big stores on the air that you will flying on woolworths, the only people that are going to be flying is woolworths on the extra spending of people that drawn in on a flight. Watch out for all the a marketing in store that will be around to persuade you to spend more to get the points.
If you love your frequent flyer points the quickest way to earn the points is to use a Credit Card to place the purchases against to earn the points, effectively this will half the time it takes to earn the one way short haul flight! But at what price when you add the fees and charges placed on the card!
For those that are interested a Sydney London on the $200 week shop is going to cost you $75K at the check out and over 374 trips to the woolworths store, nothing fresh about that idea!
I agree this is a little crazy if you don’t usually spend $200 a week on groceries, but lots of families already are. If you’re already spending it, why not earn the points at the same time? It’s similar to ‘fly-buys’ – you don’t expect to have enough Fly Buy points to fly you to London after 6 months of shopping, so why should it be the same with the Frequent Flyer points program?
Sarah thanks for commenting and agree with you you might as well earn the points if you are shopping anyway even if it does take you years to earn enough to fly to London! I’m yet to still reach the goal with my Coles Fly Buy card, maybe when the kids are older I can say here is a flight for all those golden apples you ate!