Hi
Has anyone successfully purchased a $500 Woolworths egift card from cash rewards (cost of $475 and receiving amex full points) and used it to buy a $500 Woolworths visa prepaid visa gift card in store?
Looking to pay some bills that don't accept amex and the $25 off would also be even better. Any thoughts or experiences?
Woolworths prepaid visa / buy with gift card
banzini on 15/05/2017 - 00:30
Comments
Pretty sure this is what you're referring to (and will have to do, given no $500 cards at Woolworths anymore):
- You'll want to purchase 5 x $100 "Only1" prepaid Visa cards from Woolworths - with $5.95 each activation fee, this is $529.75
- To fund this, purchase Woolies egiftcard from cash rewards - with 5% off, this will cost you $503.26
- So now you have $500 worth of Visa, for a cost of $503.26 (a cost of 0.65%).
- With a 0.65% cost, you want to have purchased via an AMEX Platinum Edge (at 3 points per $, roughly 3% value in most people's books). Failing that, at least use their Explorer card when linked to Ascent program (at 2 points per $)
- So, overall you've "earnt" a net 2.35% on a Visa - not bad, and above most Amex's.
But if Woolies ever has a sale (no fee, woolies dollars etc) on their prepaid Visas again, that's when all hell breaks loose. Lots of discussion over at AFF within gift card threads (and here on Ozbargain) on that :)
There is a loadable type that allows you to go as high as 500. But they won't take gift cards as a payment.
They pay extra attention when you come to the counter with that card. You can't even pay with credit cards, but there are 500 cards lol.
True, have tried that in the past with no success. Harvey Norman has them up to 500, but only makes sense when they have their Amex credit offers (if the let you pay with Amex…) like they currently have
Weird that they don't let you pay with a credit card? Anyone else had success with a cc?
You can't.
Prepaid CC purchases are setup so that payments are 'cash out' on the pinpad. This means unless your card has a cash out facility (i.e. a normal debit card), you can't pay for them via card.
The reason for this is risk mitigation / AML.
@pais: I did buy $500 gift cards using Amex, but I didn't get the statement credits. I had to go there and buy vPay cards to get the statement credits.
To clarify, the above is specifically for prepaid Visa/MC stored value cards, not for wish cards or black hawk cards.
Cheers for this. Looking to pay a few bills that are visa only.
I also only have the amex explorer card.
1c per Amex PE point is a bit steep. Isn't the conversion rate to QFF 2:1? If this is correct then I'd say 0.75c is a better estimate for Amex points, so you would get 1.5% value on your spend (leaving you with 0.85% net benefit). Please correct me if I'm missing something.
There's only one or two Amex's which you can transfer Amex points to Qantas (the exxy platinum charge and I think a business card) which as you say are 2:1. There's also direct earn Qantas Amex's like the ultimate card at 1.5 points per dollar (no need to transfer).
But other Amex cards can earn up to 3 PPD (eg Platinum Edge at supermarkets) and these transfer to numerous airline miles programs other than QFF at 1:1 (eg velocity, KrisFlyer, Etihad, Cathay Pacific etc). Going rate for these on this site and other places is 1c per point, so it's roughly 3% return.
Amex points can also be used as statement credits (ie to pay off your balance directly) at 0.7c per point, so the platinum edge via supermarkets earns 2.1% if redeemed this way. Another handy use is redeeming at 1c per point via Amex travel bookings (eg hotels, often stacking with the travel credit which comes with the card). So a couple of options exist for a small "profit"
That's a great post and comparison
Yes it's a great little bonus.
For me youre essentially buying points at a cheap rate. I try and get them for free;)
I've recently signed up to the AMEX Velocity Platnium card with 100K bonus points (my wife did the same). So have to spend $1500 over 3 months per card which with groceries and stuff is doable for one and a half cards.
I wanted to check if the above actions can still be done as I have a few bills coming up (council rates, water, internet), and it'd be good to use one of the AMEX cards for this to reach the minimum spend.
Is woolies still selling $100 Only1 prepaid Visa cards? I only saw $50 ones in my local woolworths.
Yes, some stores don't keep the $100's in stock or are slow to refill
but has anyone seen $200 ones? According to only1 website, there should be a $200 one with 7.95 activation fee
Yes for sale at Officeworks not Woolies
can you still buy the prepaid visa, I thought they where not available anymore.