ANZ Diners Card - Retention offer - DOUBLE POINTS for 3 mths

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danielh

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Dec 5, 2003
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This is in the ANZ Qantas Visa forum as you can only get this card if you had the ANZ Qantas Gold Visa card.

A lot of you may remember the 'wonderful' offer from Diners for a special frequent flyer card that gave you a lot of benefits like linking to your Visa card, points earnt on ATM withdrawals and that big enticement, FREE membership for the first year.

Well, my expiry date on my card is 11/06 and today I decided to give Diners Card International a call (1300 656 363) to let them know I will be cancelling my card.

FYI. I also have a work paid for Diners card and I don't pay my fees for that one.

They put me through to a nice lady who explained to me that Diners is expecting a flood of people cancelling their cards over the next few months and so they have quickly set up a DOUBLE POINTS for THREE MONTHS offer starting midnight of that day.

There is going to be a few shakeups over the next fwe months as they work out a better way of enticing people to stay but this is the current deal.

Basically, what will happen is that for the next 3 months I get the double points and I can quit at any time still and they will give me a call at the beginning on November to ask me if I wish to stay with them or not. I will most likely say no (due to my alternative Diners Card).

As an additional FYI, my October Diners Card statement will have the AU$150 annual fee in it but they will reverse it if I decide to not continue with the card beyond November. The lady stressed that I can still have the use of my card up until the end of November without having the pay for the AU$150.

Regards
Daniel

PS: I just did a check of my calender and just realised that my 3 months ends in October 9 so I guess I'll be placing that call a month earlier then expected.
 
Daniel,
Just ensure that they do not charge you a penalty for not settling the account in full.
 
Definitely Arun.

FYI, I had already cleared out my account and made sure that the FF points had transfered to my Qantas account before I made the call to Diners yesterday (7/7/04).

I'll just make sure I do the same come early October. I might also just give them a call in 2 months or so to see what new offer they are making to retain me as a customer.

:)

Regards
Daniel
 
I also called Diners Club last week to check on the annual fee. Basically the offer was for one year free however it is only 10 months old and they still applied the annual fee to my account. Diners said they collect the fee in advance.

Diners reduced the fee down to $24- for all ANZ cardholders, I insisted on closing the card and spoke to someone in retentions. We had a discussion over the $24- fee and Diners were prepared to give me two points for 6 months however they would not waive the fee. Oh well, Diners (Citibank) lost an account for a measly $24-. I would have clocked up a lot more income that the fee they were going to charge me.

ex Diners Club cardholder. :roll:

I am now an AMEX Rewards maximiser cardholder for the next 12 months. :D
 
Yep, Diners sent me a letter telling me that my annual card fee will be reduced to $71 ($24 for Card Fee + $55 Rewards Fee).

My three months of double points is up on Oct 7th and I'll give them a chat about getting double points for a further 6 months (perhaps more if I can) and I'll stay with them for at least that period. For $71 for a year it is cheaper then the Amex Rewards Maximiser ($12 a month).

For the last 2.5 months I've probably put AU$17000 on the card so I get double on top of that. :)

With regards to the early charging of my account, I'm a bit annoyed but from a conversation with a DC person 2.5 months ago, she said that I will get a full refund if I decide to not continue with the program (although she did day that I would be charged in my November bill and not my next one as indicated in the letter).

Regards
Daniel
 
Well I my 3 months are up and I just called them up to see what sort of deal I can do.

I spoke to a nice person called Nicole who updated me on when my final points (including accumulated double points) will be transfered to my Qantas account (apparantly it is once a month so looking at my last months Qantas activity it will be the 20th Oct). I told her I'd like to see what sort of deal I can do to extend the double points offer and she said I would have to go to the card cancelation people and so she transfered me to an American called Marcus.

Note: Nicole said that these double point offers are normally given out once a year.

As soon as I heard that I was being transfered to a guy I knew I was going to be in trouble.

I asked him if I could extend my double points offer to 6 months and he said "No".

I asked him what was his best offer and he said that it was no annual fee (I would normally pay $79) and I get 3 months of double points on all Petrol and Supermarket purchases. (For me this was pretty much worthless).

I asked him if I can have a flat 3 month double but pay the $79 fee but he said "No".

I asked him if he could talk to someone about getting a better deal (while sounding very reasonable and calm) and after being on hold for a bit he said "No Can Do".

I then said thank you and that I will cancel me account as soon as my points transfer and he said "Ok".

Obviously he really cares about his job.

Now I think I'll have to wait until I see the points in my Qantas account and as soon as I do that then I'll call them up again and do the whole song and dance again. By then I will have completely cleared my Diners account with a Zero balance and no points hanging around so canceling it would not harm me.

If anyone has been given a better offer from them I would like to know and in what circumstances. Eg. Had you been given a double points offer previously or not etc.

Regards
Daniel
 
Well just called up Diners Club to talk to them about cancelling my card. I had received my bonus 26000-odd points and I've still got about 1000 more in the system to be processed by Qantas (they only do it once a month).

Once I was assured that those 1000 points will definitely get to Qantas whether or not I cancel my card I told them I was interested in cancelling it. They put me through to a person called Vanessa (who was really helpfull) and she offered me 1.5 points for 3 months (after having a quick chat with her manager). She also offered to give me free membership for a year instead but i told her that I had already been charged for it and I prefer to get points anyway.

So right now I have got 1.5 points for my ANZ Diners Card until Feb 2005. This is 1/4th as good as the American Express card so I don't think I'm ahead in any way except for having my ANZ account linked to it.

I'm not sure if I've 'won' this one or not but I suspect that if I get another of those AmEx pre-approved letters I won't toss it in the bin this time. :)

I'm going to keep the card for the three months in the meanwhile and see what is around in that period.

Regards
Daniel
 
danielh said:
I'm not sure if I've 'won' this one or not but I suspect that if I get another of those AmEx pre-approved letters I won't toss it in the bin this time. :)
The Amex application on-line is really simple and quick. I used it to "upgrade" my RACQ Gold Amex card to a Amex Rewards Maximiser card last month. First year's fee is free, including MR fees. The only fee I paid was $36 for a second card, and when you consider how much Mrs NM can put onto a CC, that is a good points/$ ratio :eek: .

So I think I am ahead of the fees game for at least 2 years now on this card.

And they transferred my 148K MR points across to the new card. And they almost doubled my credit limit at the same time (I didn't ask) to about 25% of my last home loan! Its firghtning to think that I could purchase a very wide range of semi-luxury cars with the wad of credit cards in my pocket.
 
Its firghtning to think that I could purchase a very wide range of semi-luxury cars with the wad of credit cards in my pocket.

So what's it going to be :?: An Audi A6 or a Mazda RX8 perhaps :?:

:D :oops: :D :oops: :D
 
straitman said:
So what's it going to be :?: An Audi A6 or a Mazda RX8 perhaps :?:

:D :oops: :D :oops: :D
The problem is that they want me to pay it back at some point! And I can't affort the interest if I don't get it paid off by the due date :( .
 
NM said:
straitman said:
So what's it going to be :?: An Audi A6 or a Mazda RX8 perhaps :?:

:D :oops: :D :oops: :D
The problem is that they want me to pay it back at some point! And I can't affort the interest if I don't get it paid off by the due date :( .

Oh well, it doesn't hurt to dream :!:

:wink:
 
Well I think I've got about another week of 1.5 points per $ on my current Diners Card.

Its going to be time to call Diners up again and ask about double points this time. I only think I spent about $8,000 on the card in the last 3 months and I've got my wedding on 2nd April to pay for as well so I should hope to get some nice extra points or I will go to AmEx.

It's funny though, with the changes that Qantas are introducing on May 25, all this additional work I'm putting into earning points will simply put me about even when taking the points changes for long haul flights into consideration.

Oh well. I have already got my 2 return tickets to LA all 'awarded' for in Dec 05 for only 160,000 points so I'm happy.

Regards
Daniel
 
Well my 1.5 points per $ deal finished on the 8th Feb 2005 and today I decided to call them up to see what I can do.

Called the usual Diners number and got 'Steve'. He confirmed the completion of the 1.5 point deal and so I asked about extending it for another 3 months.

He said I would have to go to Card cancellation and transfered me to a very nice, very polite, Indian lady.

She went through my account and said that was a VERY good customer (she implied that i was extreemely valued by Diners - either it is true or she is a very good sales lady) and that 1.5 points for a further 3 months would be no issue.

I then asked if I could get 2 points per $ and she said she would have to check if it is ok.

After a minute or so she came back and offered me the 2 points per $ for 3 months.

Since I have a wedding coming up I'm very happy with this deal.

I asked if i could have 1.5 points automatically after that but she (sounding amused) said I would have to call back and discuss it then.

Regards
Daniel

EDI: To recap my recent Diners experience I have had 2x points for 3 months, 1 month break, 1.5x points for 3 months, week break and now 2x points again for 3 months.
 
Well my Diners card double points deal expired on 15/5/05. Thanks to flying to Sydney each week and my wedding I had racked up a very healthy AU$1,400 a week average spend.

Today, 17/5/05, I called up the usual 1300 number, confirmed with the lady that my 3 month period was up than asked to be transfered to card cancellations.

On the transfer I got Thomas, a very polite man with an Indian accent. Not sure were I was transfered to but suspect India is a good guess.

I did my usual song and dance asking things like confirming when my deal finished (I already knew this but wanted to have a starting point) and then asked if I could have this extended for another 3 months.

He said that the system has only a free second Diners Card as an available offer for me (the indication on this is that if an average DC person called up, there must be a list of available offers for the call rep to offer the person to stay). I had apparantly nothing else available. He mentioned that I had already been getting double points for the last 10 months (which I quickly corrected with 3 months double, break of month, 3 months 1.5x, week break and then 3 month double again). This was apparantly very unusual for anyone.

He then said that if I wait a while (did not specify weeks or months) and call back I might be able to get an offer at that time. Since I was going to be flying to Sydney and back for at least until the end of June I was not going to have any of that. I want to maximise my points!

I then asked what my average spend was, got 4-5k a month, and then asked what the procedure was to cancel my card.

At this point he asked me to hold (very politely) and went to talk to his supervisor.

When he came back he said that I could have 1.5 points for the next three months (with the deal being manually entered in for me) but warned me that I would not be able to get any more offer for the next 6-12 months. Me being the bird in the hand sort of guy said, how about double points for 3 months instead.

He agreed and reiterated that I would not be able to get further deals after this one for 6-12 months.

I said that I will deal with it when it happens and since the deal finishes on August 17th 2005, it is close enough to my anniversary date to be able to make a good call to cancel the card if necessary and not pay the yearly fee.

So to sum it all up, I have managed to get double or 1.5x points on the ANZ Diners Card for 9 out of 10 past months and for the next 3.

Because of work, flights, hotel and normal spend, this means I'll be able to earn about 7,100 FF points a week until I finish up my work here. I worked out that this would drop to 5,600 points a week if it wasn't for the double points component.

Very happy now.

Regards
Daniel
 
I have just spent the last few weeks discussing with Diners Card about some missing points.

To their credit they ended up giving me double points for the entire year from June 2004 to June 2005.

Please note that I had mainly double or 1.5x points throughout that period anyway but overall it ended up being a nice 5000 bonus on top of what I was entitled to ($45,000 of 12 month spend + 34,000 bonus points). I was querying a missing 6,000 points and had all my evidence from QFF deposits and DC statements.

Now throughout this ordeal I have spoken to many, many, many Diners Card reps and have actually been sent the last 12 months worth of Diners Card point screen dumps to show me what points I had been sent.

To put this all in context, I have an ANZ Diners Card that directly credits itself into the QFF program and a corporate Diners Card that accumulates within DC istelf.

Things to know:
Standard Points
1. The first amount you pay off within 14 days of statement will be automatically credited to QFF.
2. Any subsequent payoffs, even if done the next minute, will be credited in the next monthly QFF transfer. This means if you want to make sure you get all your points in that month, make sure you pay it all in one big hit or even overpay.
3. The Code for this sort of point allotment for Personal DC's is "A".
4. The Code for Corporate is "C"

Bonus Points:
1. Bonus points will always be allocated in the following month.
2. The Code for this sort of point allotment for Personal DC's is "B".
3. The Code for Corporate is "?"

If you are trying to confirm how many bonus points you 'deserve', take this in mind.
1. Shopping/Petrol station bonus points are generally monthly so is based on the first of the month to the last day of that promotion month.
2. Bonus points like the ones I've been getting (2x and 1.5x) are for specified date ranges. Eg. 12 April 2005 - 12 July 2005. Some FF back operation staff can screw you around by making it the months of April, May and June so if you had made some pretty big purchases in early July in anticipation you will find yourself disappointed. This is partly what happened to me.
3. When allocated a bonus point as mentioned in point 2 above, never lose the letter you got from them stating the date ranges. It is great for proof for when the back end office messes up.
4. An example of when the back-end ofice messes up is when you are allocated double points during Feb 05 - Apr 05 and also overlapped with another allocation of Mar 05 - May 05. No, I did not end up with 4x points.

Keeping track of your points:
1. Every month, grab a copy of the finalised online Diners Card statement and put the CSV file into an Excel spreadsheet.
2. If you are Excel capable just create a quick spreadsheet detailing what points you expect based on a multiplier column.
Eg.
Amount Multi Expect
$2000 1.5x 3,000
$150 4x 700 (Shopping Bonus)

What I found was when I did this analysis, I figured I was missing about 15,000 expected points. I knew about 5,000 was in the upcoming allocation but the remaining 10,000 was just not there.

After sucking down the last 12 months worth of history in Diners Card and Qantas point allocation into Excel I contacted Diners Card and told them my problem.

They said they do not have email addresses in which I could send the information but I could mail a printout to them. In the meanwhile they would check it out.

Two weeks later I got a letter stateing that the allocation was correct and intimating that I was lucky to get double points in the first place.

Going through the letter I noticed that they had stuffed up the months (as mentioned in one of the points above) and had also noticed that they did the bonus points on the "Monthly" method as opposed to the "Date Range" method.

I pointed this out and I finally got to a real Customer Service FF rep and she gave me her email address.

I sent her the spreadsheet and she agreeed the intitial calculation was incorrect and would go back and figure it all out.

A week later she called me back and let me know that she was going to give me double points for the entire period of June 2004-June 2005. I figured that apart from being nice to me, she also had a nasty job ahead of her trying to reconcile 12 months worth of expenditure.

In the end I was allocated an additional 10,000 odd points and it snuck its way into QFF account yesterday (20th July 2005).

End of saga.

Regards
Daniel

PS: My weekly expenditure is about $1,700-$2,000 so this may be an attributing reason to them being nice to me.
 
Well the saga continues.

I had recently gotten an American Express Gold Maximiser 1.5 point per $ card.

Free annual fee and all that. Pretty good deal.

Well I had started using the AmEx as my primary card for the last few weeks, just waiting for my monthly DC bill, pay that off, wait for points to process then cancel card.

As with many of the ANZ DC joiners, we would have been hit with the usual annual fee (Some amount less Discount = $24) and a week later the $55 rewards program fee.

Well I saw that $55 fee and I decided that it was time to get rid of my Diners Card.

I called them up and told the guy I wanted to know what was the PROCESS to cancel my card. I still had to pay up the remaining balance and get my points but was a bit antsy about the additional fees.

I was then transfered to some other Indian dude who must have been looking up my spend over the last 24 months as he said I had been a VERY good customer and obviously wanted me to stay. He asked me if there was any particular reason why I was cancelling my card.

My response was that I did not get enough points on this card and so I had joined AmEx to get 1.5 points per dollar. He tried implying that these point bonuses have caps and I immediately replied that the AmEx Gold Maximiser was 1.5 points for an unlimited amount of money unlike the AmEx Platinum which was capped at $100,000. I said this just to let him know I knew exactly what sort of product I want and had done my research.

At this point I did not know what would happen. I had been off my 2 point bonus since 31 July 2005 and had joined up AmEx after speaking to a nasty DC service rep.

Well to cut a story short, I was given a 2 point bonus for three months (backdated to 1st Oct 2005) until 31 Dec 2005. I also said that the AmEx card had Zero Fees and so the Annual fee of $24 and $55 reward fee was refunded as well.

I tried to get 6 months but that was a bo go. :)

I hope this helps others in their quest for points.

Regards
Daniel
 
Great experience Daniel.

So the lesson is never pay annual fee for Citibank cards, Diners Cards and HSBC cards. Get more bonus points out for staying with them.
 
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