IGA Rewards new program and Discover365

[PineappleSkip]

Anyone had any dealings with "Discover365" or their "discovery dollars"?

Found a checkout promo in my local IGA today. This would be the third IGA scheme I've seen in the last few years, never a promising sign. For the last expired scheme one you have to use rewards by the end of this month or the points expire. My points are going to my local bush fire brigade, hope they get a hot deal .

Anyway I got a card at the checkout and duly went online and registered. the registration is valid for one store only, and the card is branded to Peries IGA (owner of four stores). Many other IGAs (e.g. Drakes, Cornetts) do not participate at this stage.

This time around you get a ticket in a competition (current prize $5,000 Accor voucher, but no indication when drawn). There are the usual selection of member discounts at attractions etc, and also "travel deals".

The "travel deals", with a signup bonus of 50 "discovery dollars", ostensibly worth $50, come from an online store called Discover365 operated by a Gold Coast travel agent Once you log in you get the promise

50 Discovery Dollars and a complimentary 12 month Discover365 Plus membership (worth $59) to get you started

There is a blurb with attractive pictures and a bunch of vague promises followed by a link "activate my account". Hmmm, IGARewards have my email address, so maybe I won't click the link just yet. I get plenty of spam already. Their privacy policy indicates they may pass on information to "various third party service providers".

Extensive detective work (a google search) leads me to the Discover365 Website, which has an offer of 100 discovery dollars, and another page offering 200 of these magic dollars. Makes the IGA deal look pretty lame assuming these are actually worth anything.

Over on productreview.com.au we find several doubtful five star reviews, but the most recent offers a little insight into the welter of discovery dollars being handed out...

Just a silly concept and their unsubscribe link never works
Published 3 weeks ago
So, they dish out "discovery dollars" like hot cakes. Hundreds! Brilliant right? Nope.
You can only use $10 or so per holiday or night or hotel. So in essence they can give you a million dollars in credit but you'd have to spend a billion to use it. Good luck trying to unsubscribe from the annoying emails, the link never works and hasn't for months.

Glad I didn't hit that "activate my account" link

Cheers skip

 

[drron]

Down here in Tassie the Hill Street IGAs at least have a workable system but not that attractive.every $1 you spend you get a cent on the card to come off future spends.So a 1% discount.However signing up in Devonport only gets you the benefit in their northern Tasmanian stores not those in the South.
However they are very good supermarkets with lots of local items and other delicacies.So I can get my fresh miso and mrsdrron her pashmak.

 

[Mattg]

Just came across Discover365 as well, and as I've never heard of them I had a look at reviews on ProductReview. They're really not great.

Discover365 reviews

Discover365 (Booking Service): 2.9 out of 5 stars from 98 genuine reviews on Australia's largest opinion site ProductReview.com.au.

www.productreview.com.au

So, does anyone know what Discover365 actually does? Their website is full of buzzwords but I'm struggling to see what value they would offer me?

 

[odysseus]

Not really much value. Just a different way of dressing up the discounts at other travel agents from what I could work out.

Basically, say cruiseline/tour operator offers a $1500 fare on their website. <Your pref travel agent> offers it at a discounted price of $1350. Go through these guys and you'll see the RRP of $1500 offered; however, they'll put a "Discovery dollars max credit" on it of max $150 to make it sound like you're getting a bonus. So if you have 150 (300 for 2 people) discovery dollars you'll get the same discounted price as the other travel agent. If you have fewer though, your discount would be less than the other TA as you'd only get that Disc dollar amount as the discount.

Compounding things is they normally charge an annual fee of $59 to retain your disc dollar balance and 'keep your membership'. Not sure if this is permanently waived with IGA.

The combination of the above is why you see complaints on productreview; discounts aren't really great, there's a cap on using points per booking if you have a large disc dollar balance, you 'lose' your dollars if you don't renew your membership and there's a fee to renew. Basically it takes advantage of those who don't research by making it sound exclusive, with the membership fee on top, so they think they're getting something better priced than normal when they aren't really anything better.