Macquarie Visa Platinum - 40,000 points for $5000 spend - $99 1st Yr Fee

[The Rok]

How is the score determined ?

Number of applications, and probably more importantly, type of credit. Different types of credit cards are ranked differently. This will appear on you credit file under the reasons impacting your score as "credit enquiries from specific industry groups" or "individual shopping pattern for credit"

Type of credit applied for does more harm than volume of enquiries.

 

[burmans]

Type of credit applied for does more harm than volume of enquiries.

All based on many years of data, people who hold mortgages are generally "good" payers and holders of unsecured lending are more likely to be "bad". The Australian scoring system (e.g. Vedascore) is pretty immature but there are some pretty good sites that describe the US system e.g. FICO score as a good proxy!

 

[The Rok]

All based on many years of data, people who hold mortgages are generally "good" payers and holders of unsecured lending are more likely to be "bad". The Australian scoring system (e.g. Vedascore) is pretty immature but there are some pretty good sites that describe the US system e.g. FICO score as a good proxy!

It will all change here in March next year when we switch to a hybrid positive scoring system.

FWIW Veda's statical based system has been pretty good at predicting credit risk over the years.

 

[doctau]

I've got an interesting story about a problem with Macquarie I thought I'd share:

I got the Macquarie platinum in February, and had no issues with it aside from the annoyance of not being able to change the PIN. About two months ago I received a letter from my health insurer saying that the direct debit had been declined, they were going to do the next one for double the amount to catch up, and I should ensure I have enough money for it to go through. There should have only been $1k on the card so nowhere near the credit limit, so I went online to check, and everything looked good. Since it's a regular fortnightly payment which is always for the same amount (of under $50) it shouldn't have been a problem.

I called up and after a while on hold got through to a helpful woman. She said the limit shouldn't be an issue, so she'd check the rejected payment. After putting me on hold for a minute to confer with someone else, she said that the BUPA direct debits were always done around 1:00-1:30am, and they had an IT upgrade done that night and a small number of payments got rejected, and apologised for it occurring. I work in IT so I know things don't always go to plan, and since it wasn't for a company that charges you for rejected payments, I left it at that.


Two months later, I receive another letting from the health insurance saying the same thing - the problem had happened again. I called back up and the person I got this time was rather less helpful. After spending 10 minutes going back and forwards trying to find the payment (it took that long to get her to understand it wasn't in the transaction list because it wasn't successful), she told me that they have IT upgrades done and while systems are down it rejects payments. Rather than being a one-off incident, she made it sound like they were planned outages, and the plan was to just reject payments. She said that I should avoid putting payments through at 1am because they do upgrades then, and I should ask the merchant to change the time! :evil:

I needed to be elsewhere soon, so didn't ask to talk to a supervisor then, but did call back up the next day. They were a bit apologetic, but I didn't actually get very far - they just said they'd pass the issue on to their "account team" to look into. I'm giving them a few days to do that, before I harass them again.


While I don't work for a bank, I do have some idea about how they work. Plenty of banks have problems, but I've never heard planned upgrades as an excuse to reject credit card payments before. Dealing with it is pretty easy:
* do sanity checks
* record the transaction info for later, and accept the payment
* when everything is back up, run though the log of pending transactions and process them
* if a pending payment turns out to be bad and it normally wouldn't have been accepted, dealt with it then: send a letter if they went over their credit limit or pass it to the fraud department.


I'm hoping they come up with something better to tell me, but I'm not holding my breath for it. I was planning to swich cards at the end of the year anyway (for more sign-up bonuses but will probably do it sooner now.

 

[Beta4Me]

I've dealt with a number of banks and financiers and Macquarie has got to be the worst. Citibank is pretty bad, but they take the cake!

 

[k3nnis]

Hi All,

Just a question, what are your credit limits by default when your application is successful??

 

[nonpop]

Does paying BAS count as an eligible purchase for the $5k clip level?

 

[Coops1]

Just topped the $5000 spend in a little over 6 weeks, hoping the 2nd lot of 20k points are credited on the next statement mid November.

 

[burmans]

I've dealt with a number of banks and financiers and Macquarie has got to be the worst. Citibank is pretty bad, but they take the cake!

That's pretty ridiculous, I have worked for a company which wrote (and installed) Core Banking Systems, our system certainly handled transactions that occurred during the batch/maintenance window as indeed do most I am aware of.

 

[Beta4Me]

That's pretty ridiculous, I have worked for a company which wrote (and installed) Core Banking Systems, our system certainly handled transactions that occurred during the batch/maintenance window as indeed do most I am aware of.

I think you quoted the wrong post?

 

[zainman]

Just topped the $5000 spend in a little over 6 weeks, hoping the 2nd lot of 20k points are credited on the next statement mid November.

does this card earn points for BPAY payments?

 

[Coops1]

does this card earn points for BPAY payments?

I have not done BPAY as yet, all website cc payments. Lol, did not want to risk BPAY, in case it didn't earn points. Sorry for not being any help.

 

[Coley]

Yes, BPAY earns points. I rang them to find out exactly what earns points and there doesn't seem to be anything too shady in respect to earning points.

Basically transactions which do not earn points are fees, interest charged, cash advances, refunds, cancelled transactions and business transactions (if they proof you are filtering you business purchase's through the card they have a get out of jail card as it's a personal card only).

 

[k3nnis]

Sorry to sound dumb, but how do you earn points using bpay as I thought bpay is transferring from a savings account to the biller?

 

[Coley]

Most credit cards have a BPAY function however it can vary how this payment is handled by the CC company. Macquarie treat it as a purchase and you get the same QFF points and interest free period as a normal purchase.

BPAY is simply a way of paying a bill, the money can from a savings account or a credit card. However, some billers do block BPAY payments from credit cards, i.e. most of the time you cannot pay your home loan or credit card repayments with another credit card.

 

[k3nnis]

Ok thanks. How do I tell on the bill that the company accepts bpay via credit card? E.g Sydney water?

 

[FrankC]

Ok thanks. How do I tell on the bill that the company accepts bpay via credit card? E.g Sydney water?

BPAY - Pay bills with BPAY

 

[k3nnis]

Thanks for the link.

 

[Coley]

Ok thanks. How do I tell on the bill that the company accepts bpay via credit card? E.g Sydney water?

As far as I know you don't know for sure without trying. If there is BPAY information on the bill then give it a go.

Generally if you can pay the bill with a credit card, BPAY from a credit card will be fine as the biller doesn't care where the money comes from if they are getting paid. The only time you may be declined is if you try to pay credit with credit. i.e. Pay off credit card with another credit card, or pay car/home loan with credit card.

 

[k3nnis]

Thanks for the info.