qantas gift voucher / award redemption

[candyb]

Hello all, my husband, always looking to do things cheaply with the most maximum value, plans on the following.....

Purchase Qantas gift vouchers with his account on my Qantas cash card (Qantas cash points + 10 points per $1 spent gift voucher points)
give the gift voucher to me to redeem for J seat flights to visit his mother, without him.....yes I know, however there are two reasons for this.....
I need 70sc before the end of the year to retain gold,
so all of the above seems simple enough and straight forward, but what's next is where we are asking for your help as to the best way....

As I said to visit his mother without him, but also taking my 2.5 yr old as well, so as I stated above my husband also wants to do things cheaply....
He wants to book our 2yr old with points, how do you redeem a voucher for myself and book the 2yr old with points, because I wouldn't be able to book him a classic seat on his own and then book my voucher flights online
so would it be best to book myself online and ring Qantas up immediately to book him on a classic award with points and add him too my booking....can this be achieved easily....

Back to the voucher situation the total flights (2 flights and planning to stop over for 24 hours at the first port [to see family]) will cost just under $1500 for myself can I use two vouchers, say a $1000 and a $450 voucher for the booking, or will Qantas only accept one voucher online per booking?

Just for the curious, he has decided to book us back using AA miles he plans to purchase due too the bonus offer they have at the moment.
but he is tossing up between purchasing enough points to get us back
or
is also considering going for the full 80K purchase to give enough points to also take the three of us too Perth and back in a couple of month, kind of makes our saving up velocity points & Qantas points a little pointless for the time being as that is what we were saving them for.


why isn't he going....work, and his year isn't up until April so he has a couple of month to get his final 70 sc.

 

[medhead]

You can use one voucher per booking. one way on one booking for $1500 means you can't use 2 vouchers.

I'm not sure about the order for booking you and the child. If a classic award for your child, it might be better to lock that in first. However, I'm not sure why you can't book the child's award on line. I just did a quick dummy booking and there was no obvious request for the age of the passenger. It might be ok to book that and your paid booking separately online. Then call to have the bookings linked.

With the AA offer. I thought I saw that the valid dates of the bonus points offer went until January. If that is the case you can effectively double dip on the bonus by buying points in 2014 and then early in January to get the bonus again. Also in general, I think AA bonus points for purchase provide the biggest bonus for buying the full number of points. On redemptions AA points seem to offer pretty good value.

 

[Colster]

Related to the thread but different question to the OP.
We (2 adults, 2 kids) have a trip on pay later premium economy to Europe next year. We have to pay by the 22nd and I am wondering if my wife (who is traveling) can buy me a big voucher, and then I redeem it for the entire family and that way we get the 150k plus points. Thoughts?

 

[medhead]

Related to the thread but different question to the OP.
We (2 adults, 2 kids) have a trip on pay later premium economy to Europe next year. We have to pay by the 22nd and I am wondering if my wife (who is traveling) can buy me a big voucher, and then I redeem it for the entire family and that way we get the 150k plus points. Thoughts?

If you already have a booking reference then no you can't use a voucher. Purchase of a gift voucher creates a new PNR/Booking reference that you then have to use to purchase your flights.

You would need to cancel the existing booking and start again. This is a bit of a difficult proposition regarding timing. Because you want to make sure the same fares are still available. You'd have to check the flights/fares are available via dummy booking. Then buy the gift voucher, the PNR is issued immediately. Then use that PNR to book the flights. Then cancel the pay later booking - which I assume means losing the deposit.

BTW you can buy yourself a gift voucher. No reason you can't buy yourself a gift.

 

[RichardMEL]

The other issue is it's one voucher/booking.. Max value of a voucher is $2k so if you really wanted to try this and get your apparent 150k points, you'd need to make 4 separate voucher bookings for each family member (the one person could buy the vouchers and accrue the bonus points). Then you have 4 PNR's which causes mess in terms of sitting and travelling together and all that, and even then all you'd get is a max of 80k bonus points as far as I can tell (plus the flight points of course when flown). IMHO too tricky to manage, ensure fares are valid and someone wouldn't wind up 15 rows back (specially with kids) and so on. too risky IMHO.

and no you can't apply a voucher to an existing booking as far as I'm aware.

 

[Colster]

Thanks all. Drats!

 

[medhead]

The other issue is it's one voucher/booking.. Max value of a voucher is $2k so if you really wanted to try this and get your apparent 150k points, you'd need to make 4 separate voucher bookings for each family member (the one person could buy the vouchers and accrue the bonus points). Then you have 4 PNR's which causes mess in terms of sitting and travelling together and all that, and even then all you'd get is a max of 80k bonus points as far as I can tell (plus the flight points of course when flown). IMHO too tricky to manage, ensure fares are valid and someone wouldn't wind up 15 rows back (specially with kids) and so on. too risky IMHO.

and no you can't apply a voucher to an existing booking as far as I'm aware.

Actually you can buy one voucher for 4 people at the max value per person. So $2000x4 = $8000. Not 150k points but not the mess of 4 separate vouchers.

Plus 20000 points if using the right Amex (2.5 points per $ for qantas spend)

 

[RichardMEL]

Really? You can purchase a $8000 voucher? Would that be by calling? Seemed to me the max value online is $2000.
not that I am in this kind of situation, I'm curious as to how that would happen.

EDIT: nevermind I just saw the "value per passenger" and "num pax" in the online purchase. silly me.

I've learned something new

Well so that makes more sense now but still there would be the issue of cancelling an existing booking and buying a new one hoping all other things would be equal is a real risk.

thanks for that!

 

[medhead]

The only limitation is you must then travel with 4 people on the booking.

I agree there are potential timing issue with cancelling the booking on hold. But I'm not sure how significant that is without knowing more details. At almost $4000 per person, as a return fare, that suggests a premium fare class hence it might be easy to rebook and just cancel the pay latter booking.

Also worth noting that it would have to be a return trip to use the voucher.

 

[RichardMEL]

The only limitation is you must then travel with 4 people on the booking.

I agree there are potential timing issue with cancelling the booking on hold. But I'm not sure how significant that is without knowing more details. At almost $4000 per person, as a return fare, that suggests a premium fare class hence it might be easy to rebook and just cancel the pay latter booking.

Also worth noting that it would have to be a return trip to use the voucher.

The booking was mentioned to be in PE which I presume is Premium Econ, so $4k is around the mark depending on route and season of course.

I don't know that a voucher has to be used for a return booking per se. I've just used one for a one way booking ex-oz without incident. In the specific example of the family travelling then a return would seem to be the obvious requirement anyway.

 

[medhead]

The booking was mentioned to be in PE which I presume is Premium Econ, so $4k is around the mark depending on route and season of course.

I don't know that a voucher has to be used for a return booking per se. I've just used one for a one way booking ex-oz without incident. In the specific example of the family travelling then a return would seem to be the obvious requirement anyway.

I was just being cautious in giving advice by saying return only as one way international trips can often result in much higher cost.