Tricky situation: RTW (140K x 3) in Sept to Europe & Africa & Asia, BUT....

[BigDerek]

My wife, daughter and i want to tour Europe for a month starting Sept school hols, visit friends in Uganda and get over jetlag in Thailand on way home early in Nov. (Our first QFF since took family of 5 to Fiji in 2004.)

Prob 1: We have 375K QFF but need 420K for the RTW (Multi-City) booking!

We can buy points (about $1400) but are there other good ways to get the extra 45K quickly? No relatives have QFF points to give us but some are willing to get QFF credit cards and donate points: I think this takes 3 months for points to come through? Is 3 months optimistic? Would this delay make it too hard to still get 3 x RTW QFF seats? Suggestions?

Prob 2: Current Qantas site for RTW (Multi-City) doesn't include Uganda (Entebbe) so requires flying to Nairobi Kenya then long drive! But Emirates flies direct to Entebbe daily so we should wait until Emirates partnership comes through for QFF Award bookings (end March?) and then make bookings.

Maybe I could book RTW (incl. Kenya) now and modify for Uganda later? (A form of insurance for the Rome seats and in case Emirates QFF deal somehow fails.) Would it keep my original Rome & Thai flights? But costs extra points that I don't yet have. Any point in just booking simple Rome return (360K) now with my points and converting to RTW (420K) after Emirates deal? Is this possible?

Will Dubai hub reduce our taxes (since will be MEL-DBX-Rome not MEL-LON-Rome)? Any thoughts/news on when we will be able to book QFF RTW using Emirates?

Thanks for your advice and suggestions.

 

[aikman]

The QF oneworld award can only be used on oneworld member airlines. Emirates is not and will not be a oneworld member airline, at least in the forseeable future.

British Airways flies to Entebbe to and from London.

 

[Flying mermaid]

On my credit card points are through immediately my billing date is reached. I.e as soon as a monthly statement is issued the points are transferred into my FF account. Family transfers are immediate as well. Although you can only do once a year, so they need to accumulate multiple months worth of points. Also if the cc isn't set up to automatically sweep points into the FF account then there is more of a delay.

 

[casanovawa]

If it looks like a struggle to get all 420,000 points before some of these seats disappear, perhaps you could just get two 140,000 awards and maybe a one way on points to Europe for one of the travelling party, maybe a return LHR-Entebbe on points and then maybe a cheap one way purchased fare back from the UK with a stop in BKK???

By the time you pay fuel surcharges on top of these economy award redemptions they don't work out to be that much cheaper than if you can find a cheap deal paying cash etc... Economy 140,000 awards can be good value if you use all the features of it to the maximum... I certainly wouldn't buy more points for $1400 as there you almost have a cash European return trip anyway, plus even once you have the miles and redeem the award you will be up for hundreds more in fuel surcharges and taxes... You really have to look at these awards sometimes and do the sums to find out if your really saving any money playing this game or not...

But yes when taking out cards it often does say that you will get the points within 2 months or so, sometimes its on your first statement, but you will get the points very cheaply at less than 1 cent usually which makes the awards better value... And you will probably need to book this over the phone which will cost some points then everytime you call up to make changes to your intinerary it costs you more points...

 

[opusman]

If you have a tax liability and an Amex card you could pay it (early) for 1.5pts per $0.0145 = $435 for 45k points. Or if you have a Visa/MC that pays 1 point/dollar, $0.0048 cents per point = $216 for 45k points. Even if you don't owe the ATO anything you could probably still make a payment and then get it back again come refund time

 

[love_the_life]

If it looks like a struggle to get all 420,000 points before some of these seats disappear, perhaps you could just get two 140,000 awards and maybe a one way on points to Europe for one of the travelling party, maybe a return LHR-Entebbe on points and then maybe a cheap one way purchased fare back from the UK with a stop in BKK???
..

I am interested in hearing about these "cheap one way" tickets - every time I have considered/looked the one way fare is almost the same cost as the cheapest return. What am I doing wrong?

 

[coyote25]

If you have a tax liability and an Amex card you could pay it (early) for 1.5pts per $0.0145 = $435 for 45k points. Or if you have a Visa/MC that pays 1 point/dollar, $0.0048 cents per point = $216 for 45k points. Even if you don't owe the ATO anything you could probably still make a payment and then get it back again come refund time

Actually I am fairly confident the ATO would do the refund via EFT on a request if your account is in credit even before refund time.

Maybe this is a way to turn credit into cash but you'd have to let the money sit for a few days and you could probably only do it a few times. Plus the credit transaction fee is lost. The ATO isn't really setup for card reversal transactions.

 

[get me outta here]

Big, I noticed that 100k QF FF pts just sold for $1,500 on a famous auction site.

 

[BigDerek]

Hey Casanovawa. I hadn't thought about get 2 x 140K and fudging the rest. Will have to investigate - thanks.

Thanks also for your private message. I am interested but unsure how I could do that. Could you give me more details please? (I tried to reply to your message but this site doesn't let me send private message until I post 15 times.)

 

[BigDerek]

Thank-you everyone for your help so far.

Updates:

I have confirmed that Emirates can't be included in the 104K RTW ticket, so no point waiting for that to happen.

I have confirmed that British Airways does fly London to Entebbe Uganda. But it doesn't show up on the Qantas FF website as an option, which means that I can only do it over the phone talking with Qantas! But it also means that I don't have to pay points for phone bookings (because the website is deficient). Good news, but it means I can't do proper costings on the web or check seat availability easily!

But bad news: London-Uganda is only 1 or 2 days a week. And the week that we wanted to arrive both flights only have 2 economy seats left (plus business seats), so that's more points required and I don't know how many more. The flights that do have 3+ economy seats are 10 days earlier (which bites into our Europe tour heavily) or 4 days later (which just about rules out the Thailand stopover on the way home).

One benefit of sacrificing Thailand stopover means could book 2 x 140K and 1 x 120K (straight London return) and then buy standard return LHR-Entebbe with very few points needed. We would then be able to use the original dates for Uganda flights since only need 2 QFF seats! (But then we would have time to do the Thailand stopover after all, but then we'd need extra points again.)

From what I can see, it is not possible/legal to buy QFF points from auction sites or non-familiy members. Am I wrong? Details?

And opusman, can you please explain how I can pay $250 to ATO and get 45K QFF points for doing so? Sounds great!

Still haven't got to the stage of tweaking the 140K stopovers to minimise taxes and surcharges yet. (eg. Flying on slightly from London when we arrive to avoid extra London levy).

More comments or suggestions?

Thanks again!
Derek

 

[opusman]

And opusman, can you please explain how I can pay $250 to ATO and get 45K QFF points for doing so? Sounds great!

1. Visit https://www.optussmartpay.com/governmenteasypay-ato/
2. Using a 1.5pts/$ Amex card, pay $30000 off your tax plus card payment fee of $435, OR
Using a 1pt/$ Visa/MC card, pay $45000 off your tax plus card payment fee of $216
3. Collect 45000 points
4. (if applicable) Get the $30000/$45000 refunded at some point in the future if you have overpaid your tax

 

[Flying mermaid]

1. Visit https://www.optussmartpay.com/governmenteasypay-ato/
2. Using a 1.5pts/$ Amex card, pay $30000 off your tax plus card payment fee of $435, OR
Using a 1pt/$ Visa/MC card, pay $45000 off your tax plus card payment fee of $216
3. Collect 45000 points
4. (if applicable) Get the $30000/$45000 refunded at some point in the future if you have overpaid your tax

Well now that is an idea - would never have occurred to me!

 

[love_the_life]

Given that the suggestion is to pay 30 thousand or 45 thousand off the tax bill it would not have occurred to me either! I must be a lowly mortal to not pay that much tax in the first place.

 

[Hvr]

Given that the suggestion is to pay 30 thousand or 45 thousand off the tax bill it would not have occurred to me either! I must be a lowly mortal to not pay that much tax in the first place.

As a very lowly mortal who only pays a couple of thousand per year I still find the points very welcome.

 

[Flying mermaid]

Given that the suggestion is to pay 30 thousand or 45 thousand off the tax bill it would not have occurred to me either! I must be a lowly mortal to not pay that much tax in the first place.

yes but I have a business (which I am busy closing down). over the years I have easily paid that each month (and more!) and the fees are tax deductible....I still have a couple of years to take advantage of this as the business winds down. This board never ceases to amaze me - the creativity of people in gaining points and status credits is truly amazing!! I have spent all morning regretting years of lost points.....Must talk to my accountant to make sure it is OK.