The Increasingly Desperate Flybuys & Woolies Offers When You Stop Shopping

Many Flybuys and Everyday Rewards members will know that the supermarkets regularly send out targeted offers of bonus points. These personalised offers are based on your previous spending patterns.

These targeted offers are where the true value lies in the Flybuys and Everyday Rewards programs. Rather than earning one point per dollar spent, you could earn as many as 10,000 or even 20,000 bonus points for spending just a few hundred dollars!

They are designed to incentivise you to shop more often and spend more. But as savvy points collectors know, there are ways to “trick” the system into giving you much better offers.

Generally, these targeted offers will give you bonus points if you spend a little bit more than you usually do. And if you mostly just shop at the same supermarket each week, the offers you receive probably won’t be that great because the supermarket knows you’ll just shop there anyway. They don’t need to go out of their way to entice you back.

But the offers start to get really good if you stop engaging with these loyalty programs and the supermarkets believe you haven’t shopped for a while!

Twice last year, I stopped shopping at both Coles and Woolworths for several months at a time. Coles probably thought I’d started shopping at Woolies during those periods, and vice versa. The truth is that I was on extended overseas trips – but the supermarkets didn’t need to know this. 😉

As the weeks went past and the amount of time since I’d spent any money at Coles or Woolworths increased, the offers I was receiving in my inbox from Flybuys and Woolworths’ Everyday Rewards program started to get progressively better!

For example, in the weeks after I started my first long overseas trip last year, I was typically getting Coles offers like this one from Flybuys:

Around a month into my trip, Coles raised the stakes and started offering 10,000 bonus Flybuys points for spending a similar amount of money, instead of 3,000 points!

It’s perhaps also interesting to note that both Flybuys and Everyday Rewards continued sending me almost daily emails, even when I had not scanned my card or activated any of their offers for many months.

The Everyday Rewards offers I continued to receive were a bit more sporadic. But after around three months of not scanning my Everyday Rewards card, I started to get the same attractive Woolworths offers again that normally get sent to new members who’ve never or rarely shopped.

After more than four months passed without me shopping at Woolworths, I even got this rather desperate offer of 1,000 Everyday Rewards points (worth $5 or 500 Qantas points) for buying literally anything at Woolworths worth at least one cent!

Later in the year, when I left Australia for another overseas trip, I was typically getting Coles offers like these from Flybuys twice per week:

Like clockwork, Flybuys kept sending me similar offers every Tuesday and Friday. But as the weeks went by, the spend targets reduced. First from $250 to $230…

Then to $210…

Then $200…

Finally, I got this offer…

It’s no secret that being disloyal is the secret to maximising your points with supermarket loyalty programs. This experiment proves it.

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 70 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.