Back in August Westpac Altitude Rewards has flagged a number of changes, which were due to kick in shortly after.
Cardholders then found that the transfer rates to Asia Miles and KrisFlyer on Altitude’s website didn’t actually change, despite the planned devaluation – and until late last week, the new date was uncertain. This allowed cardholders to continue to transfer points out at the unaffected higher rates.
Changes to Westpac’s transfer rates for Asia Miles and Krisflyer are now known, with the Altitude Rewards website now stating 9th November.
Our previous take on the proposed changes
What’s happening – changes in the transfer rate of Altitude Rewards points to Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, Cathay Pacific’s Asia Miles, and Air New Zealand Airpoints.
If you have interest in any of these points currencies, have a think about whether you should transfer out some or all of your balance now to avoid losing around 25% of the value your Altitude Rewards points.
Image above from Scott Lewis on Flickr
What’s not changing? The specific points earn rate on your Altitude Rewards credit card, and the transfer rates to both Velocity and Malaysia Airlines Enrich program.
Decisions to make
It’s hard to make specific and general advice here – everyone’s circumstances are different. But these are the kind of things you should be considering:
- Do you have a redemption in mind requiring extensive travel on either Singapore Airlines or on oneworld airlines?
- How often do you redeem via Velocity (who’s transfer rates aren’t changing)? Is it worth leaving some points in Altitude for the possibility of future bonuses on transfers to Velocity?
- If you transfer out any points to Asia Miles and/or KrisFlyer now, can you use them in the three year period before they will expire?
I suspect that many people with large balances might be served well by transferring out a portion to Asia Miles or KrisFlyer now, but if your Altitude balance is lower and you don’t want to make speculative transfers in case it’s the wrong decision, then there’s no right thing to do here.
The frequent flyer program transfer rate changes
Currently the transfer rate from Altitude Rewards to both KrisFlyer and Asia Miles is 2 Altitude Points to 1 KrisFlyer mile or Asia Mile. This is changing to 2.5:1 for these programs.
The transfer rate of 2:1 is being kept for Velocity and Enrich.
| Program | New Transfer Rate | Old Transfer Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer | 2.5:1 | 2:1 |
| Cathay Pacific Asia Miles | 2.5:1 | 2:1 |
| Air NZ Airpoints | 180:1 | 160:1 |
There will be no change to the number of Altitude Points required to redeem Velocity Points and Enrich Miles.
For Air New Zealand Airpoints Dollars, the old transfer rate of 160 Altitude Rewards points to 1 Airpoints Dollar is being changed to 180 Altitude Rewards points for the same. Air NZ Airpoints are generally a poor redemption option, so I won’t talk about that further.
How do Altitude Rewards cards stack up for points earn now?
This is where it gets complex, as all Altitude Rewards-linked credit card have different points earn rates. Here goes:
| Velocity Points (unchanged) | KrisFlyer Miles | Asia Miles | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current Effective Earn Rates | Amex | Visa/MC | Amex | Visa/MC | Amex | Visa/MC |
| Altitude Black | 1.5 | 0.625 | 1.5 | 0.625 | 1.5 | 0.625 |
| Altitude Platinum | 1 | 0.5 | 1 | 0.5 | 1 | 0.5 |
| Altitude | 1 | 0.5 | 1 | 0.5 | 1 | 0.5 |
| Altitude Business Platinum | 1.5 | 0.5 | 1.5 | 0.5 | 1.5 | 0.5 |
| Altitude Business Gold | 1 | 0.5 | 1 | 0.5 | 1 | 0.5 |
| Future Effective Earn Rates | ||||||
| Altitude Black | 1.5 | 0.625 | 1.2 | 0.5 | 1.2 | 0.5 |
| Altitude Platinum | 1 | 0.5 | 0.8 | 0.4 | 0.8 | 0.4 |
| Altitude | 1 | 0.5 | 0.8 | 0.4 | 0.8 | 0.4 |
| Altitude Business Platinum | 1.5 | 0.5 | 1.2 | 0.4 | 1.2 | 0.4 |
| Altitude Business Gold | 1 | 0.5 | 0.8 | 0.4 | 0.8 | 0.4 |
Given the change in earn rate for KrisFlyer, and the fact that KrisFlyer and Velocity have their own transfer option, it’s worth looking at whether you should now transfer to KrisFlyer via Velocity.
Outside of the Velocity 15% bonus transfer promotion, the maths looks like this, using 100,000 Altitude Rewards points under the new transfer rate:
- 100,000 Altitude Rewards points = 40,000 KrisFlyer Miles, or…
- 100,000 Altitude Rewards points = 50,000 Velocity Points
- 50,000 Velocity points = 37,037 KrisFlyer Miles after transfer.
So outside of Velocity transfer bonuses, you’re still best off going direct to KrisFlyer.
During a 15% bonus though:
- 100,000 Altitude Rewards points = 40,000 KrisFlyer Miles, or…
- 100,000 Altitude Rewards points = 57,500 Velocity Points
- 57,500 Velocity points = 42,952 KrisFlyer Miles after transfer.
So you’ll be better off transferring Altitude Rewards points to KrisFlyer via Velocity during a 15% bonus period, if you can plan to do so. However you can’t always count on every bank rewards program being included in these promotions.
Summing Up
This obviously isn’t great news, but I think it was to be expected. Altitude Rewards was one of the last holdouts of the round of changes made to rewards credit cards this year.
It seems like Westpac have cherry-picked the frequent flyer programs that were costing them the most and reduced the earn rates for those programs accordingly – while this makes the earn tables for these cards more complex, at least Velocity wasn’t also affected ‘just because’.
The odd circumstances around how the previous changes were communicated, along with a date for them kicking in, has not been explained – and the visibility of what’s going on generally to existing and potential cardholders has not been great. Let’s assume now though that these changes will go through in November as stated.
But, as someone earlier today posted at AFF:
https://altituderewards.com.au/public/info.aspx?name=changes
The rep than pointed me to a notice on my most recent statement flagging that there are changes soon and I should go to a particular webpage for information – but my response was that this was not good enough as the notice could be easily missed when a persons’ focus is on checking the debits. (I did actually missed the notice.)
Further I pointed out to the rep that there was nothing on the Rewards Home Page about ANY changes – zip! Instead there was a banner message that the system was going down for maintenance that Saturday so customers had 1 day less to transfer points etc. To me it really didn’t pass the smell test though the maintenance could have been purely coincidental.
The rep was apologetic though I repeated that I was not annoyed at her – rather it was directed at Westpac. She undertook to take my concerns back to management. Did my voice and everyone else’ voice made any difference …? To the changes implementation timetable?
After my call, I t/f 600k points out of Rewards and the converted points appeared in my KrisFlyer a/c late on 27/9.
Noting people’s comments re this matter and elsewhere in social media, I’m guessing that Westpac realised they have stuffed-up its implementation. So now how to fix the bad karma from this exercise? Perhaps for the bank, it is better to silently delay the (official) change date and move more resources to implement them – eg upgarade/maintain the system. Then fully implement the (unannounced-unofficial-revised) change date once the invectives diminish.
But I may be giving Westpac more credit than it deserves. Too bad its change managers did such a shi*ty job in the first place.
BTW – I found out about the Rewards change from Pointhacks – thanks. Rather than from the Bank’s attempt to hide/obscure/minimise the changes.
My approach would be, as soon as my altitude reach 3000 again I’ll sweep through to KF or AM. Don’t hold on the points.
If that’s not the case and it has been delayed for a long time or cancelled then customers have a strong reason to be angry.
I have around 1 million altitude points and its 5 days from being devalued 25%. I too dont remember seeing anything in the email like with my other cards.
So now I’m left with a few days to decide what to do….urgh.
I’m moving to AMEX Explorer (1.5 miles per $) and Citi Prestige (1 mile per $ for MC) as well as AMEX Plat Edge (3 miles per $ which I use exclusively for supermarket spend and giftcards).
I’m trying to work out what I should do with my 500k Altitude points seeing as I have no plans to really travel right now.. maybe in a years time but not even that is set in stone. Maybe I should just leave them as is and see what happens.
The sweetest spot in the AM program is actually the multi-carrier award redemption – cheaper than CX return direct.
Route 1) BNE-HKG-AMS-HKG-BNE (ie anywhere Aust-HKG-Europe) is 175k return in J
vs
Route 2) BNE-MEL-BNE-HKG-DXB-LHR-ATH/AMS-HKG-BNE is only 160k flying mixture of QF/BA/CX
– This same routing would have required 285k QFF points
They have the right to make changes to the program, we acknowledge this. However I continued to disagree with Westpac on how they notified it. To address my dissatisfaction with this they offered to credit my account with 20,000 Altitude points. Will appear next statement, so will be post-28 Sep points, of course! But even at the the new redemption rate to Kris Flyer, that’s the equiv of 8000 KF Miles, and at a conservative $0.05 per KF Mile, that’s $400.
Will wait to see the points actually hit the statement. But it’s worth ringing up and complaining!
I have never received any email or letter from Westpac about the above changes, but just had a look at my last black card statement and there was a “message from altitude” next to the altitude points balance summary announcing the changes and the deadline of 28 September 2016. I think it is very sneaky of Westpac. They didn’t even have the courtesy of emailing their customers. If it wasn’t for Keith, I wouldn’t have known.
I still haven’t received anything via email or mail from Westpac explaining the changes either.
Interesting changes and thanks for the update Keith.
Cheers.
With the Black card devaluing to an effective earn of 1.2 and 0.5 for Amex and MC respectively, it would be interesting to know which comes out on top if for example looking to redeem for a QF flight via new Asia miles rate or using a Qantas direct sweep card with say 1.5 and 0.75 earn rate.
i.e. how much one would need to spend if paying with Amex (Altitude vs e.g. Westpac Black Qantas or other) to redeem for a business return flight on QF to LA from MEL
Does the lower redemption on Asia Miles still works out better value or does it depend on a flight etc.
I hope that makes sense
Asia Miles doesn’t have the same partners as Qantas (missing Emirates, Fiji Airways etc).
Asia Miles is better priced for Business and First Class.
Asia Miles is better priced for return vs one way.
All up it does skew things toward Qantas a bit more than before but the biggest value in Altitude Rewards vs Altitude Qantas is still in the value of flexibility of transfers with Altitude Rewards vs having all points locked up with Qantas.
Comparing QF vs Asia Miles and the MEL-LAX and MEL-Lon routes as examples this were my findings when looking at amount of spend needed per card.
MEL-LAX on Mastercard (0.5 asia miles altitude vs 1 QF point)
$ spent needed for one way and return respectively on MC:
$170,000 and $290,000 vs $96,000 and $192,000 *obvious winner QFF MasterCard
As above but Amex (1.2 vs 1.5)
$70,000 and $120,000 vs $ 64,000 and $128,000 *similar spend needed
MEL-London on Mastercard (0.5 asia miles altitude vs 1 QF point)
$ spent needed for one way and return respectively on MC:
$220,000 and $350,000 vs $128,000 and $256,000 *obvious winner QFF MasterCard, again
As above but Amex (1.2 vs 1.5)
$92,000 and $145,000 vs $ 85,000 and $170,000 *depends on one way or return redemption
So as you can see from those 2 examples the findings are grim. I haven’t done Krisflyer comparison and obviously various programs have their sweet spots. Thoughts Keith?
Anyway, to your thinking here, the biggest variable I see is how much spend from your regular transactions you can put on an Amex. It seems that standalone Visa/MC haven’t been hit hard (either yet or won’t be) by the recent round of RBA changes, especially for Qantas earning cards, and companion card accounts which have always had traditionally poor points earn on their Visa/MCs may disappear given the RBA legislation – who knows.
So doing the comparison of like for like companion Qantas Visa/MC earn rates vs standalone Visa/MC earn rates is not quite like comparing apples to apples, companion cards have always had poorer earn rates. It’s the St. George Amplify / Virgin Money High Flyer / Citi Signature Visas out there that this comparison is most relevant too – that’s more like comparing Qantas vs more ‘flexible’ programs more fairly. But the comparison only really matters if you have to put a lot of spend on Visa/MC, which thankfully, I don’t do too much of.
Do you know if the Amplify program is affected as well as Altitude Rewards.