Perth Hacks - best tips, hints and bargains

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Can you do anything when your gift card expires?

Gift cards used to be an expression of love, but nowadays many of us dread receiving them or only buy them for ourselves to save 5% or something. When gift cards expire, it is very frustrating and the idea that your money just disappeared can be quite hard to dismiss. However, some good companies like Woolworths may allow you to have your balance reinstated with a short expiry date. Recently, someone had their WISH egiftcard expire and called up 1300 665 249, explaining that they just found out their card expired. They were credited the full $118 back on the card with one month to use it up. However, not all companies will do this. Someone else tried to get an extension on a Garden City gift card but their written request was quickly dismissed.

If you came on here looking for a solution, let us know how you go when you call up in the comments, and how much you got back.

Sunday, July 23, 2017

How to Get Velocity Gold the FAST Way?

Most of us probably do not fly much for work and even with family pooling, the idea of attaining gold membership with Qantas or Virgin Australia seems so far away. Are there shortcuts?

Coles Flybuys
If you have flybuys, they are known to give selected flybuys customers the opportunity to "Explore Gold". This gives you three months of Gold level membership with Virgin Velocity, allowing you to use the lounge when you travel with Virgin Australia and most of the other benefits that Gold members get. If you manage to earn 80 status credits during that three months, you will be able to get full Gold level membership for the next 12 months.
Gold benefits included in Explore Gold

Advanced seat selection and priority seating preferences
Priority check in at the airport
Priority boarding onto the plane
Virgin Lounge access for you and a guest and up to two children aged between 3-12.
Access to around 150 other international lounges when traveling with Virgin or affiliates
Priority baggage arrival - comes out first on the carousel
75% more points each time you travel on Virgin

Gold benefits not included in the three month Explore Gold membership include

Guaranteed Economy Reward Seats for an annual trip to any Australian destination,
Membership pause for Parental Leave
Complimentary membership with our car hire and hotel partners (eg Hilton, Hertz, Europcar, Thrifty)

Coles Flybuys MasterCard

Rather than waiting anxiously to be offered by flybuys, the other way of getting "Explore Gold" is to apply for a Coles Flybuys MasterCard. This will cost you $89 for the annual fee, but comes with the equivalent of $100 worth of flybuys points. It also comes with "Explore Gold" as described above with the same offer to attain 12 months of full Gold membership if you can earn 80 status credits in three months. For people living in Perth, this is pretty easy to earn - it's just one flight to Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane return to Perth and you will have Velocity Gold for 12 more months.

Some have reported that some of their status credits disappeared when they got the Explore Gold membership. This is because in Explore Gold mode, the Velocity website only shows your status balance for the last three months. Any other status credits earned before the last three months will not appear on the website, but have not been taken from you. When you have finished your Explore Gold, the website will once again display your total SC balance.

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Unlimited Calls on your Mobile for $10/month

I think Amaysim is getting pretty aggressive with acquiring market share. We've been comparing prepaid plans for quite a while and this offer is the best we've ever seen.

If you are using mobile prepaid and international calls are important to you, Amaysim has an offer that is definitely worth looking into. Like other prepaid offers nowadays, they are giving unlimited calls to mobiles and landlines within Australia as well as unlimited SMS. But what sets them apart are their UNLIMITED international calls and SMS and MMS They give unlimited calls to ten international destinations and unlimited SMS/MMS to 32 countries. On their lowest plan, this normally costs $24.90 with 1.5GB of data to use within the 28 days. However, until the end of this month you can lock in a rate of $9.90 for every 28 days for the first six months using the promotion code 10FOR6 when you sign up.

If you think this is what you need, don't forget you can get $10 extra credit if you use this link amaysi.ms/bonus10

EDIT: If you sign up with Cashrewards, you can also get $32 cashback for signing up to this deal through Cashrewards. This site pays you commission on your purchases from websites like Ebay and Amaysim.

Unlimited SMS/MMS to mobiles in 32 countries.