Choice Privileges have launched a new offer to buy points with a discount of up to 25% discount. In my case, the offer was a 25% discount. I am informed that others have received 30% discounts. That aside, the discount increased as the number of points purchased increased. In my case, it was
- 4000 to 8000 points – 15% discount
- 8,000 to 14,000 points – 20% discount
- 14,000+ points – 25% discount
The current discount offer is available until 3 March, 2025.
Buying Points
Choice Privileges sell points through Points.com. If you are looking to but points, head over to the Choice Privileges landing page on Points.com and enter your details to log on to Points.com.
Keep in mind that these transactions are processed in US Dollars in the US. You may incur some international transaction fees.
Why Buy Points?
The question that springs to mind is what would you want to buy points?
The obvious reason would be that you want to use them for Award nights. That is, of course, one reason that you may want to buy points. However, combining Choice Privilege offers can provide a way to pick up Qantas Frequent Flyer points. It can also allow you to get Velocity Points at a good price.
There is a trick to extracting the best value on these transfers. You need to wait until there is an offer of a double points transfer to Qantas or Velocity. Unfortunately, the offer to purchase discounted or bonus points rarely coincides with the transfer bonus offers. They tend not to run at the same time, and they may have limits on transferring recently purchased points. So, you would need to buy some and then wait for an offer. This goes against the normal advice of not buying points speculatively, so its not for everyone.
To work this through, at the moment, you can pick up points with a discount. For example, on my offer, I can purchase 40,000 Choice Privilege points for $US309. That converts to about $AU490, given the Australian Dollar is not doing so well at the moment, but I digress… That makes each point cost 1.225 cents each.
Normally, you can transfer to Qantas or Velocity at a rate of 2,000 Choice Points to 800 Frequent Flyer points. However, during bonus transfer periods you’ll get 1,600 Frequent Flyer points. So, if we wait to transfer those 40,000 points, we could get 32,000 Frequent Flyer Points. At that transfer rate, we would be buying points at 1.53 cents apiece. That is much cheaper than Qantas or Velocity are willing to sell points for.
Final Words
Choice Privileges is offering a discount on points purchases through to 3 March. As with other programs, purchased points can be used for reward nights. So, it may be useful to by points if you are a bit short of a reward.
They also offer a way of buying Qantas or Velocity Points at a reasonable price. This does taking a punt on a points transfer promotion coming up again, so this strategy has some risk attached.
