Just about to pay my Telstra bill and realised that this is the last payment before they introduced the dreaded PPF.
So a few sums.
Do I prepay the next bill now. Normally about $500 for 3 months. So my saving will be:
$500*1.69%=$8.45 (Amex card)
I have an offset account, so if that $500 sat there for 3 months it would earn:
$500*8.07%/12*3 = $10.09. Prepaying more than 3 months in advance is really not going to be beneficial (ie prepaying the 6 months time bill will lose me $20 for a $8 saving)
hmm, thats pretty close...what about the FF points. Living in Perth, cross country trips are the most common, so I value my points as 30,000 p=$500 (I know you can get cheaper, but as a WP X availability is better than N, so:
$500*1.5 (Amex Max Card)/30000*$500=$12.50.

So it's all about equal. I think they may have done the sums themselves to come up with a fee that doesn't reward big prepayers, but still gives FF chasers a bit of profit (pay $8 to get $12 worth of points) and offsets some of their CC costs.

To quote the old Comedy Company skit... now that's a real .......!

Thanks for doing the sums. I was trying to avoid getting around to it. I (we) can just thank the Government for allowing merchants to jack up the price for using credit cards - when (I assume) the price already had a margin to cover the use of cards.

Thanks for reminder on this. ^

I paid $1000 extra last month and think I'll add a few more $1000 this month.

Can someone please remind me and others what date in July the Telstra card surcharge takes place upon?

I must say we personally value 30000 QF points at a LOT more than $500 as we use them for otherwise super expensive routes like biz Class trips to New Guinea etc. Or a Concorde round trip flights for about 3 times that many miles etc. I'd say a Concorde round trip flight was worth a lot more than $A1600.

For that reason I personally value QF miles at about 3c each, but everyone has greatly different views on that.

IMHO using miles for domestic trunk routes, given the many sales these days is a ridiculous waste of miles.

26 July
http://www.telstra.com.au/paymentpro...gfee/index.htm for all the details.

Trying to regain some FF cred... the last lot of points I redeemed were for U seats PER to the East coast, so 45k=$1085 or 2.4c/point. (Much earlier was a 45000 point round Oz trip in Bus Class with the full 5 stopovers before the rule change!)

So I probably was undercalling the value of the points!

Also I found the old Telstra fee thread (sorry for starting a new one!) and it reminded us that the 1.69% is GST exclusive... so for most of us it's more like 1.859%, or $9.30 per $500 paid.
If you have a Amex Maximised, $500=750 points, at 3c/point = $22.50; at 2.4c/point = $18.
decisions, decisions. Pay $9.30, get $18 worth of points, lose $10 in Home Loan interest...might have to forgo the points and rely on work trips to get them... SCs are more my target anyway!

Thanks for advising the last date to do this on.

DARN.

Went to pre-pay a few $1000 today as for some reason July 28 was fixed in my head and got this:


Credit card fee - Applicable from today � 26 July, 2004

The Payment Processing Fee for bills paid by credit card have now changed from four different rates � to a more streamlined high and low threshold that does not have any detrimental impact on our customers. The low rate of 0.63% will apply for Visa, Bankcard and Mastercard, and the high rate of 1.68% will apply for Diners and American Express (plus applicable GST).
None of these rates are higher than rates previously announced and in some cases are lower.

http://www.telstra.com.au/paymentpro...gfee/index.htm

I had a similiar experience on Monday, 26 July was the day, but that when the fees started. I had original thought that the 26 July 2004 was the last day on the old system. The bill didn't turn up until the 26 July 2004.