Qantas Points Challenge: How to get expired points back

Have your Qantas Points expired? Luckily, there's a way to recover your lost points balance.

Waking up to find a stack of points missing is any frequent flyer's worst nightmare. Keeping track of points expiries across various programs can be tricky, especially when life gets in the way.

Thankfully, Qantas offers a trick to get your lost points back. Introducing the Qantas Points Challenge.

What is the Qantas Points Challenge?

One of the pros of being a Qantas Frequent Flyer member is that expired points aren’t necessarily gone forever.

Providing you contact Qantas within six months of the points expiry, the Qantas Points Challenge could make it possible to reinstate all of your expired points on one straightforward condition: you must earn 2,500 Qantas Points within three months.

How to recover expired Qantas Points

While you probably won’t earn this number of points in your sleep, the ‘challenge’ aspect here is still quite attainable, with 2,500 Qantas Points an easily achievable mark for those who purchase a case from Qantas Wine.

Yes, it could really be as simple as making a Qantas Wine purchase to enjoy a drink and your reinstated points too.

There have been reports of Qantas asking for the points to be earned from at least two different streams, but this is still highly achievable in three months – especially if you hold a Qantas Points-earning credit card.

In saying this, it would make sense to crunch the numbers before going ahead with the challenge. The value of the points – depending on how you intend to use them – should outweigh the expense to earn the required 2,500 points.

However, we would suggest avoiding this scenario altogether by closely monitoring your points through a free app such as AwardWallet, which tracks most everyday accounts used by Australians.

When do Qantas Points expire?

Qantas Points expire after 18 months of account activity, which means your balance will expire if you have not earned or redeemed at least one Qantas Point in the past 18 months.

Similarly, Qantas Business Rewards members will also lose any points after one and a half years without account activity.

As such, it’s actually very easy to prevent your Qantas Points from expiring, thus eliminating the need to go through with the points challenge at all.

Prevention is the best medicine: How to stop your Qantas Points from expiring 

Luckily, there are some easy and virtually foolproof tricks to register activity and stop your Qantas Points from expiring.

Many of these activities are entirely passive. Here are our tips for ways Qantas Frequent Flyer members can keep points valid:

• Book and complete travel on a Qantas Classic Flight Reward
• Shop online at over 300 retailers through Qantas Shopping to earn at least one Qantas Point per $1 spent
• Download the Qantas Wellbeing app for free and take part in points-earning tasks such as fitness and sleep challenges or health assessments. Yes, you can earn Qantas Points in your sleep
• Take up a Qantas Points earning credit card and earn points on everyday spend
• Connect your Woolworths Everyday Rewards card to your Qantas Frequent Flyer account and earn Qantas Points by shopping at Woolworths, BigW or Caltex Woolworths
• Purchase your alcohol via Qantas Wine to earn points for each dollar spent, as well as at times lucrative bonus points offers on cases of wine.

Note that Family Transfers do not count as Qantas Frequent Flyer account activity that will prevent your points from expiring.

We’ve prepared a handy post on how to stop your Qantas Points from expiring all together, which you can check out here.

Is it possible to reinstate expired frequent flyer points in other programs?

A quick glance at any frequent flyer forum usually features a few cries for help from members who have lost their entire points balance.

Depending on your frequent flyer program, there can be ways to retrieve your points.

Some frequent flyer programs make it possible to reinstate points or miles with a fee. Alaska Mileage Plan Miles, for example, can be reinstated for up to one year for a $75 USD fee, while American Airlines AAdvantage charges a ‘redeposit’ fee which varies, depending on the number of miles to be returned.

Other airline loyalty programs make it possible for members to reinstate expired points by taking part in some sort of test similar to the Qantas Points Challenge.

Reinstating expired Velocity Points

Virgin Australia’s Velocity Frequent Flyer does not offer a points reinstatement policy but may choose to reinstate Velocity Points on compassionate grounds.

Here, Velocity Frequent Flyer works on a case-by-case basis to take into account the personal circumstances that prevented any points activity.

To request the reinstatement of Velocity Points, you’ll need to contact the Velocity Membership Contact Centre direct by calling 13 18 75.

Summary: Does the Qantas Points Challenge work?

While keeping frequent flyer points from expiring may seem straightforward enough, sometimes you can get caught out.

Fortunately, Qantas Frequent Flyer offers a simple and achievable solution with the Qantas Points Challenge: Earn 2,500 points in three months and you can get your points back.

But you must act fast as this grace is only offered to members who begin the points challenge within six months of their points expiring.

Should life get in the way and your points expire unexpectedly, it will likely be worth completing the Qantas Points Challenge to be reunited with your balance.

We recommend earning or redeeming at least one Qantas Point every 18 months to avoid the Qantas Points Challenge altogether, but this handy program feature is a great insurance policy if nothing else.

Have you had points reinstated with the Qantas Points Challenge? Tell us about it in the comments!

FAQ – Qantas Points Challenge

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