Go Forth and Shop Local

By Siriol Dafydd on May 28, 2018 in News

Shop your way to Bali, by Con Sumption.

Unless you’ve unexpectedly developed a chronic case of agoraphobia whilst also embarking on a fully fledged media detox in recent months, you’ve probably seen the abundance of purple signs and adverts dominating every bus stop and billboard in the Eastern Suburbs. Hell, you’ve probably even spotted them in prime positions in The Beast. But what is Velocity Daily and why is it suddenly all up in our faces?
Velocity Daily is a recent development under the Velocity Frequent Flyer program. It basically allows VFF members to earn Velocity points from day-to-day purchases which they can then redeem on things like flights and hotels. They’ve been trialling the initiative in the East since April, with hopes to potentially take it nationally if it catches on. So the good news is, we can get a jump-start on the rest of the country by turning our coffee and avo-toast addiction into air miles!
So how does it work? If you aren’t already a Velocity member, you can sign up on their website. Then you need to register your eligible Visa card to the system. You can register up to five Visa cards per account. After that, you automatically accrue points as you tap your card in participating stores.
So if you, like me, are the kind of person who has multiple loyalty cards but always forgets to use them, this is ideal. You can earn between 2 and 5 points per $1 spent, depending on the merchant. This might not seem like much to begin with, but it all adds up.
Your daily $5 coffee, for example, would score you 70 points each week, assuming you’re one of those ridiculous humans who can survive on only one cup per day. Add 60 points for a casual $30 Sunday brunch, and another 200 points for a date with a tightarse who forgot their wallet, and all of a sudden you’re looking at free return flights to the moon. Your painful physio appointment could whack on another 400 points and your dry cleaning could tack on an extra 200. You can even earn points from getting your dog groomed – now there’s an actual incentive to keep Fido clean. Then there’s the $150 you accidentally spent on beer and munchies in your local on Friday night – adding another 300 points to your collection will at least help a little with the guilts the next morning.
That’s over 1,200 points in one week without even trying. In about five months, you’ll have earned enough points (22,300) to fly one way from Sydney to Bali (plus taxes, of course).
Finally there’s a way to make the cripplingly expensive Eastern Suburbs lifestyle work to our advantage! The take-away avocado toast has crept up to $18.30 at my local cafe, but that’s 36 points towards my next holiday. Add a few more bucks on, you greedy devils!
And that’s without being crafty about it, like taking clients to dinner and expensing it immediately afterwards or chucking the group meal for fifteen people on your card when they say, “No split bills”. Everyone will transfer you their share anyway and you’ll look generous and accommodating whilst also getting an enormous amount of points – #winning.
There are over 150 local businesses already on board and Velocity is looking to add more. It’s easy to join as a business: you pay a small percentage based on the money spent by Velocity members at your store and gain advertising and brand association in return, plus a bunch of new customers who would happily buy that extra cupcake for no other reason than to add to their points total.
It looks like a win-win really. If nothing else, it gives you an excuse (nay, reason) to eat, drink and socialise more so that you can afford that next big holiday. Go forth and shop local, I say!