Discovery Vitality 2023

[vusiboy]

I was trying to figure where Discovery may gain from the changes to Vitality Rewards as they are not given to magnanimity (Disclaimer: I believe they are the best Rewards program out there by a country mile if you subscribe to their ecosystem and and hit your goals). I came up with the following four and wonder if there are any other thoughts:
1) Removal of bonus play - Whilst I do not have a view on how many people were getting bonus plays, I can imagine that their removal will result in quite a decent saving overall.
2) Instant rewards - I would think that they are betting on a decent cohort choosing these rather than waiting for the game-board. Given potential back-end rebates on these, along with savings from less miles being in circulation for utilization on DoublePoints days, I assume that there is a saving.
3) Spend goal changes - By resetting the spend goal weekly, they are hoping to consolidate spend onto discovery bank cards if one is to hit their goals. Making the goals dynamic also means that they are pushing spend onto discovery and when one does not hit the goal, then there are less miles that they give away. I seem to remember somewhere that the goal will go as high as 750 points (R7.5k of spend per week), which will definitely reduce the miles given away overall.
4) iPhone benefit Impact - The impact of point 3 on those with the iPhone benefit is that should one fail to meet their spend goal on 3 + weeks in a cycle, they will pay circa 50% of their benefit. Given that the spend goals will be harder to hit, Discovery is likely to make some decent savings on this one.

 

[prod]

I find the general app to be very shoddy. Its mostly just links to PDFs/webpages and/or applets that don't really work. That said, the banking app is much better...so maybe this move is a good thing.

Yup, that's really what I'm trying to say as well. If they actually gave the Discovery app a good facelift then it would've been fine as well imo

 

[VBot]

2) Instant rewards - I would think that they are betting on a decent cohort choosing these rather than waiting for the game-board. Given potential back-end rebates on these, along with savings from less miles being in circulation for utilization on DoublePoints days, I assume that there is a saving.

I find the Instant Rewards not so rewardable... surely you are better off using saved up miles to buy a coffee/smoothie as you can get a 10% discount too + surely you can get a minimum coffee/smoothie on the board game?

But will probably only be able to judge it properly once I have played the new board game.

 

[vusiboy]

I find the Instant Rewards not so rewardable... surely you are better off using saved up miles to buy a coffee/smoothie as you can get a 10% discount too + surely you can get a minimum coffee/smoothie on the board game?

But will probably only be able to judge it properly once I have played the new board game.

Totally agreed. I do however reckon there are lot of people that do not have the "patience" to wait until the next Wednesday. Not sure how the platform works for non-banking clients, but there could be something there that is tempting for them.

 

[twr]

I was trying to figure where Discovery may gain from the changes to Vitality Rewards as they are not given to magnanimity (Disclaimer: I believe they are the best Rewards program out there by a country mile if you subscribe to their ecosystem and and hit your goals). I came up with the following four and wonder if there are any other thoughts:
1) Removal of bonus play - Whilst I do not have a view on how many people were getting bonus plays, I can imagine that their removal will result in quite a decent saving overall.
2) Instant rewards - I would think that they are betting on a decent cohort choosing these rather than waiting for the game-board. Given potential back-end rebates on these, along with savings from less miles being in circulation for utilization on DoublePoints days, I assume that there is a saving.
3) Spend goal changes - By resetting the spend goal weekly, they are hoping to consolidate spend onto discovery bank cards if one is to hit their goals. Making the goals dynamic also means that they are pushing spend onto discovery and when one does not hit the goal, then there are less miles that they give away. I seem to remember somewhere that the goal will go as high as 750 points (R7.5k of spend per week), which will definitely reduce the miles given away overall.
4) iPhone benefit Impact - The impact of point 3 on those with the iPhone benefit is that should one fail to meet their spend goal on 3 + weeks in a cycle, they will pay circa 50% of their benefit. Given that the spend goals will be harder to hit, Discovery is likely to make some decent savings on this one.

I took out the iPhone benefit knowing I wil reach my spend goal easily by splitting up my transactions. But not to force me to spend a certain amount a week and it will only go up will pi** me off if I don't achieve that. They say they don't want us to over spend yet the gonna push it up every week

 

[pkid]

I was trying to figure where Discovery may gain from the changes to Vitality Rewards as they are not given to magnanimity (Disclaimer: I believe they are the best Rewards program out there by a country mile if you subscribe to their ecosystem and and hit your goals). I came up with the following four and wonder if there are any other thoughts:
1) Removal of bonus play - Whilst I do not have a view on how many people were getting bonus plays, I can imagine that their removal will result in quite a decent saving overall.
2) Instant rewards - I would think that they are betting on a decent cohort choosing these rather than waiting for the game-board. Given potential back-end rebates on these, along with savings from less miles being in circulation for utilization on DoublePoints days, I assume that there is a saving.
3) Spend goal changes - By resetting the spend goal weekly, they are hoping to consolidate spend onto discovery bank cards if one is to hit their goals. Making the goals dynamic also means that they are pushing spend onto discovery and when one does not hit the goal, then there are less miles that they give away. I seem to remember somewhere that the goal will go as high as 750 points (R7.5k of spend per week), which will definitely reduce the miles given away overall.
4) iPhone benefit Impact - The impact of point 3 on those with the iPhone benefit is that should one fail to meet their spend goal on 3 + weeks in a cycle, they will pay circa 50% of their benefit. Given that the spend goals will be harder to hit, Discovery is likely to make some decent savings on this one.

Wow. That R7.5k is out of reach for me. A huge percentage of my take home pay on a credit card. If they included EFTs and Debit Orders, I would make it. I see this potentially back firing as people give up on the spending goals. I was looking at the iPhone benefit but without hitting my spend goal it isn't worth it.

 

[darste]

Quick one: how does incentivising people to spend money align with Discovery's concept of being "financially healthy"? Discovery receives the only tangible benefit to that scheme: charging clients interest on their credit card spend.

Is it not just a bit hypocritical of Discovery?

 

[Thrasil]

How do exercises get synced to the bank app now for your goal? Do you still have to open up the health app so it can sync with apple health? Just seeing that i have not opened the discovery health app since the change and none of my exercises so far this week are coming through to the bank app.

 

[vusiboy]

How do exercises get synced to the bank app now for your goal? Do you still have to open up the health app so it can sync with apple health? Just seeing that i have not opened the discovery health app since the change and none of my exercises so far this week are coming through to the bank app.

Yes..I utilize an apple watch I still have to synch via the health app as there is no auto synchronization built in. It is likely different for the Garmin and other devices.

 

[vusiboy]

Wow. That R7.5k is out of reach for me. A huge percentage of my take home pay on a credit card. If they included EFTs and Debit Orders, I would make it. I see this potentially back firing as people give up on the spending goals. I was looking at the iPhone benefit but without hitting my spend goal it isn't worth it.

Just thinking through it again, I think they will divide the Monthly spend threshold by 4 depending on your card colour for the weekly goals. So max R2.5k for white, R3 750 for silver, R6 250 for Black, and R7 500 for Purple. Not sure how they will handle it in a 5 week month. This will be their argument vis-a-vis responsible spending as account should be linked to earnings.

 

[Charlesjjm]

View attachment 1499681

Just thinking through it again, I think they will divide the Monthly spend threshold by 4 depending on your card colour for the weekly goals. So max R2.5k for white, R3 750 for silver, R6 250 for Black, and R7 500 for Purple. Not sure how they will handle it in a 5 week month. This will be their argument vis-a-vis responsible spending as account should be linked to earnings.

Nope. These are the maximum weekly points you need to achieve per card colour:

 

[Charlesjjm]

Happy reading. Pay attention to the various limits and card colour requirements especially. Hopefully we'll have less tears and unhappiness in this thread.

 

[Thrasil]

Thats actually alot of consistent spending. Not sure about others but i typically have one or two high spend weeks followed by weeks with essentially just groceries. Going to hurt me by not having the any carry over to the next week badly.

 

[Charlesjjm]

Thats actually alot of consistent spending. Not sure about others but i typically have one or two high spend weeks followed by weeks with essentially just groceries. Going to hurt me by not having the any carry over to the next week badly.

Indeed. I'm looking at breaking payments up into a few smaller ones so that I can hit the goal every week.

 

[vusiboy]

Happy reading. Pay attention to the various limits and card colour requirements especially. Hopefully we'll have less tears and unhappiness in this thread.

I see that in the T'c and C's it says Contact Payments are excluded from qualifying spend! So using one's watch or mobile phone to pay will not count to spend goals. That isn't great!

 

[3WA]

View attachment 1499811
I see that in the T'c and C's it says Contact Payments are excluded from qualifying spend! So using one's watch or mobile phone to pay will not count to spend goals. That isn't great!

Isn't that where you pay your contacts using their phone numbers? If you go into the app to make a payment, it shows all your contacts who have a Discovery Bank account. It's called Contact Payment.

 

[pkid]

Happy reading. Pay attention to the various limits and card colour requirements especially. Hopefully we'll have less tears and unhappiness in this thread.

I'm going to ask my ex-wife if she will accept credit cards for child maintenance payments . Will easily get the points then. Other than that, I am going to go from hitting my goal every month on the old system to never on the new. #winning

 

[3WA]

I'm going to ask my ex-wife if she will accept credit cards for child maintenance payments . Will easily get the points then. Other than that, I am going to go from hitting my goal every month on the old system to never on the new. #winning

Or just give her the card - I'm sure you'll hit the goal comfortably each week.

 

[Claymore]

I find the general app to be very shoddy. Its mostly just links to PDFs/webpages and/or applets that don't really work. That said, the banking app is much better...so maybe this move is a good thing.

I just find it's bloody hard to find particular items buried in their tree of menu items, and it's not always obvious what in the interface is clickable and what's not. Not great interface design.

 

[Charlesjjm]

I'm going to ask my ex-wife if she will accept credit cards for child maintenance payments . Will easily get the points then. Other than that, I am going to go from hitting my goal every month on the old system to never on the new. #winning

My other thinking is to open a second account with FNB. At the moment my goal is low, so once I've achieved it I will pay with my second account until Saturday, when I'll use my DB card again.