Sydney communters - This is a good way of combining two deals to top up your OPAL Card.
Simply top up $100 at Woolworths and get bonus $10 for next shop (top up the extra $10 immediately if you want)
If on ING/ME bank 5%, don't forget to pay in $1 cash, then rest on pay pass for 5% discount.
If Entertainment book member, get 7.5% discount buying Big W e-gift card which can be used in-store at Woolworths. Might take a couple of hours to come through to your e-mail.
Can in practice 2 people at different address w' diff emails share the cost of the book as neither spend much in general. Maybe an ebook or whatever…
I don't have e-book but believe you can link it to 4 devices (phones) - so could share it that way. Would need to use one e-mail login to Entertainment book, but could then use your own credit card to buy gift cards.
Special on buying book: https://www.entertainmentbook.com.au/special-offers/gift-edi…
The Everyday Gift Cards website prepopulates the e-mail address in an non-editable field when you use your EB login to buy the cards, but I've found that all you need to do is use an inline code editor such as Firebug for Firefox to edit the field before submitting, and it happily processes it using your e-mail address (i.e. it's not validated).
You can top up opal at Woolworths?
In fact any shop you see an Opal retailer sign. Woolies near train and bus stations are useful this way.
Yes. used to be just Town Hall Woolworths, but now most/all i think. Maybe a month or two ago.
Great thank you! I had no idea.
Major Woolies near train stations and other transport links generally do Opal topups, but not certain ones eg. North Strathfield Woolies on Concord Rd.
I've put in a complaint to Opal about that. The possible reason to this is, the Budget Petrol station next door is an Opal retailer! The most absurd places to have an Opal retailer, in a petrol station. However, most if not all 7/11 petrol stations and shop font outlets do sell opal too.
@theone83: haha - I hadn't thought about that irony - public transport tickets sold at petrol station!
@theone83: Why would it be absurd? There are people like me who both use public transport and drive.
If you don't have an Opal card, many Woolworths sell the old school MyBus and MyMulti tickets too.
I thought they have been phased out
How much is maximum balance on opal? I'm thinking do two $100 top ups.
Maximum balance is $250
Here you go, I actually had no idea there is a max balance. Why do they care? More interest for them if they have more cash in there.
More complaints from people that lose their high valued cards.
$10 saved on the inflated woolies/coles prices? no thanks. I refuse to be sucked in by incentives like this in a store which charges over $6 for two loaves of bread. thats… flour….water…and yeast.
over $6 for two loaves of bread. thats… flour….water…and yeast.
yeah, but in all fairness, water has gone up quite a bit in price lately.
? U refuse to save money? this is a post about Opal top up where $100 = $100 plus a bonus $10.
coles brand white bread is 85c…
Just use the $10 on your next top up. Same price for Opal credit everywhere.
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/frugal-opal-card-users-beat-the-sy…
One unpublished quirk with the Opal system is that the card itself stores the previous 8 trips transactions. This is to give information to the Opal readers to give them a general idea of what fare to apply, and so that inspectors can see what you've been up to.
Because of this, the Opal developers decided to limit a journey to four trips. This isn't officially acknowledged on the Opal website, but it is definitely there in the system.
Another thing to note is that after you reach the daily cap, which is $15, journeys are no longer counted for that day.
Now, onto the <$20 weekly. Most people would consider it an arduous task to undertake, so be warned. You will need to do this at the beginning of the week to enjoy maximum savings because the Opal week goes from Monday to Sunday, and weekly travel rewards are not carried past Sundays. The main difference of this technique over the other widely discussed fare minimisation technique is that instead of waiting an hour between tapping off and tapping on to add a journey, you catch three buses instead, which can often take less than 20 minutes in high frequency bus corridors.
For your information, the absolute minimum you can do this with is $16.80. That's 8x $2.10 (Opal <3km fare). In order to actually do this, I think the best way is to find a major bus corridor like Elizabeth Street in the CBD (prime roaming ground for Opal enabled buses at the moment) with buses coming very frequently and travel between, say, Circular Quay and Martin Place back and forth.
You can also do whatever route you want to take, but make sure that the combined straight line distance of your four trips (i.e. straight line distance from stop 1 to 2 plus straight line distance from stop 2 to 3 plus etc.) adds up to less than 3km or else you'll pay a higher fare. Circular Quay to Martin Place 4 times is 2.7km, so keep that in mind.
You'll need to tap on, ride at least one stop, and tap off. 29 times. Yes, 29. That's how many hops you need to do in order to invoke this loophole. As to whether it's worth wasting your Monday morning to potentially save $30 a week, I don't know, but you might find this information useful if you're interested in doing this spread over one or two days.
Anyway, after the 7th journey (25 taps) when you've spent about $14.70, you can stop the hopping. Journeys aren't counted after you hit $15, so you can enjoy unlimited travel for the rest of that day for 30 cents. The next day, keep hopping and you will hit the weekly travel reward once you finish your 8th journey.
I was insane enough to try this myself today and I got up to the 7th journey. I did most of my hopping at Circular Quay and around Bondi Junction (down the road from Waverley Depot, where most, if not all, the buses are Opal enabled) with a separate ticket to travel between Circular Quay and Bondi Junction - I would have hit the daily cap had I used the Opal card to go from the CBD to Bondi.
You would have to spend 7 hours doings this, it's an hour between journeys.
So you don't have to wait for one hour each bus trip?
Yes you do. Ex: Trip 1 at 7am, trip to at 8.05 am, trip 3 at 9.10am etc. (allowing 5 min for traveling). Think his maths are out too. 7 $2.10 trips is $14.70. Your eighth trip can be 30 cents, so in fact you can get all your trips in the one day.
Wrong. The absolute minimum is $15, do $2.1 x 7 + $0.3 x1 that's 8 trips in one day. ANY PAID TRIPS are counted, so the last one still counts.
i thought you had to wait like 15-45 mins between taps otherwise it gets counted as part of the same trip?
i aint wasting 7 hrs just to save $30
if you start from a different station, it counts as a new journey.
Mashable noted a group who managed it within 30min:
http://mashable.com/2014/11/24/opal-card-hacks/
prime roaming ground for Opal enabled buses at the moment
All buses are opal enabled now, the opal rollout is complete.
Also, not to mention there's easier ways to doing this. You can go in between Erskinville and Macdonaldtown Stations walking. You tap on at one, tap off at the other and then go back to the original to tap on. This works only for trains but if you tap on a train station different to the one you tapped off at (only outside of the city stations) then it counts as a new journey.
The other easier way is to tap on at Pyrmont Bay Light Rail, tap off at The Star LR, tap back on at The Star, off at Pyrmont, back on at Pyrmont and keep repeating until free journeys are reached. Light Rail Opal follow the same rules as Bus Opal at the moment so you have to make 3 Light Rail Trips to make a journey. This way however only should take 30 mins max since the stations are like 200m apart and you can catch the Light Rail sometimes if it's there.
But the bus method also works.
You can't use a Big W gift card in Woolies. Only Wish gift cards can be used across the different Woolies brands.
Yes you can, just you've never tried at self serve and done it yourself.
Handover your OzB tag please,were you behind the rocks in last few weeks ?
Even at regular checkout (where you'd need to do Opal) just say you've got an e-gift card and input the numbers, and pin - no probs.
has anybody filled up the opal card survey before to get the $15 credit?
i went to the website and it says something like "register your interest" but never got any survey invitation.
Haven't heard of it. Where'd you hear about it?
when they send me the card, within all the brochure, got one say about this
Yes I was a survey volunteer as I was one of the first adopters of Opal for trains and got a couple of $15 gift credits for my responses. But I think they have all the survey results they need with the rollout almost complete. For example the light rail is now Opal enabled which wasn't expected to happen before next year. Time for me to take a light rail ride after 8 trips or on Sunday.
Thanks mate. No more recharging at newsagencies! off to woollies to recharge and get $10 credit haha
So with gift cards and bonus you're effectively making $17.5 profit in value?
I heard that you can withdraw your opal amount at any time you want and it refunds back to your credit card, does this mean I can top up with this method to the max value of $250, and effectively withdraw and make money back from it? Elaborate scheme, but can work!
do it then lets ozbargain the opal system before they can patch it
millionaires by the end of the week
$17.50 x 2.5 = 43.75
43.75 x 25 = $1093.75
If you do this 25 times a week you can live off that
do it 25000 times and you'll be a millionaire
Unfortunately it's a phone request requiring a person to handle, and Opal gets the shits if you do anything too many times and may refuse to action it - they keep a track of the incidents on your Opal card (even unregistered - they can go by the card number). Check WP for examples.
just buy new opal cards from 7/11
Do i get the Fuel Discount Voucher if i recharge over $30 in Woolworths???
Sure.
And Everyday rewards points too.
Thanks for this deal , but I still think its fairly stupid that you CANNOT top up your Opal card at a train station .
Are you insane?
How inconsiderate do you have to be to expect the government to have any common sense
bloody outrageous, third party vendor profits like 7/11, petrol stations and woolies are important than govt transport workers you know
This would require some common sense on the part of the government . Don't be ridiculous.
Carn Adelaide Metro! Get some metrocard outlets in woolies!
A heads up, if you took this offer on the last day and haven't used your $10 voucher it probably expires today so use it, even if just to top up. I was lucky I took a second look.
Just to confirm this sadly doesn't work. Tried at Town Hall and the voucher doesn't work for Opal, manager came over and everything :(
@clarky, expired in December.
But did you mean you already bought a Big-w gift card and they wouldn't accept it to top up Opal?
I did it multiple times, just ask to top up Opal, and pay with e-gift card (didn't specify it was Big W gift card) then just entered the numbers and pin and worked no problem.
$100 at Woolworths and get bonus $10 doesn't work, but e-card does :)
Yeah, it's finished. They had a few other deals before Christmas too, but think all finished now.
Opal top ups is definitely the best way to take advantage of any woolies deals (for commuters)… unless there's a Amex shop small promotion around which definitely trumps this. But there aren't, so up vote from me.
If on ING/MEBank though just top up 2x $50 ;) (or $60 & $40 to be more subtle).
Oh, also don't forget about Dan Murphy gift cards, or the e-Gift cards off groupon that were here with an approx 9.14% total discount (combining the 5% off from groupon + cashrewards). They would be better than the entertainment book discount you've mentioned.