I know I’m a bit late to the party with this, but Citibank is running a 50% bonus miles promotion for its Premiermiles card for the month of Sept. This means you earn 1.8 miles for every $1 spent locally and 3 miles for every $1 spent overseas. You need to register via SMS for this promotion to apply to you- text “Premier50” to 72484. Once registered, this promo applies to all spending between 1 and 30 Sept, regardless of when you actually registered.
This bonus promotion is subject to a minimum spending of $3,000 for the month of September and the bonus you can earn is capped on $5,000 spend. Which means that the maximum bonus you could earn (if you theoretically spent everything overseas) is 15,000 miles.
Is this a great deal? You can earn the same rates (1.8 miles local, 3 miles overseas) on the DBS Altitude AMEX card for 6 months after applying, Plus, the Altitude AMEX gives 4.5 miles per $1 on online hotel and flight bookings, subject to a cap of $10,000 spend each month.
If you’re committed to spending on the Citibank cards anyway, this is a nice to have. But it’s not enough to make me switch away from my Altitude AMEX.
Also note that Citibank has a promotion with Agoda where you can earn 8 miles per $1 spent on bookings made until 30 Sept for stays until 31 Oct (and 6 miles subsequently).
I think the Citibank Premiermiles Card is a solid offering- it certainly can’t compare to the juiced up DBS Altitude but if you’re spending with them anyway there’s no reason not to take advantage of this promotion.
EDIT: Good point raised by Shane on the comments that the spending on supp card does not count towards qualifying charges. Doesn’t make a difference to me because I don’t have anyone on a supp card, but good to know too because normally spending on both principal and supp cards counts towards earnings.
yeah…and better for overseas with min usage of 1000$ is UOB Visa Signature, u can get 10x UNI$ or 4 miles/$
precisely. realised i’ve not given the UOB visa signature sufficient coverage around here. hmmm
Terms of the premier50 promotion are also tricky.
Seems that spending on supplementary card does not count towards qualifying charges, as supp card holder is not eligible under no. 3 and 4 of the T&Cs.
https://www.citibank.com.sg/global_docs/pdf/50percent_bonus_miles1Sep30-Sep-TC.pdf
Given above, said promotion seems geared towards competing for sign ups, and not so much as to increase/maintain spending for current cardholders.
great point. going to mention that in the article
Which uob visa signature card is this?
http://www.uob.com.sg/personal/cards/credit/uob_visa_signature_card.html ?
that’s the one.
Given the max spend for 4miles/dollar on UOB Visa Signature is 2k SGD, I try to split up my overseas bills such that any spend above 2k goes on either PRVI Miles or DBS Altitude.
Yup. That’s definitely the smart thing to do. I heard of this guy (and I’m not sure if this story is true) who would call up the SQ call centre when booking his flights and ask them to put $2K on his DBS woman’s card and the rest on his PRVI Miles. Apparently they did that for him. I think he still had to pay a call centre booking fee which would negate some of his bonus miles earned, but hey, got to love the attitude.