Nerfed: Major BOC Elite Miles devaluation taking place on 15 June

Oh boy.

Bank of China has announced some major changes to the BOC Elite Miles World Mastercard that take place from 15 June 2020. These, in my opinion, effectively nerf the product, and I’m none too pleased about how one of them has been implemented.

BOC has reduced the earn rate to 1 mpd for local spend, 2 mpd overseas

When banks want to tweak the miles that cardholders earn, the most common approach is to change the earn rates. That’s never a good thing, but it’s still acceptable, insofar as it affects your future patronage.

I’ve never seen a bank take the reverse approach, which is to change the conversion rates. And yet, that’s exactly what BOC is doing.

From 15 June 2020, BOC will revise the conversion rates from points to KrisFlyer and Asia Miles as follows:

	Current	From 15 June 2020
	30,000 points = 10,000 miles	45,000 points = 10,000 miles
	18,000 points = 6,000 miles	27,000 points= 6,000 miles

The cost of miles increases by 50% for both KrisFlyer and Asia Miles. This reduces your earn rates as follows:

What irks me is that devaluing the conversion rate discounts your past patronage. When I decided to spend on my BOC card, it was with the understanding that I’d be earning 1.5 mpd locally, 3 mpd overseas. That decision has been made; it’s in the past and I can’t go back and change it.

For BOC to turn around and say “yeah, that spending you did previously? We’re going to make it as if you only earned 1 mpd locally, 2 mpd overseas” is just not the right way of going about things.

Of course, you’re perfectly at liberty to cash out all your points before 15 June 2020 at the existing rate, but unless you manage to hit the conversion block exactly, you’ll still have some orphan points, which value will be diminished under the new rates.

BOC seems to have no compunctions about this, stating clearly that the conversion rate applies also to existing points.

The above conversion rate will be applicable to all new and existing BOC Bonus Points which are accumulated to date, with effect from 15 June 2020. BOC reserves the right to amend, vary or modify the Miles Conversion Rates at any time from time to time at its sole and absolute discretion.

tl;dr: if you have any existing BOC points, you need to earn up to the next transfer block and cash out before 15 June 2020. 

We know BOC points transfers can take up to 3 weeks, so they’d better honor the rate based on the date you submitted the form.

New rewards exclusion categories

From 15 June 2020, BOC will add the following rewards exclusion categories:

• Payments to educational institutions
• Payments to hospitals
• Insurance payments
• Payments to financial institutions (including banks and brokerages) for
  financial services;
• Payments to real estate agents and managers; and
• Payments for betting through any channel (including but not limited to
  lottery tickets, casino gaming chips, off-track betting and wagers at race
  tracks)

BOC has provided specific examples in the detailed T&Cs:

What’s interesting to me is that they’ve excluded both private and public hospitals from earning points. When OCBC made their recent T&C changes, they only excluded public and non-profit hospitals, while allowing you to continue earning points at private facilities like Gleneagles.

It also looks like all rent payments are out of the picture now, as CardUp, ipaymy and RentHero all get excluded.

The BOC Elite Miles was one of the last remaining cards that awarded points for insurance payments, so it’s sad to see that go too.

I’m assuming these rules are applied prospectively and not retroactively. It seems almost ridiculous I have to say that, but some cardholders have complained about retroactive points adjustments made by BOC, for transactions which were not excluded at the time they were made. I’d keep a very close eye on my points balance, in any case.

Points required for annual fee waiver have been cut

As some cardmembers learned the hard way last year, BOC charges a hefty amount of points in lieu of an annual fee. Cardholders were told they received an annual fee “waiver”, then were docked 95,000 points (31,667 miles, under the existing conversion rates) the next month.

Most people would say that 31,667 miles were definitely worth more than a S$190 annual fee, so it’s as if the annual fee “waiver” ended up costing you more!

For what it’s worth, BOC is reducing the number of points needed for an annual fee waiver from 15 June 2020.

You’ll now pay 30,000 points (6,667 miles) for an annual fee waiver, which is a hefty 68% reduction.

Whee.

Conclusion

My frustrations with BOC are well documented, and the only reason I’m holding on to the card is because it:

1. offers an objectively good earn rate of 1.5/3.0 mpd on local/overseas spending
2. offers points on transactions like insurance, hospitals and education
3. counts towards bonus interest on my SmartSaver account.

Points (1) and (2) are now gone, which only leaves me with (3). But with a nerfed earn rate and more exclusion categories, is it really worth keeping around just for some bonus interest? Given all the usual BOC aggravation, I’d say no.

I’m out.

(HT: Sbux)