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Earn double miles with the new DBS Altitude AMEX sign up promo

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Until 30 Sept, the DBS Altitude AMEX card had a very generous 50% bonus miles promotion. Upon card approval, you would earn 1.8 miles for local spend, 3 miles for overseas spend and 4.5 miles for online hotel and flight bookings for the first 6 months (as opposed to the 1.2/2/3 miles normally). There was no minimum spend nor cap on the maximum number of miles you could earn via this promo.

dbsaltitude2

DBS Altitude AMEX now has a new sign up promo. For all cards approved between now and 30 April 2016, spend $800 in your first month and get 3,000 bonus miles. More importantly, you also enjoy double miles on overseas and local spend (but not the online hotel and flight booking category) for the first 3 months after approval subject to spending a minimum of $800 per month.

That translates into

  • Local= 2.4 miles per $1 (an incredibly generous rate)
  • Overseas= 4 miles per $1 (ditto)

The maximum bonus you can earn is capped at $6,000 of spend per month. The spend is capped on spend rather than miles, so the way to max this out is by putting all $6,000 on overseas spend.

How does this compare to the previous 50% additional miles promotion? 2.4 miles/4 miles  for local/overseas spend is unheard of. DBS must really be taking it to UOB in the fight for the miles card market. The $800 min spend is a bit of a downer, but if you’re certain you’re going to hit $800 a month for the next 3 months then you should absolutely take advantage of this sign up promo. In theory, you could max this out with 72,000 miles in 3 months for $18,000 of overseas spend.

T&C here– only for new signups, but if you’ve cancelled your DBS Altitude card for more than 6 months you’re eligible to take advantage too.

Short story: If you’re confident of hitting $800 a month for the next 3 months, definitely go for this and frontload some of your big ticket item purchases. The card has a minimum income requirement of $50,000 (when it launched it was $80,000). My understanding is DBS is relatively flexible about income requirements but YMMV.

Read the Milelion’s take on the DBS portfolio of cards here.

cover photo by paulnelhams

Free one-way car rentals. Really.

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I’ve spoken before about how much I enjoy driving holidays, and the best kind of driving holiday is when you see most of the country by road. Land at one airport, get a car, drive for a week, return it at another airport and fly out from there.

The main problem with this approach is that one way car rentals are prohibitively expensive. Companies often add “drop fees” that can be upwards of $500, turning a bargain $30 a day rental into a much more expensive proposition.

I’ve recently learned of a solution for those of you visiting the USA, Australia, NZ, Canada or select locations in Europe and the UK.

Apparently there are situations where car companies want to move inventory from one location to another. Rather than pay someone to do it and incur the gas prices, why not give someone the car for free, a specified time limit to get the car from Point A to Point B, and let that person pick up the gas bill along the way?

Enter solutions like Transfer Car and iMoova.  You can get both cars and RVs (recreational vehicles- think camper vans) for the more adventurous.

Suppose I’m flying into Seattle and wanted to do the Pacific Coast highway drive down to Los Angeles before flying out of LAX.  I could get a small car for free, for 4 days, to cover the 1,135 miles. Personally I’d prefer a bit more time to see the amazing Pacific Coast, but hey, it’s FREE.

transfercar1

You don’t need to have a US license to do this- your Singapore driver’s license will work just fine.

transfercar2

Not going to the USA? Let’s look at Australia then- I did a Brisbane- Sydney drive about a year back and it was magical.  Imoova offers a similar concept- they charge you a nominal amount for rental but some contracts also include free fuel.

immova

immova2

Or perhaps you’d like to go around Europe?

immova europe

Again, there is a nominal fee of 1-5 Euros per day. Way better than a $500 drop fee I assure you.

I think the main catch here is whether or not you can work this into your travel plans. The delivery window may be less than the time you intend to spend on the road, or it may be a detour from where you want to go. But if you can work this into your schedule it’s a phenomenal way to save money.

cover photo by jinx!

Credit cards and your credit score

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I’ve received a few questions about whether this whole miles game is going to have an adverse impact on your credit score, and I’d like to address it here.

Short answer: No

Long answer: No, but

I’m going to quote wholesale from Moneysmart here

While a new credit card does actually affect your credit score, when you understand how it does, you won’t freak out as much.

When you first get approved for a card, your credit score might drop a little, as the overall age of all the credit facilities open to you is one factor. A new card lowers the average age and will thus have a slightly negative effect on your credit score. The bank will also check your credit report when you apply, and each inquiry gives your credit score a little hit.

However, in the long term a new credit card can actually improve your credit score. Remember how borrowing a lower percentage of the total amount of credit offered to you is a good thing? A new credit card raises your available credit amount, so assuming you don’t go nuts and start spending like there’s no tomorrow, your credit score could well improve.

In short, getting a new credit card is unlikely to cause all the demons to escape from hell, so you can put down your amulets now.

There is one exception, however—if you intend to apply for a loan anytime soon, it might be better to hold off on any new credit card applications for the time being.

TL;DR version: so long as you’re paying off your balances IN FULL and ON TIME, I wouldn’t lose too much sleep about having multiple credit cards open. There are much things that can happen to you credit score, like missing a payment or defaulting on a loan obligation.

If you’re at the stage where you’re about to take out a housing loan and every percentage point counts, then yes, you may want to hold off on the credit card applications. But otherwise, don’t get too worried.

More helpful articles on this topic here and here

cover photo by donharder

UOB’s 5 miles per $1 promotion sounds exciting but really isn’t

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uobhohum2

So UOB sent out a mailer to all its PRVI cardholders informing them of a promotion where card members can earn 5 miles per $1 spent between 23 Oct and 31 Dec. Registration is required.uobhohum

This sounds amazing, but really isn’t.

  1. A minimum spending of $1,000 on overseas shopping and dining is required
  2. This promotion is limited to the first 2,000 cardholders to do (1)
  3. The maximum bonus miles you can earn is 4,000 miles

The definition of dining is, I must say, rather generous. It even includes spend at grocery stores

dining

Shopping too, is similarly generous…

shopping

However, the promotion maxes out at 4,000 bonus miles, AND you have to be among the first 2,000 people to incur the $1,000 spend.

Your base overseas spend is 2.4 miles per $1, and this gives you an additional 2.6 miles per $1 (remember though that UOB awards this in blocks of $5 not $1).

This promotion maxes out at ~$1,540 of overseas spend.

This gives me 3,696 of base miles (@ 2.4 miles per $1) and ~4,000 of bonus miles (actually 4,004 but remember the bonus is capped at 4,000 bonus miles)

To summarise: If you’re going to spend money on your UOB card anyway, this promotion is a nice bonus and you should definitely sign up for it. But it’s not worth going out of your way to do overseas spend, especially since only the first 2,000 cardholders who do so get the bonus and you have no way of knowing ex-ante if you fall into that category

 

Revisiting the Krisflyer Star Alliance Partner Chart

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Varig RG McDonnell Douglas MD-11 M11 PP-VTH MAO

EDIT: Revised guidance to this article now exists. Please refer to this article for the latest version.


I said before that it doesn’t make sense to redeem Krisflyer miles for Star Alliance partner awards. That still holds true. Krisflyer’s partner chart is structured in such a way that the greatest value still comes from redeeming Krisflyer miles for SQ awards.

BUT, I now feel upon closer inspection that there is 1 key exception- flights from Singapore to certain places in Europe (namely, what SQ calles Europe 2)

Here’s how many miles Krisflyer charges for a one-way ticket to Europe in the various classes on SQ vs on Star alliance partners (prices reflect SQ’s 15% award discount)

Class On SQ (Europe 1) On SQ (Europe 2) On Star
Economy 29,750 29,750 45,000
Business 51,000 68,000 80,000
First 72,250 91,375 107,500

Europe 1=Amsterdam, Athens, Copenhagen, Rome

Europe 2= Barcelona, Frankfurt, London, Manchester, Milan, Moscow, Munich, Paris, Zurich

Note: Krisflyer Star Alliance awards do not split Europe into 2 zones- there is only 1 Europe.

Suppose you want to fly business/first class to a popular destination that SQ doesn’t fly to in Europe. Maybe Berlin,  Madrid or Lyon. Or basically, anywhere else in Spain, France, the UK or Germany, or perhaps countries not serviced by SQ like Portugal, Austria or Belgium.

If you redeemed your KF miles for an SQ ticket, your best option would be to redeem a ticket to  fly to a city in Western Europe serviced by SQ and then take a cheap flight to your final destination. Depending on the type of airline you fly, this could add a couple hundred more dollars to your final fare. And you’d need to buy 2 separate tickets, which means less certainty in the event of irregular operations (IRROPs) (especially so if your second ticket is with a non-Star carrier or worse, a budget airline, which will almost certainly require you to claim and recheck your bags, which rules out any chance of a 1 hour connection time)

Viewed this way, the incremental 12,000 miles (for business) isn’t that much extra to pay for the convenience of getting to your destination on 1 itinerary and not having to buy a separate ticket.

What’s more, if you do this you won’t be subject to SQ’s somewhat arbitrary controls on business class award availability. There is only 1 class of Star Alliance partner redemption tickets, and with numerous European members you’re (TAP, SAS, Austrian, Lufthansa, Aegean) you have a good chance of finding something that works with you.

I don’t recommend doing this for first class because intra-Europe’s version of premium cabins are simply economy class seats with the centre seat blocked off. Really.  There is no such thing as business or first class on intra-Europe flights.

intra-europe business class on Lufthansa (courtesy of thepointsguy)

Obviously this logic doesn’t work on Europe 1 flights, which are significantly cheaper than Europe 2. If you’re going to other cities in countries in Europe 1, it makes more sense to redeem with SQ and get a cheap flight for your final leg because of the overall miles savings.

Is anyone planning to redeem Europe flights soon?

 

cover photo by matthintsa

When is overseas spend not overseas?

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Because banks earn a nice profit on all your foreign spend (nowhere as bad as that scammy DCC but still a good margin), they tend to offer lucrative overseas spend bonuses to entice you to use your plastic overseas.

For example, DBS Altitude offers 2 miles per $1 on overseas spend (Potentially 3 if you have the AMEX version and are within the first 6 months of card membership), UOB PRVI Miles offers 2.4 miles per $1 and Citibank earns 2 miles per $1.

However, there are some cases where you think you’ve clocked something in foreign currency, but it really books as local. Here is the general rule

Foreign currency payments processed by Singapore-based payment processors do not qualify for overseas spend bonuses

That’s a bit wordy, so let’s go through some examples

Example 1: Foreign Currency Payments by SG-registered Paypal accounts

Suppose I make a US$500 payment to a merchant in the USA using my SG-registered Paypal account. Seems pretty straightforward right?

But SG-registered paypal account payments will be processed through a payment processor located in Singapore. Therefore, when you use your account to pay in foreign currency, you only earn the local spend figure. If USD$500 becomes S$700 after conversion and your card offers 1.2 miles local, 2 miles overseas, you’d earn 840 miles instead of 1,400. Quite a big difference!

Paypal does count as online spend for purposes of maxing out the $2,000 per month on the DBS Woman’s World card, but after you hit this cap you should then look on the basis of which card gives the best miles per local spend.

Example 2: Foreign Currency Payments made to a travel agency

I read online of someone’s account of dealing with the Singapore office of a Japanese tour company. The tour company quoted him in JPY, the final invoice was in JPY and his card receipt when he signed showed JPY, but he earned only local spend. Further investigation revealed that the transaction, although done in JPY, went through a Singapore-based payment processor.

The 2.4 mile question here is- how do I know where a payment processor is based? The answer is, you don’t. Short of calling up the bank to ask them (and even then they might not know), you’ll be hard pressed to know ex ante  whether or not your foreign spending will come through.

Of course, this only affects online spending, because spending done physically overseas is not going to run into these issues. I think a good rule of thumb is to look at whether the merchant has a SG-based operation. Paypal for example, has one. Amazon does not. So foreign currency spend on Amazon will go via its US payment processor and thereby earn you a bonus.

You can avoid all this drama by simply putting your online spend (or at least the first $2k of it) on the DBS Woman’s World card.

Anyone has any other instances of no FCY bonus awarded to report?

 

EDIT: I’ve since clarified that this issue only impacts UOB cards. DBS policy is that Paypal transactions done in FCY will enjoy the overseas spending rate. 

So, about that $70 of free fuel

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I wrote a previous article about how DBS was giving away free money with its Esso card for new signups. Basically, it was advertised that you’d get $70 in fuel vouchers when you signed up for the card.

The vouchers have come in the mail and they’re not exactly what I expected.

IMG_20151023_081839

As you can see, they come in $5 denominations, and their validity is spread out over a few months. You get

  • $10 to use in October 2015
  • $20 to use in November 2015
  • $20 to use in Dec 2015
  • $20 to use in Jan 2016

The T&C state

  • Vouchers CAN be used with prevailing station discounts
  • Vouchers CAN be used at all Esso station, for petrol only
  • 1 redemption per voucher, but vouchers can be combined
  • Payment must be made to a DBS Esso MasterCard card

So you do get $70 in total, but you’re going to have to spread that out.

The promotion is valid for sign ups till 30 Nov, so sign up here if you want to get in on this.

The Milelion Credit Card Omnibus Week 4: Citibank

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The Milelion is running a new series that aims to profile every credit card available in Singapore. Each week we will cover a different bank. The appendix below will be updated weekly with hyperlinks as more banks are added, allowing you to navigate between weeks seamlessly

Week 1- OCBC
Week 2- DBS
Week 3- UOB
Week 4- Citibank
Week 5- ANZ
Week 6- American Express
Week 7- HSBC
Week 8- Standard Chartered


Citibank has a solid lineup of cards for miles earning. Between the Citi Premiermiles card and the Citibank Rewards card, you can look forward to getting a solid amount of miles on your general and category spend.

My biggest gripe with Citibank is that they do not pool your rewards points together. Suppose I have a Premiermiles card and a Rewards card. The points from these 2 will be on different “rewards accounts”, meaning I need to pay 2 conversion fees when I want to liberate them. Contrast this to DBS and UOB which pool all points from your cards into 1 account. This is especially a problem if you’re going for the strategy I adopt, which is right card, right place. Your points balances on individual cards may be low- meaning a higher cost of liberation. Right card, right place is ok with UOB because it all goes to the same place (meaning spending $100 a month on dining with UOB Preferred Platinum is ok because that will get lumped together with all the UNI$ from my PRVI Miles cards)

I’ve been told that you can pool points from 2 similar currencies- that is, if you have 1 Citibank Rewards Visa and 1 Citibank Clear Platinum, you can ask the customer service rep to manually combine the two before redeeming. But if you have 2 different currencies, eg 1 Citibank Premiermiles AMEX (which earns Citimiles) and 1 Citibank Rewards Visa (which earns Citi ThankYou Points) you can’t.

Miles/Points Cards

Citi PremierMiles

citi premier

  • Annual Fee: $192.60  (First year fee waiver)
  • Income Req: $50,000 (Singaporeans & PRs)
  • Marketing Spiel: 1.2 miles on general spending, 2 miles on overseas, miles never expire, special promotions with OTAs to get 6-10 miles
  • The catch: Good all-round card to have, although it’s still slightly behind the ANZ Travel Visa at 1.4 miles
  • APPLY HERE

A lot of people use the PremierMiles card as their one and only card. I’m sure by now you’ll know that I’m opposed to using one card and one card only, because you’re going to miss out on lucrative category spend. But if you insist on doing that, then the Premiermiles card will serve you well, earning

  • 1.2 miles per S$1 on local spend
  • 2 miles per S$1 on overseas spend
  • 6 miles per S$1 at Expedia
  • 10 miles per S$1 at Kaligo (I’ve covered Kaligo here– their rates tend to be higher than other OTAs, so do the math and be sure the rewards are worth it)

What is especially attractive about the Citibank PremierMiles card is these tieups they have with OTAs. Assuming you’re not actively trying to earn elite status with any chain, earning bonus miles through these OTAs is extremely enticing- 10 miles per S$1 at Kaligo is not to be sniffed at.

There’s a promotion till year end that offers 50% bonus miles on overseas spend during “long weekends” (the remaining dates for 2015 are 8-10 Nov, 25-27 Dec, registration required) subject to S$1,000 min spend per 3 day period and the maximum bonus you can earn is 3,000 miles.

Since the conditions on this are so strict, you’re better off not bothering and using your DBS Altitude AMEX (assuming you got in on the first 6 months bonus promo where all overseas spend gets 3 miles per $1, no minimum/maximum on earnings)

Citibank is slightly misleading (ok very misleading) its marketing materials for this card- it claims that you can redeem your miles at over 60 airlines. However, it only transfers to

  • SQ Krisflyer
  • Cathay Asia Miles
  • BA Executive Club
  • EVA Infinity Mileagelands
  • MAS Enrich
  • Garuda Frequent Flyer
  • Delta SkyMiles
  • Thai ROP
  • Etihad Guest

It’s a decent list to be sure, but nowhere near 60 airlines. How they get that, is because SQ is part of Star Alliance, you can redeem your miles on any Star Alliance carrier (whether you should do that, however, is a different matter altogether).  So you can in theory, but you’ll get quite bad value for them.

You get 10,000 miles when you pay the annual fee of S$192.60, thereby offering you the possibility of buying miles at <2 cents each (good value for redeeming premium cabin flights at upwards of 4 cents of value)

Note that this card comes in 2 flavours- the AMEX version gives 1.3 miles for local spend (vs 1.2 for the visa version) and 2 miles per S$1 spent on SQ/MI tickets. You’re still better off with the DBS Woman’s Card or the DBS Altitude AMEX, which grant 4 and 4.5 miles respectively per S$1 spent on airtickets (need not be SQ).

Yay or Nay: YayI don’t think the 0.1 incremental miles the AMEX version offers is worth having to deal with lower AMEX acceptance, so go for Visa. The Visa version doesn’t publicise 2 miles on purchases at SQ as a benefit, but in any case you shouldn’t be using this card for airtickets

Citi Rewards

citi rewards

  • Annual Fee: $192.60  (First year fee waiver)
  • Income Req: $30,000 (Singaporeans), $42,000 (Foreigners)
  • Marketing Spiel: 4 miles per $1 spent at department stores, on shoes, clothes, bags and online shopping.
  • The catch: Citibank’s definition of online shopping is a bit more restrictive than DBS’s. Bonus capped at $12,000 per annum
  • APPLY HERE

The Citi Rewards card should be your go-to card for all department store purchases + shopping. Citibank defines shopping as purchases at any merchant whose primary line of business is shoes, clothes or bags. I suppose that’s open to interpretation but it should be quite safe to charge things from Mango, Zara, Fred Perry etc to this card.

This extends to online shopping as well. Note that Citi’s definition of online spending does not include  food & beverage, travel, airline, government, brokerage/ securities, cinema, insurance, tuition and online gambling websites.

The Citi Rewards card comes in 2 flavours- Visa and Mastercard. The Mastercard version is a World Mastercard, which means you can participate in the Starwood Gold offer– make 1 stay in any Asia Pacific property and get Gold status after that.

Granted, not all of us spend a lot at department stores, but to the extent that you’ve identified a big ticket household item to purchase you can price shop and decide if buying it at a department store is good value.  I had the hallowed responsibility of buying a PS4 for the office and did so at the electronics section in Taka, earning 2,400 miles on a ~$600 purchase. Had I gone to Best Denki or Challenger I’d be looking at best at 1.3/1.4 miles per $1.

Either this card or the DBS Woman’s World card can be your go-to cards for Amazon spending too.

Yay or Nay: Yay. Useful card to have for your shopping needs- get a supp card for your partner if he/she is the shopping kind.

Citibank Clear Platinum Card

citibankclearplatinum

  • Annual Fee: $160.50 (1 year waiver)
  • Income Req: $30,000 (Singaporeans), $42,000 (Foreigners)
  • Marketing Spiel: 5X rewards points on overseas spend, dining and online shopping
  • The catch: Earn rate not as good as the UOB Preferred Platinum AMEX card (4 miles vs 2 miles for Citi Clear Platinum), but useful for places where AMEX not accepted
  • Sign up temporarily not available 

This is a good, flexible rewards card which I recommended as part of the suite of entry-level credit cards. 

This card earns 2 miles per S$1 for spend on dining, overseas and online shopping. Note that Citibank’s definition of online spend is not as generous as DBS’s. Citibank excludes online spend on food & beverage, travel, airline, government, brokerage/ securities, cinema, insurance, tuition and online gambling websites.

It’s clearly a good card for dining. Although the UOB Preferred Platinum AMEX gets you 4 miles per $1, Visa is accepted at a lot more places than AMEX.

The only issue now is that you can’t seem to sign up for this card online. I tried poking around the Citibank website but the sign up links have disappeared. It’s possible this card is currently undergoing a re-brand, and I’ll update this page when we know more.

Yay or Nay: Yay, if you want a dining Visa to compliment your UOB PP Amex

Citibank Prestige Card

citiprestige

  • Annual Fee: $535.50 (1 year waiver)
  • Income Req: $120,000 (Singaporeans & Foreigners)
  • Marketing Spiel: Earn a miles bonus based on your relationship with Citibank, free unlimited lounge access, get 25,000 miles with annual fee
  • The catch: High income requirement
  • Sign up here

If you can afford the high price of entry (annual income of $120,000), you might want to take a look at this card.

The base deal is 1.3 miles for local spend and 2 miles for overseas spend, which is slightly better than the Altitude portfolio and slightly worse than the PRVI portfolio. But there’s a kicker to this- you earn a bonus based on your relationship with Citibank

Tenure 0 – 5 years 6 – 10 years > 10 years
Citigold / Citigold Private Client 15% 20% 30%
Non Citigold/ Citigold Private Client 5% 10% 15%

The way to read the chart above is- if you’re a non-Citigold client who just got this card, you’d earn 1.365 miles per $1 of local spend and 2.1 miles for overseas spend. This could potentially scale to as high as 1.69 miles per $1 of local spend and 2.6 miles for overseas spend, which would put this card as one of the best miles earning value propositions out there. Of course, you’d need to have been a Citigold member for more than 10 years to qualify for that…

EDIT: Apparently i’ve misunderstood this. Scott from the comments clarifies

The Citi Prestige Card Relationship Bonus is actually rather misleading. How is works is you get a percentage bonus on your total spendings in Citi Dollars which you can then convert to miles. So suppose we have been Citigold members for more than 10 years with $10,000 annual spent. This gives 10,000*0.3 additional Citi Dollars and thus 1200 additional miles. So, assuming only local spendings, this adds up to roughly 1.42 miles on the dollar.

I copied the following from the Prestige site.

“You are a Citigold Client who has been a Citibank customer for the past 8 years, with an annual retail card spend of S$50,000.
Your Relationship Bonus rate would be 20% and you will receive a Relationship Bonus of 10,000 Citi Dollars (S$50,000 annual retail spend x 20% bonus rate) at the end of membership year. “

 

You get a welcome gift of 25,000 miles by paying the $535 annual fee- that is a cost of 2.14 cents per mile. This is potentially good value if you have a high value redemption (premium cabins where you get 4 cents and up in value) in mind.

Other interesting value propositions of this card include lounge access via Priority Pass, (you get the unlimited use membership, not those 2 free visits a year type offered by other banks) a buy 4 nights get 1 free promotion at hotels, special benefits at the Ritz and Four Seasons and 4 one way limo transfers per year (with $1,500 spend per quarter)

Yay or Nay: If you can afford the cost of entry, might be worth a look if only for the opportunity to manufacture miles at ~2 cents each

Cashback/Co-branded

Citi Dividend

citi dividend

  • Annual Fee: $192.60  (Two years fee waiver)
  • Income Req: $30,000 (Singaporeans), $42,000 (Foreigners)
  • Marketing Spiel: 8% cashback on 3 categories- grocery, dining and fuel
  • The catch: Subject to minimum spend of $888 per statement month, capped at $25 per category per month. You need to earn a minimum of $50 cashback before you can start cashing out
  • APPLY HERE

Another cashback card promising big and delivering small. The Citibank Dividend card awards 8% rebates in 3 categories, but you need to spend a total of $888 on the card each month and the maximum rebate you can get per category is $25. This means you max out the benefit once you hit $312.50 per category. At most, you should spend $937.50 on this card per month, if you want to maximse your benefit.

Given that the rebate caps out at such a low amount, the more you spend on this card, the less rewarding it gets. Which, I find, is a characteristic trait of all cashback cards. And you can’t cash out on your cashback until you hit $50. If you want to do cashback, you can find much better alternatives.

Yay or nay: Nay. You can do much better with the UOB Preferred Platinum AMEX for dining.

Citi SMRT Platinum

download (1)

  • Annual Fee: $160.50  (Two years fee waiver)
  • Income Req: $30,000 (Singaporeans), $42,000 (Foreigners)
  • Marketing Spiel: 7% savings on groceries, 15% savings on coffee, 5% savings on toys and books
  • The catch: Conditions, conditions, conditions. Maximum cashback in a year is $280
  • APPLY HERE

Although the card is marketed as an SMRT co-brand, the actual benefits you get from SMRT are minimal. You get 2% back on your EZ-Reloads in terms of Smart$, but the bigger draw for this is groceries. There is a current promotion for grocery shopping, as shown below

Participating Merchant Total Savings Earned from SMRT$ Earned from Citi Rebate Additional SMRT$ Earned
Giant 12% 5% 2% 5%
Sheng Siong 12% 5% 2% 5%
FairPrice Supermarkets 10% 5% 5%
FairPrice Xtra – Kallang Wave 12.3% 7.3% 5%

As with all cashback cards, there are many T&Cs attached. This promotion lasts till 31 Oct and you need to spend at least $600 per month to maximise this. You’ll only earn the bonus 5% if your total transaction is $50 and more, otherwise you earn 3%. There’s a lot more fine print, but the TL;DR version is don’t bother.

I don’t understand how people can opt for cashback cards over miles cards on the premise that they’re “simpler”, especially when cashback cards have so many T&Cs attached to the cash back- minimum monthly spends, minimum transaction spends, monthly caps on earnings, minimum cashout blocks…

Yay or nay: Nay

Citi Paragon WORLD Mastercard

citi paragon world

  • Annual Fee: $192.60  (first year fee waiver)
  • Income Req: $40,000 (Singaporeans), $42,000 (Foreigners)
  • Marketing Spiel: 10% rebate at selected Paragon stores, 3% rebate on taxis and Paragon Marketplace, complimentary parking and coffee
  • The catch: Parking and coffee require $100 single receipt spend and limited to first 50 cardholders, rebates only redeemable in intervals of $50. Rebates valid for 6 months
  • Sign up here 

Citibank’s answer to DBS’s Takashimaya and UOB’s Metro cards comes in the form of the Paragon WORLD card. You might remember Paragon as “that place with the bloody expensive parking”, and therefore it’s a good thing that this card gives you free parking! Oh, only with $100 spending in a single receipt and for the first 50 customers.

The Paragon WORLD card gives 10% rebates at selected merchants (quite an extensive list, to be fair). Note that you could earn 4 miles per $1 by spending on the Citi Rewards card at some of these merchants (eg the clothes, bags and shoe stores), so do the math and decide which one you’d rather have.

One interesting thing about this card is the presence of what’s called the Citibank Paragon Premium Membership Program. Apparently this is offered to a subset of Paragon card holders (presumably those with higher spend) and offers complimentary year long parking and $500 of Paragon shopping vouchers. The spending requirement is $50,000 in a given calendar year. Enjoy your 1% rebate!

Note that this is a World Mastercard, so it should be eligible for the SPG Gold promotion.

Yay or Nay: Nay- who can afford to shop at Paragon anyway?

Citibank M1 Platinum Visa

citibankm1

  • Annual Fee: $160.50  (first year fee waiver)
  • Income Req: $30,000 (Singaporeans), $42,000 (Foreigners)
  • Marketing Spiel: Enjoy savings on your phone bill with M1
  • The catch: Obviously, only of use to you if you’re an M1 subscriber
  • Sign up here 

Given the craptacular nature of UOB’s Singtel card, can Citibank’s M1 card be any better (and why doesn’t Starhub have a co-branded card, I wonder)?

You get 2.5% rebate on M1 mobile/broadband bills. Plus you get some special VAS if you’re an M1 subscriber…

M1 recurring bills Up to 2.5% Citi Rebate
Purchases at M1 Shop 0.7% Citi Rebate
Additional Value Added Services if you are an M1 Subscriber:
Handphone accessories at M1 Shop 10% discount
Free mobile data $20 worth of usage per month for first 3 months upon card approval
Free 3G video calls $5 worth per month for first 3 months upon card approval
SIM card Free replacement
M1 Value-Added Services (eg. Roaming) Free registration
Interest-free installments 12-month loans on new handset purchases above $200
Free loan phone Free use for up to 2 weeks within a calendar month if you lose yours

I think the free loan phone program has since been discontinued, and a lot of the perks above aren’t really worth shouting about (except maybe the $20 of free mobile data)

There used to be a 5% rebate on overseas spend with this card but the promotion expired more than a year ago (and for some strange reason is still being advertised on the site).

Yay or nay: Nay

 

Citibank revamps its rewards portal, ThankYou points are now the currency

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Over the weekend Citibank Singapore updated its online rewards platform to bring it in line with the rest of the world.

citibank thankyou1

Points are now called “ThankYou” points. Fortunately, nothing has been devalued- what was before is still today.

krisflyer1

With this change comes 3 additional FFPs you can redeem miles with

  • FlyingBlue
  • Qantas Frequent Flyer
  • Qatar Airways Privilege Club

Citibank still offers the most transfer options by far among the local/foreign banks offering cards in Singapore (most of whom offer Krisflyer or AsiaMiles and that’s it)

Interestingly enough, my PremierMiles AMEX miles did not become ThankYou points. They’re still redeemable at a 1:1 ratio with various FFPs.

Points are still not pooled, unfortunately, so if you have multiple cards (I have a PremierMiles AMEX and a Citi Rewards card) you’re still in the same position as before, having to do 2 redemptions to liberate 2 different sets of points (and thereby incur 2 conversion fees).

I’m putting the finishing touches on The Milelion Credit Card Omnibus Week4- Citibank, so stay tuned for that really soon

Clearing the SQ waitlist

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kf

Ah, the fabled SQ waitlist. I don’t think any other airline has such a perfect mechanism for torturing its loyal members as does SQ.

When there are award seats available in a particular award class (saver, standard, full) but revenue management has not decided to release them yet, the status shows as “waitlist”. Provided you have sufficient miles to redeem the ticket should the waitlist clear, you can fill in your details and add your name to the list. You’ll then receive a confirmation (but the miles will not be deducted yet).

krisflyer

Now you wait. Should the gods (SQ revenue management) look favorably on your request, you’ll receive an SMS anywhere from a few weeks to a day (typically 2 weeks out, although I’ve heard reports of people clearing the waitlist when they got to the airport (!)) before your flight telling you the waitlist has cleared and asking you to call the customer centre to confirm your seat .

How fast you clear the waitlist depends on 3 factors

  1. The route you’re flying on
  2. The cabin you’ve requested
  3. What status you have with SQ

With regards to (1), different routes have different popularity and capacity. Popular routes like SIN-FRA-JFK with good loads and relatively lower frequency have a lower chance of clearing than others. Regional routes which SQ services often (eg BKK, HKG) are popular, but because SQ runs so many flights to these destinations demand is spread out over more flights, increasing your chances of getting a seat. In reality this is a bit of a chicken and egg situation- popular routes have more flights but also more competition, less popular routes have fewer flights but less competition.

Suffice to say that some of the legendarily difficult routes to redeem miles for include

  • SIN-FRA-JFK in premium cabins
  • SIN-LHR in premium cabins
  • SIN-SYD in premium cabins
  • Silkair award flights to locations like USM (for some strange reason)

With regards to (2), award seats are all about opportunity cost. Yes, SQ has an internal metric that values the miles it has outstanding with members, and allowing a redemption will clear some of that liability from its balance sheet. But SQ also controls the value of that liability directly through its award pricing chart. What the American airlines are known for doing is that when they need to shore up the balance sheet, they just announce a devaluation and just like that, a mile which was previously worth 2 cents liability is now 1 cent. Brilliant.

SQ is generally willing to let the economy class seats get filled up with award passengers because their opportunity cost is lower. But business and first class seats represent a much larger opportunity cost, so SQ will wait until the absolute last minute before releasing these to ensure that they couldn’t otherwise have sold them

Another thing to consider is the type of aircraft- SQ has announced that on its new 777-300ERs, first class seats will be cut from 8 to 4 (they will however be increasing business class from 42 to 48 seats).

old

new

This will obviously have implications for award seats too. Given that the 777 is the backbone of the SQ fleet, this means there will be far fewer F award seats available in the future.

(3) is a black box, because I honestly don’t know how this plays into the equation, other than it is relevant. As I’m sure you know, the pecking order is-

Solitaire Life PPS >Solitaire PPS>PPS>KF EG>KF ES> KF

The higher you are on this rung, the more priority you have in terms of waitlist. It’s even a published benefit that Solitaire PPS members and their redemption nominees get priority access to Economy class saver awards (whee). But does it apply to business/first waitlists? Observation suggests yes. Ever since I’ve become a KF EG member I’ve noticed my business/first awards clearing about a week earlier than before. Of course, that’s from a grand total n of 1. But reading online suggests the same priority exists.

How to get your waitlist cleared?

I’d like to caveat this with the disclaimer that only SQ revenue management knows what their formula is for clearing the waitlist. Online forums are filled with speculation and heresay- some people swear by one method which others say doesn’t make a difference.

Everything below is anecdotal- stuff that has helped me or others I know. YMMV, but if you’re desperate, why not?

Call, call call

SQ really makes you work for your award tickets.  Obviously it’s too early to call them 6 months before you fly, but what I generally do is I start calling them at the T+21 day mark before departure. And then I call them daily. Each time they will say the same thing, that they will send a chaser to the relevant department. Whether or not they do that, I don’t know, but the way SQ’s system works is that award seats are not automatically released. This is a manual trigger process initiated by SQ’s revenue management team . So it doesn’t hurt to have someone bugging them about it.

Link to a revenue ticket, if one exists

If you’re flying with someone on the same flight who has a confirmed revenue ticket, you can ask the CSR to make a comment in your waitlist that your partner is flying on the same flight as well. Giving the PNR enables them to “link” the two (I say “link” because it’s more like a note than an official computer linkage).

Paying SQ a visit

ionsq

Of all the methods, I’m the most skeptical about this. The story goes that visiting SQ’s office in Ion and sitting down with a CSR will help your waitlist clear faster. I can see why people would say that, but the actual clearing takes place in a different department. So all the CSRs there would be doing is what a CSR on the phone would do- to send the same chaser along. Nonetheless, there are people online who swear this worked for them.

If booking for multiple people, use separate reservations

This is good for a few reasons. First, if one of you for whatever reason needs to change his or her plans, it’s easier to change the booking. Second, if they’re only willing to clear the waitlist for 1 passenger at a time, you won’t get skipped over the list (if they’re wiling to clear for 2, and if you waitlist both simultaneously they’ll clear you then your partner so you don’t lose out anyway).

To recap

  1. Only SQ revenue management knows the exact rules behind opening up award seats. 
  2. Waitlists generally start to clear 2 weeks before departure
  3. Accept that waitlists are a sad fact of SQ redemptions, and you should have backup handy in case the waitlist doesn’t clear

Happy waiting!

cover photo by xiaojun