Dec 26, 2011 05:27 PM
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(Updated Dec 26, 2011 08:36 PM)
Although the Indian Oil Platinum Citibank credit card has been heavily advertized as THE card to save on fuel expenses, there is more than one CATCH associated with it, and one usually discovers the fine print after having suffered at least once. To start with:
- The Card offers the user 4 fuel turbo points for every Rs. 150 of fuel spend at Indian Oil Stations -> This translates to approximately 2.67 points per Rs. 100 i.e. 2.67% fule saving per Rs. 100 spent (only if the Transaction amount is Rs. 150, that you receive 4 points). Also the surcharge is waived for all Fuel spends, which is quite a relief.
CATCH 1: As already mentioned, this card is useful only at Indian Oil Stations -> pretty hard to be choosy when your tank is running low, but okays, can be handled with a little discipline and brand loyalty.
CATCH 2: The concerned Indian Oil Petrol Pump SHOULD HAVE CITIBANK MACHINE INSTALLED. This is the real catch since after searching for an Indian Oil Petrol Pump, one needs to search for a CITIBank machine to swipe. If you swipe with any other machine, you would get NO TURBO POINTS and WOULD ALSO BE CHARGED A 2.5 % SURCHARGE. This means if say you refill with Rs. 300 on an Indian Oil Petrol Pump and swipe with any other Bank's machine, you end up paying Rs. 310 instead of Rs. 300.
CATCH 3: You can only encash your (hard earned) turbo points after having accumulated atleast 200 turbo points, which means going through the pain of locating Indian Oil petrol Pumps with Citibank machines for atleast 50 transactions of Rs. 150 each = Rs. 7500 worth of transactions.
CATCH 4: Ok consider that you are die hard fan of this card and you just managed to accumulate 200 turbo points, where do you encash them? Well, the guys at the petrol pump are simply too ignorant to answer that question and you end up calling the NON toll free Citibank Helpline for Bangalore to get these credited to your credit card account.
A much wiser option: Do not opt for this card in the 1st place.
You really need fuel savings -> Opt for Standard Chartered Titanium Credit card which offers you 2.5% cashback + 2.5 % surcharge waiver on ALL Petrol pmps across India on ANY Machine with just 1 catch -> Minimum Transaction for surcharge waiver should be worth atleast Rs 500. The cash back is credited to your card account in approximately 2 days.
Well, I think I can still live with my good old Titanium card. Think about it!
