May 14, 2009 08:19 PM
3635 Views
I have been using the Standard Chartered Super Value Titanium credit card for five months now(since Dec 2008). SCB's cashback offer is generally fine, and I have no complaints. But I will be discontinuing the card for the following reasons:
1) I was told that there is a 5% cashback on telecom & fuel, and 1% cashback on all other purchases. After getting the card, I realized that for fuel/telecom, the minimum spending should be Rs.400, and for everything else the minimum is Rs.1000. Also, there is a cap of Rs.500 cashback every month. Also, there is a cap of Rs.250 cashback per transaction. So this card is useless for usual transactions below Rs.1000. If anyone offers you a cashback card, I would suggest that you ask the following questions first:
What is the minimum amount of transaction for which the cashback is applicable?
What is the maximum cashback amount per transaction?
What is the maximum cashback amount per month?
2) Recently, they've changed the policy: the minimum fuel/telecom amount for cashback is increased from Rs.400 to Rs.500. I have a bike, and therefore this fuel cashback is mostly useless. Also, they have reduced the maximum cashback per transaction from Rs.250 to Rs.150.
3) The 5% cashback on fuel is tricky. They will first add the 2.5% surcharge, and from this total amount they deduct 5%. So if you fill petrol for Rs.1000, your statement will first show Rs.1025 DR(1000 plus 2.5%), then Rs.51.25 CR(1025 minus 5%). So while you expect the discount to be Rs.50(1000 minus 5%), the actual discount is Rs.26.25(1000 minus 973.75).
4) The sales guy said that I could pay my bills online. This is NOT TRUE. There is no option to pay your bills online, unless you have an SCB savings account. Now, I have a Citibank savings account, and I normally pay from there. When I called up the SCB customer care, they said "Check the website of your other bank, from there you can transfer the money to your SCB credit card." This is strange logic! Why would other websites have the option "pay your other banks' credit cards"? Instead, SCB should have the list of registered/supported banks from where it can pull money. And sure enough, when I called up Citibank, they said "please see the website of your credit card". So I have been paying my bills by cheque every month.
5) I usually drop my cheques at a drop box in my office. I dropped my cheque last week on May 7. I kept some money in Citibank so that this cheque payment would be realized. After one week, I forgot about it and withdrew some money yesterday(April 13). The remaining fund was lesser than the cheque amount. And today, the cheque was presented by SCB and it got dishonoured because I did not have sufficient funds. They took 7 DAYS to present the cheque! This is ridiculous. most cheque transactions are done within 3-4 days. And Citibank charged me Rs.150 for the dishonoured cheque. I don't know why have they kept a dropbox if they cannot monitor it every day. This is usual, my SCB cheques are cleared after 7-8 days each month. This Rs.150 charge will nullify much of the cashback amount I would have gained over the past five months.
For me, this card does not give much benefits as they had promised. I am okay with whatever they offer, but its frustrating when the sales people don't tell everything clearly. Now I know better when I get offers from other credit cards and what to ask the sales guys.
