allturnleft

Anyone taken up this offer; pertaining to earning avios with BA
its a paid card £195 a year
1 avios per £1 spent 2 avios per £1 in foreign currency
40000 intro avios and a further 40000 after a year if spend enough
other benefits include a lounge pass key
not quite as good as black Amex but a goodback up?

pauldb

Unless you have an improved offer, isn't it 2 lots of 40k points, which can be transferred to 20k + 20k avios?

allturnleft

I missed that trap
they cleverly make the points 2 for £1 but a point is then only are worth half an avio!

mike&co

Terms and conditions for a successful application may prove difficult for some

To be eligible for an HSBC Premier World Elite MasterCard you need to be over 18, a UK resident and an HSBC Premier customer.
HSBC Premier is available without a monthly account fee if you meet any of the following criteria:

1. have savings or investments of at least £50,000 with HSBC in the UK; or
2. have an individual annual income of at least £100,000 and one of the following products with HSBC in the UK:

- a mortgage;

- an investment, life insurance or protection product;

Or, qualify for HSBC Premier in another country.

Please note: HSBC in the UK excludes M&S Bank, First Direct and HSBC Expat. For the second criteria, in the case of a joint account, at least one of the parties must have an individual annual income of at least £100,000. The investment, life insurance or protection products also includes those purchased through one of HSBC's advisers.

shadowline

I'm waiting on a discount on the annual fee or similar for existing Prem customers.

I asked for one when the card launched and no luck

scottnothing

There is a good review of this card on Head For Points which is worth looking at.

I do use it as my default Avios-earning MasterCard for Sterling spend where AMEX is not accepted, but am cancelling it shortly because I don't make use of the Lounge Key benefit (due to being BA Gold and rarely travelling on non oneworld airlines) or the other published hotel or travel benefits and HSBC seems to have done away with the annual points transfer promotion that used to occur around this time of year.

The other trap with this card is the 40,000 point (i.e. 20,000 Avios) bonus is now only being paid on the anniversary/renewal of the card, meaning you (will likely) need to pay the £195 annual fee for two years in order to get the bonus. Some readers of this forum and HfP have had success in pointing out to HSBC that this is not expressly set out in their terms and conditions, however it's worth taking into account that you might need to fight HSBC for the points if you intend to cancel the card once you have spend £12,000 (and you may not be successful there).

The terms say that the anniversary bonus is awarded within 60 days of "point of qualification". To a card holder, you would interpret that to be 60 days after spending £12k. HSBC currently interprets the terms to mean within 60 days of the card anniversary. Naturally, "point of qualification" is not defined in the terms.

mda03jb

Also note that the second 40k points bonus (20k Avios) only materialises on renewal not when you hit the 10k spend and they don't do pro rata refunds so you're paying £195 for each bonus which is pretty much 1p per Avios.

The plus points are 2 Avios/£ for foreign currency spend (I think that's the best rate around) so may be good for those billing a lot of expenses abroad, the wider acceptance of MasterCard vs Amex and the LoungeKey membership.

mda03jb

You just beat me to it pointing out the catch with the second bonus. I fall into the above group who have had to argue for the points albeit they conceded pretty quickly. Generally I find HSBC pretty good on the customer service front & appreciate their UK based team but feel this card is a bit of a flop unfortunately so also will not be renewing. I guess if you live outside London & are more dependent on the LCC's for European flights then the lounge access may be useful but otherwise it seems like a relatively expensive way to buy Avios vs Amex Gold.

benjai

If you already have HSBC premier then you can consider the credit card in another country. I have the one in HK which gives 15 avios per hkd250 (~£24) but they have a 6x boost for overseas spend so you can get 90 avios per £24 = 3.75 per £ which isn't bad at all. The regular or elite UK card don't look very good...

shadowline

Interesting.

Any foreign currency charges?

FlyingMoonwards

Do you need to be resident in the other country (in this case HK)? Or does HSBC Premier status mean you can apply for foreign Premier CCs even if you are not in that other country?

andymac66

I'd also be interested to know the answer to this. I suspect you would need to be resident in the other country but I'd be happy to be proved wrong.

CrazyJ82

I don't specifically know the answer, but based on my experience opening HSBC accounts when I had a "legitimate" reason (ie, relocating to the country where I was opening the accounts) you'd be in for a pretty miserable ride. They've swung rather too far in the other direction on know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering internal controls.

Frequent flyer 101

1.95% unfortunately.

marcolau317

At 1.95% fee for HK-based HSBC Premier card, given you maximize the reward on overseas spending, you are seeing a net return of 0.45% (Excluding any long-term bonus and transfer bonus).
HSBC in HK now also runs a year-round promotion for 2018, with spending of HK$3000+ (~£275+) overseas/online spending per quarter, you earn extra 2%, which push the net return to 2.45%
If you get the VISA Signature card as well, the extra 3X reward cash means a return of 3.65% for overseas spending. The actual return would be a bit lower due to annual HK$300 (~£27.5) mileage transfer fee for unlimited transfer.
At it's best return rate, this also translate into earning at HK$1.19/avios (11p/avios) (Exchange surcharge included, annual fee excluded)

That is, if you are lucky enough to open a account in HK and open the 2 cards needed.