Ok...anyway, ANZ Travel Card + the 4 Citibank cards suits my lifestyle best. The bulk of my miles are earned from groceries, household bills, EZ-link and shopping (small purchases). Not much on dining, online shopping and overseas expenses and almost merchants I go to do not accept AMEX.

Transferring in blocks of 10,000 miles creates a lot of wastage miles. Most of the time there are residue miles inside the FFP especially for someone who redeems only once or twice a year. Not good for me. Also, think of the situation when you need miles urgently and so far from creating that 10,000 miles, example, you need only 3456 miles and you purposely charge a lot to transfer 10,000 miles.

Citibank is best, any amount >500 miles. AMEX in blocks of 250 miles, Maybank in blocks of 500 miles. OCBC, StanChart, HSBC, ANZ are in blocks of 1,000 miles.

Why not the UOB PPV to get 10x via Paywave?

Aster, can you amend the first post for the 3X Citi Premier Miles for overseas spend promotion?

Like mentioned if your company allowed. Normally will use 1 of the slip which provide DCC rate and choose local currency. Lucky for me they accept this as the exchange rate.

Ops Seems like OT

UOB transfers in blocks of 10,000 miles. Even though you earn 10x UNI$, most of the time you don't use up the full block of 10,000 miles when you redeem. Will always have wastage, up to 9999 miles. Consider the wastage miles, it really makes no difference if you are earning 5x or 10x. Since I can earn 5x CitiDollars with Citibank Platinum VISA at NTUC & Sheng Siong, I can transfer the number of miles I need to redeem and do not create wastage, it works for me.

Also Citibank has so many FFPs to choose from. At only 25,000 miles for 1 way (no stopovers) Business Class ticket anywhere within Asia (Eg: SIN-Japan via TPE) with EVA Air's Infinity MileageLands, its a steal. (50,000 miles for return with 2 stopovers, strictly on EVA Air flights only)

Can I check the transfer to EVA Air is available for Citibank PM Visa??

Yes, must call Citiphone to redeem. Cannot do online yet. Can redeem EVA Air Hello Kitty Jets for TPE-Korea/Japan!

That's good news! By the way, must pay fuel surcharge?

I just tried redeeming online, must pay fuel surcharge (SGD$300 bucks return) for SIN-TPE and the 77W is Premium Laurel :td:

Yes. Each sector US$100. Very expensive for EVA Air.

No, all EVA Air B777-300ER are Royal Laurel Class now.

http://www.evaair.com/en-us/flying-w...leet=777-300ER

Sit alone like First Class in a full flat 2 metre bed, only airline in the world that serves Dom Pérignon Champagne in Business Class. SIA is double seater angle lie flat and China Airlines is the worst, double seater, maximum reclining position for SIN-TPE Business Class.

Why is it wastage? The 9999 points will still be there the next time you want to redeem. Since UOB uses a rolling expiry points system (ie, points expire 2 years later (based on quarterly period), the 9999 points left over, are the ones that are most recently earned and will have validity for up to two years. So, a year later, if I have earned just 1 point, and I want to transfer, it's still ok since I have the 9999 points.

And the large difference in earning rate does make a difference, even if Citibank has more partners.

Using your example, if I want to go to NRT, that will cost 25,000 miles on EVA Air Business. At 2 miles/$ using Citibank Platinum Visa at grocery shopping at NTUC, that will be $12,500 spending.

On SQ, that will cost 40,000 miles on SQ (Business as well & direct, no transit required). At 4 miles/$ using UOB Preferred Platinum Visa at grocery shopping at NTUC via paywave, that will be $10,000 spending.

However, obviously, if you are more comfortable with Citi's cards and scheme, that's cool. However, to rubbish UOB's cards & scheme just because it doesn't fit into your spending pattern is a tad unfair.

The 9999 extra miles because of the 10,000 miles block that you transfer when you only need 1 mile I'm referring to are those miles that are already in KrisFlyer or Asia Miles, not with the credit cards.
Yes these 9999 miles that you do not need for the current redemption will be there and they will be there for another 3 years and you are forced to leave them alone to expire or to transfer more to redeem.

It's somesort like cashflow problem. Imagine you have 5000 UNI$=10,000miles at your UOB credit card now. You need only 3000 miles for a redemption for KrisFlyer AND your Asia Miles also need another 4000 miles for a redemption. So how? You either transfer the 5000 UNI$ to KrisFlyer or Asia Miles, but not BOTH and create 7000 miles wastage, where 4000 of these 7000 miles could have been transferred to Asia Miles.

But with Citibank credit cards its different for the above example. If you have 5000 Citidollars, you can transfer 1500 Citidollars to KrisFlyer and 2000 Citidollars to Asia Miles and can redeem 2 tickets.

I hope you understand better to what I'm explaining with the example.

"Using your example, if I want to go to NRT, that will cost 25,000 miles on EVA Air Business. At 2 miles/$ using Citibank Platinum Visa at grocery shopping at NTUC, that will be $12,500 spending.

On SQ, that will cost 40,000 miles on SQ (Business as well & direct, no transit required). At 4 miles/$ using UOB Preferred Platinum Visa at grocery shopping at NTUC via paywave, that will be $10,000 spending."

Referring to your example above, if I use all 3 Citibank Platinum VISA, Citibank Clear Card and Citi Rewards Card (10x) and combine the Citidollars from ALL cards to do a redemption, the estimated spending for EVA Air Business Class to NRT is from S$6,250 to S$12,500, provided each charge you make is in exact multiples of S$1.

For SIA SIN-NRT, you need 34,000 miles on Business Saver (1 way) after 15% online discount, for Star Alliance mixed carrier awards, you need 40,000 miles. If only use UOB UNI$, you need to transfer 20,000 UNI$ for both cases, (Transfer in blocks of 5,000 UNI$). Spending $10,000 at 4 miles/$ using UOB Preferred Platinum Visa is the lowest estimation PROVIDED that you charge in exact multiples of S$5 for each transaction. You must factor in the maximum S$4.99 rounding off per charge. The actual spending depends on the number of transactions and the rounding off per charge that you made to clock that 20,000 UNI$, hence can be as high as S$12,500 too.

Banks are smart. They let you earn more miles for every $1 like 4miles/S$1 for UOB and DBS but also increase the number miles per block to transfer to FFPs. Only Citibank has never increased the number of miles to transfer, always at any amount >500 miles.

vsepr - if you can only achieve $12,500 spending in three years, then of course the UOB10K/transfer is not for you.

However if you can achieve that spending in three months (or in my case, the last three days buying Watsons coupons to max out the Bank of Communications extra 7X (S$0.2/Asia Mile) promo) then the 10K/redemption requirement will not be that onerous.

No, I don't have to be rich (I sold all I bought for 97-98 cents on the dollar already). I just have to have the ability to generate enough spend (and a fraction of it as working capital).

UOB PPV T&Cs
 

Just checked the UOB PPV card's T&Cs and it states the following (see below), which appears to rules out most big ticket opportunities for earning miles - e.g. flights, hotels. Unless I am missing something?

UOB Preferred Platinum Visa Cardmembers will earn 10 UNI$ for every S$5 spending from direct retail transactions with online merchants with effect from 6 March 2013. Such online merchants include merchants that fall within the categories of bookstores, cinemas, entertainment, electronics, fast food, music and retail shopping, and excludes all airline, travel, government, utilities, telecommunications, brokerage/securities, insurance, education/tuition, online money transfers and online gambling websites and such any other categories of online transactions as UOB may deem fit from time to time.

Although capped at $2k per month, DBS woman's card does not seem to have same restrictions.