I charge to Citi Rewards Card MasterCard and still earn 10x Points, last transaction 31 Dec 15.

Only paid once $5 with DBS Woman's card on 6th Dec. Awarded 1x. Does not know if balance 9x was awarded because of refunded online transaction in Dec 15 which earned bonus 9x. Cannot have negative balance.

Someone said today he got the 9x bonus points for e-AXS payments.

Anyway, Citi Rewards Card still best!! Earn points for every $1 and 10x points awarded once the charge is posted. No need to keep tracking every 16th of the month for the bonus 9x points.

For citi, no. Because supplementary card accrues the points to only one bucket (i.e. the main points balance under your name). You can transfer everything to your KF and then do a redemption for her though.

Hi everyone,

Now that I got both Citibank Premiermiles AMEX and UOB Prvimiles AMEX, I am double-checking (I'm paranoid) my first statements.

For Citibank, no problem. As long as I remove the cents, I can match their statement 100%.

Now for UOB, the site says "UNI$6 for every S$5 spent on transactions in foreign currencies and UNI$3.5 for every S$5 spent on transactions in Singapore Dollars.".

My problem is that it doesn't seem to work this way. If I calculate by blocks of $5, I'm off. But if I calculate by blocks of $10, then I can find their total.

=> Are the website conditions misleading?

It would change quite a bit my arbitrage strategy between Citibank and UOB to maximize miles accruals.

Julien

I can also confirm that paying with Citi Rewards MC via e-AXS gives 10x points. I used it to pay for my Prudential premiums last week.

I also used the DBS WWMC to pay for AXA premiums via e-AXS. Will monitor and see if I get the 10x points.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the system only calculates UNI$ with integers so the 3.5 is rounded down to 3, or something similar like that.

Mine is getting cancelled as soon as they stop waiving annual fees. The limo rides now have too many restrictions and conditions, and everything else is easily replicated by quite a few other cards. The extra 0.2 miles per dollar spent locally doesn't quite bother me especially when most spends would go to other cards with specified targeted earns.

I tried that but it didn't line up either.

If I round down the UNI$ (truncate) to integer, by either blocks of $5 or $10, I get resp. 1,265 and 1,246 when UOB credited me with 1,230.

Just puzzled by the way they calculate things...

Julien

Quoting myself, post #4799:

Excel. Create your own formulas, here is the one which calculates 10x UNI$:


"posted charge amount" - is the amount with dollars and cents.As you can see, if you charge anything between $15.01 and $19.99 and these are 10x qualified charges, you will be awarded the same 30 UNI$ - they round it down.

So if you download statement in excel and in your E5 column is the first posted charge, put in F5 column as =TRUNC(TRUNC(E5)/5,0)*10 - this will put there number of awarded 10x UNI$.

Then for each charge which is 10x UNI$, you can copy/paste the formula into corresponding F column. Based on above you can calculate your own list of awarded UNI$ and if there is discrepancy, you need to call.

You have to do your own breakdown if UNI$ awarded per charge, they won't do it for you.

Sounds reasonable (and what I was doing, although in a different way) and using the x3.5 and x6 multiplier for local and forex transactions, I end up with 1,256UNI$, still more than the $1,231 on my statement.

Will contact them. They also forgot to provide to which address the first payment cheque -- before the GIRO kicks in -- should be addressed to. :-P

Julien

While I'm crunching numbers, I made a quick comparison of foreign currency transactions and they are quite pricey (vs spot rate for that day):

So far only one with UOB (THB) => 3.58% in fees
5 with Citibank (EUR and AUD) => from 3.42% to 3.96%

My assumption was that AMEX was usually 2.5-3.5%.

On the other hand I'm used to European Visa/Mastercard who got sued by the EU and lost because they were taking fees on both credit and FX and EU asked them to chose one only. They decided to be credit cards and waived the FX fees.

Is 4% "normal" for Singapore cards?

[EDIT]

For UOB, they do announce 3.25% upfront fees by AMEX + anything but USD and AUS will be converted to USD first, then USD to SGD. 3.58% doesn't sound too bad in that case.

For Citibank, they do announce 3.3% upfront fees by AMEX + anything but USD will be converted to USD first, then USD to SGD. That explains the higher rates for Citibank.

I guess I'm just (re)discovering the pleasures of being a "weak" currency!

Julien

It could be worse-you could be trying to use AUD/CAD (or even £ as £/$ is at record lows...)

If you want to use an Amex overseas, use a Amex-issued card, not one issued by UOB, Citi or DBS. As you noted, the foreign transaction fees (FTFs) are in the region of 3%. For a Amex-issued card, the FTF is listed as 2.5% when I last checked the cardholder's agreement.

For some cards, such as the UOB Privi Visa and Mastercards, even the FTFs are 3.25%. So even if the miles accrued per SGD spend is higher, you have to factor in the higher FTFs.

need all your wisdom and help.

Will have a huge department store purchase soon, which is around $45K, what is my best option? Willing to open new card. Have citi reward (both cards almost reach $12k)

:eek:

Assuming you want miles...

Suggest looking at sign-up min spend offers and spread over multiple cards.
AMEX Krisflyer Ascend normally has something.

Simpler option would be UOB PRVI Miles American Express Card which gives 20K mile bonus for hitting $50K in a year so assuming you can make up the final 5K you should get around 83K miles.

Since we're discussing overseas transaction fees -- what are some of the best cards in terms of overseas fees and miles accrual? I generally use my PRVIMiles MC but the fees are quite high.

I think you can't get anything less than 2.5% from AMEX/MC/VISA. Considering that they itself add 0.8%-1% on interbank spot rate, at the end 3.3% is absolute minimum comparing to interbank spot rate.