Citibank seems to be falling off the cliff on the Citibank Ultima credit card, which was their equivalent of the most aspirational credit card in the Indian plastic space. Like I wrote earlier, they recently withdrew the proposition where you could pay the exceptionally high fee for this card and also get Jet Airways Platinum membership in the process. The few benefits still on the card are also seeming to be withdrawn slowly and steadily. One of the prime benefits of the card, for the travel focussed tribe, was the Priority Pass, where you could access it and bring along a colleague, or two, or three along into the same lounge along with yourself. This was of interest if you…
Credit Card
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Citibank Ultima, now just another credit card!
Citibank Ultima is was one of the best lifestyle credit cards in the market, and now it seems that it will be losing the edge soon. The invite-only Ultima card has premium proposition that includes an unlimited Priority Pass, a membership to the ITC Culinary Plus program, Golf privileges, an international medical cover for $50K and other stuff. The reason a business traveller would get interested? Till last December, they used to have a product variant, which used to let you get access to the Jet Airways’ Jet Privilege program Platinum Tier, along with the upgrade vouchers and complimentary 50K JPMiles (used to cost INR 50K per annum in fees!!) Like I reported a couple of months back, this partnership…
An extra 25,000 PremierMiles for you?
In the last quarter of 2012, Citibank ran a promotion for the PremierMiles credit card holders, where the top 2000 spenders who registered for the promotion were going to get a double on their PremierMiles earned during the promotion period. Some of you should have received an email on these lines yesterday: Double Miles Double Happiness Congratulations! 25000 Bonus Miles havebeen credited to your account! Thank you for participating in the Double your Miles campaign for our PremierMiles credit cardholders.We are happy to inform you that your card number ending with XXXX has been credited with 25000 Bonus Miles on 11th Feb 2013.Looking forward to bring you more exciting offers this new year. While PremierMiles have significantly devalued since their…
ICICI Bank Jet Airways co-branded sign-up bonus is back till March 2013
ICICI Bank hasn’t exactly been doing a great job with what is perhaps a good product out there in the market for those who like to accumulate JPMiles. However, the Jet Airways ICICI Bank co-branded credit card did make it to my personal list of Mileage Earning Credit Cards which you should keep to earn JP Miles. The reason I’ve been using my blue-cloud JP/ICICI Sapphiro Amex is the 7 JPMiles per Rs. 100 which I earn on this card, the best mileage earning in India for daily expenses at the moment. ICICI Bank has been offering a bonus mileage offer of 50% of welcome miles from time to time, and every time the offer would be extended for one…
American Express 10,000 bonus JPMiles are posting
In December, American Express launched their co-branded Jet Airways’ credit card, and as an introductory promotion, they offered 10,000 bonus JPMiles to anyone who applied for the card before December 25, 2012 (and got it approved too!). Yesterday, these points posted in my JetPrivilege account, and from what I heard from other people, they got the miles posted as well. Remember that the bonus is due for everyone who applied for the card before December 25, 2012. Even Platinum JP Members, who may have decided to not pay for the card and forego the regular 20K welcome gift will get these miles if your card was approved. The regular 20K welcome gift will come in on your first spend. Time…
Find your best Mileage Earning CC in India here
Last week, I wrote the Mileage Earning 101 – India Edition 2013, where I had provided you my views on all the credit cards you could use to earn miles in India. I got quite some feedback and requests, including one for a calculator. That prodded me to pull out an old worksheet from 2011 and add some columns to it, adding all the new information available to it. I hereby present to you Version 1.0 of the worksheet, which you can directly access from Google Drive here. Here is how to use it with just a few simple inputs: Step 1: Input if you are a JetPrivilege Platinum Member or not. Step 2: Input your monthly domestic spend and…
ICICI Bank Jet Airways welcome offer is back for Jan 2013
If you’ve been reading my recently updated Mileage Earning Credit Cards 101, you’ll notice I’ve given a thumbs up to the ICICI Bank credit cards’ top end versions for their mileage earning capabilities. However it is a pain to predict if and when you will get the card because ICICI Bank’s internal systems are not still up-to-speed in this department. I recently received my blue cloud ICICI Bank American Express Sapphiro followed by the Visa Signature version a few days later. I am happily swiping away the Amex version for 7 JP Miles/ Rs. 100 on domestic spends. ICICI Bank had offered a welcome bonus in October 2012 for those who applied for the card in the first month, and…
Mileage Earning Credit Cards 101 – India edition 2013!
I met a fairly well travelled bunch of people this past weekend for a coffee in Mumbai, and I was very surprised at the end of this conversation when we pulled out our wallets to pick the tab. The payment was split between two of the folks, and I was not allowed to pay. However, both the cards used for payment were not mileage earning or anything close! The scene was repeated later that evening with a bunch of friends. Someone beat me to reaching out for the check, and another non-mileage earning credit card went into the payment mode. Look, I have nothing against non-mileage earning credit cards. I was using them at a point of time (when there…
American Express withdraws the Kingfisher Credit Card!
With the airline no longer in existence, Amex finally pulled the plug on their co-branded credit card partnership with Kingfisher. All existing cardholders have been sent out individual letters (not emails, not announcements on the website…) about the decision of Amex to part ways with KFA. This could partly also be the influence of their recent partnership with Jet Airways for a credit card. Here are the key details of what will happen now on for the existing KFA credit card holders: Amex is replacing all the KFA cards with the Amex Platinum Travel card and all the card holders will receive the new card in their mail in a few days from now. Here are some details of the…
PremierMiles devalued for good by Citibank
For the existing Citibank PremierMiles customers, they would have received an email communication a few weeks back, announcing a new redemption rate of Rs. 50 per 100 PremierMiles. I did not write about it at that point of time because I was not sure if this was an additional method of redeeming miles, or the only way for redemptions on the website premiermiles.co.in. Here is how it looked. Now, the PremierMiles credit card has come a long way from its original promise. I discovered this card in December 2011, when it was an also ran product. When the card first launched into the limelight in May 2012 as a replacement to the Citibank Jet Airways credit card, there was a…
Citibank Ultima & Jet Airways parting ways
Things are going sour very fast between Jet Airways and Citibank. Earlier in May 2012, they parted ways on the Jet Airways/Citibank credit card and things have never been the same again between the two. Jet Airways ended up partnering with 3 banks to counter their earlier partner Citibank: HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank & American Express. However, the statement at that point of time was that Citibank Ultima – the super premium luxury card product from Citibank, was not going to be affected with this turn of events. Ultima is an invite-only product, and one of the benefits of the product is that it comes with Jet Privilege Platinum tier membership, a heapload of Jet Airways miles and vouchers. Turns…
