Illustration by Gary Clement for The National
I caught a glimpse of a Bollywood blockbuster being watched by the person sitting next to me on a flight this week. There was an elaborate party on screen to mark the launch of a new bank. And to much applause and fanfare, and little sincerity, a protagonist was committing to deliver exceptional products, service and returns to clients.
The next scene was that very person sitting across the table from a seemingly wealthy potential client — the banker stating: “We guarantee you 15 per cent growth”, or so the subtitles said.
One word came to mind: fool.
I am sure that the rest of the movie revolved around people jumping at the 15 per cent return without much attention to detail, and in the process losing their shirt or worse.
I too was sucked into a sales pitch a few weeks ago that was too good to be true.
I had just completed my first ever 10-kilometre run, and that had obviously compromised my ability to be a discerning judge of what is reasonable and what is fantasy.
A representative from a bank came up to me and said: “How would you like us to pay 10 per cent of your school fees?”
I thought: “Ooh, that would be super, yes please, thank you”.
He went on to explain that the bank would pay 10 per cent of my rent too, my utilities bills and much more – if I were just to take out the bank’s credit card. He said that this was a cashback card, and if I use it, I would get 10 per cent back on my spending.
I asked many questions, trying to figure out what the catch was. It seemed like such a great deal. And to add the icing on the cake, the card was free for the first year.
Well my friends, this isn’t the full story: yes, using the card will give a nice 10 per cent back on certain categories of purchases — I looked up the details on the internet — but simply put: you need to spend at least a monthly minimum of Dh1,000 to get the highest cashback rate listed, which is 10 per cent, there are only three categories of spending that qualify for this, and there is a cap on what you can get back.
The categories are utilities, school fees and supermarket purchases. There is a cap of Dh200 on what you can get back from spending on your utilities bill each month, Dh400 on what you can get back from your monthly supermarket bill, and Dh400 a month on your school fees – in other words, you’ll be entitled to a whopping Dh12,000 a year as an absolute maximum, which goes towards paying your next bill.
But if you don’t pay school fees, the total goes down to Dh7,200 a year.
You will get your cashback, which will come off the outstanding balance on your credit card, only by applying to redeem the points online or by calling the service centre. Pity it can’t automatically be put towards bill payment without extra effort on our part.
Now I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and yes, an extra Dh7,200 or, even better, Dh12,000 a year would go down quite nicely thank you. But that’s a far cry from 10 per cent total spending on my rent, school fees or life’s spend, as was put to me initially.
The original article was first published in The National
