Recently one of the newest credit card that caught all the driver's attention is the Citibank Shell credit card, their poster can be seen in all Shell petrol station. The main attraction of this card is the 5% fuel rebate as advertise on it. As fuel prices are continuing going up and never comes down (similar to everything in m'sia, except the stock prices :D), everyone is trying to save every penny that they could, and this promotion came right in time.

So, smart consumer will want to take advantage of this 5%, but does it really seems like so? This is the point where smart consumer vs. smart marketing, if you never pay attention to their Terms and Condition, u might fall into their plan.

As you can read from below, smartconsumerbanking.com has a full writeup on this :

The newly launched Shell Citibank credit card is not as good as its sounds - to enjoy the rebate, you must have a carry forward balance. Yes, a carry forward balance that you have to pay Citibank 18% interest per annum. But that’s is not all, your so called ‘rebate’ is based on your current month spending. That means if you have a carry forward of RM10,000 but did not use the card at all for the current month, you get ‘zero’ rebate.

To be precise, this ‘rebate’ card is an old card - it has been around for about 2 years. But now taking advantage of the fuel cost concern, Citibank co-branded it with Shell.

This is how the rebate scheme works:

  • First, you need to have a carry forward balance. The amount of that carry forward determines the rebate rate (%) that the card holder is getting.

Shell Citibank

  • Then based on your current month spend, you will get the rebate (as shown by the rebate table above) - your rebate is not based on your total carry forward balance. Repeat: your rebate is not based on your total carry forward balance, but current month spending

In short, to get your ‘rebate’ you must have at least of RM2,000 outstanding balance in you card AND continue use the card. The outstanding balance is the net of previous month balance minus current month payment. If you do that, every month you will be paying RM30.00, or RM360 a year for the minimum RM2,000 outstanding balance.

Let’s do a simple math here:

If you spend RM500/mth on shell petrol and your classic card has a RM2,000 outstanding balance, at 1.5%, you are getting RM7.50 as ‘rebate’, while at the same time, paying RM30.00 for the interest. The ‘nett’ profit for Citibank is RMRM22.50. Your are essentially “over paying” 4 times the price (30/7.5)

To ‘break even’ (so that your RM30.00 interest payment = rebate value), you need to pump RM2,000 shell petrol a month, or charge RM6,000 a month for non-shell related purchases.

The USD100.00 per barrel of crude oil won’t kills you, but the Citi-Shell card will.

Source : smartconsumerbanking.com