Tuesday, September 01, 2009

My choice of credit cards

This article is contributed by my friend Kong. I didn't ask for his permission to reproduce it here and I hope he doesn't mind as this is good info for all. Thanks to my friend Kong. Appreciated! Now, my only problem is not sure whether to change my card or not. I will do some research myself also.
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Every now and then, something bugs me and I went off doing a little research and recently, the Credit Card bug hits me. And here I would like to share with you what I think are the best cards.

1. Direct Access
For graduate. Best customer service in the sense that a real person pick up the phone within 3 rings. No frustrating voice messages asking you to hit key 1 for Bahasa and key 2 for English and then key 1 for banking and key 2 for card etc. Drives me up the wall.

2. Alliance Younique
You can have your own photos on the card, anything, your wife's photo, transformer toy, Doraemon or whatever. But I don't know why they gave me a pink card instead. Give you cash rebate ranging from 0.5% to 2% on a maximum spending of RM5000. If you spend the maximum RM5000, it works out to be 1.36% cash rebate. Anything above RM5000 do not attracts further cash rebate. But customer service is only office hours but I suppose everybody have to go to sleep sometimes.

3. American Express Gold Credit Card.
The only free card from AMEX and not to be confused with AMEX Gold Card. Gives you cash rebate of 2.5% on petrol/telephone/supermarket. Gives you 1% cash rebate on everything else. No upper limit unlike Alliance's RM5000 limit. Cash rebate has no expire date unlike many other cards. 24 hrs customer service unlike Alliance.


All 3 cards are free with no condition attached. No such thing as having to spend how many times a years or having to request for fee waiver every year. Having to ask every year for fee waiver makes me felt like a beggar so thanks but no thank.

And all the benefits are not for limited time period only. I know a lot give you 5% or 2% petrol rebate but it is only for a limited period and who got times to monitor those dates?

And if have to give supplementary card to your children, you can set separate credit limit on those. We have kids away from home so we would give them a supplementary card with a credit limit setting of our choice. This is possible with all the above 3 cards.
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2 comments:

Kong said...

Ha William, you really did post my email without asking but I don't mind because I always like to share things with my friend. But a word of warning, I did not survey every cards on the market so my opinion are limited.

Nowadys, there are plenty of credit cards that is free for the taking and they are all good but different. Some people goes for card with the lowest interest rate, some for the best promotion or something else. So you just have to pick the one that suit your needs best. For me, my priorities are:
1. Free Annual Fee. Why pay if you can have it for free?
2. Cash rebates instead of points to redeem goods. Cash rebate is as good as getting paid for doing absolutely nothing.
3. Good customer service.

FYI, American Experss Gold Credit Card also gives you reward point instead of cash. But those point can be converted to cash to offset your bills so it is as good as cash.

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