I've never paid an annual fee for the various HSBC and Citi credit cards that I have held at various times. Some of them have an explicit "spend this much and it's free" type clause (often HK$100K/year) and even if they don't or you don't meet the threshold then I've never failed to get the charge waived if they try to charge one (nor has Mrs Lam). It's a specific option on the HSBC customer service phone number to request it.
That's pretty interesting! Would you guys happen to know if that'd also work on more "premium" cards like "Standard Chartered Cathay Mastercard"? (Though by annual fee alone it's the same HK$2000, it just feels kinda more premium lol).
Since for Octopus AAVS they offer HK$6/AM, which (for me) works out to an effective cashback of 4%.
SC's T&Cs seem a bit firmer on the annual fee - they seem to waive only for "Priority Banking" clients or payroll clients. They also say that they never refund a fee that's already been charged to the card. This is unlike HSBC, for example, who will refund on request up to 2 months after it has been charged in case it takes you a while to notice.
So apparently you need a bank account with them that either has $1M or has your salary paid there each month. But I've never had an SC card so I can't be sure.
Gotcha, HSBC then seems like a pretty good option.
Visa Signature w/ RHRYC is equivalent to HK$2.7/mile (vs. my current Gold which is HK$4.17/mile). So maybe I'll get that and not worry about chasing the Octopus AAVS extra bps...
Remember that RHRYC is a once per calendar year choice, and it applies the same to all your cards. But if, for example, you spend $100,000 on dining each year then it's $3600 back (including the 1.2% Visa Sig bit), which is decent. The trick is to get the bill whenever you're out with friends and get them to pay you cash/FPS!
Last edited by PLamHK; 03-12-2024 at 12:57 PM.
I am just tabulating my BOC Cheers cards points accumulation, its actually quite impressive.
Got the card in Dec 23, in total charged ~HKD260k to the card, which included 70k of Tax/TVC payments.
So put it as 200k..
Total cash back points collected was HKD10k.. so around 5% rebate and the amount is reasonable.
Obviously i did use them overseas and had to make sure the numbers match (e.g. to spend excess of 5k hkd each category each month, etc).
I've looked a couple of times at the BOC Cheers. I see there's a cap for the Visa Sig version (which I assume is the one you have, not the Visa Infinite) of $18,750 per calendar month for the 8x points. And it gets 3.2% on dining and foreign currency transactions. I see also 2 lounge access (I assume Plaza Premier) per quarter.
How do you get to 5%? Does that include the welcome bonus ($1200)? Have you tried getting your fee waived for the second year yet?