Shell Citibank Credit Card - A Cash Draining Card
Do you fancy of getting a credit card that offers 5% rebate on shell petrol and 1.5% rebate on other purchases?
If your answer is yes, then you are draining your money away!
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.
- 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.
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this is insane..I am withdrawing from the application! thanks for the info!
Even if there is no carry forward balance (0), the rebate is still valid. As the table clearly shows less than RM2000 (or RM4000).
Further as you noted too, the rebate is ON the spending amount for that month.
So, there are still some savings, thou not much at all..
Even if there is no carry forward balance (0), the rebate is still valid. As the table clearly shows 1.5% rebate for less than RM2000.
Further as you noted too, the rebate is ON the spending amount for that month.
So, there are still some savings, thou not much at all..
how about UOB’s rebate card? does it work the same way?
Humm… I just visit citibank web site. There is a section to help you calculate your saving with citibank shell card. I’ve key in Monthly Fuel Spending RM300 with RM0 Carried Fwd Balance, guess what? My yearly saving is RM54.00 base on Classic Card rebate rate. Base on my calculation, let’s say I’m a Classic Card holder With RM 0 Carried Fwd Balance with spending of RM1500 per month plus RM300 for Patrol, I should get RM7.50 rebate for (Non-Fuel/Purchases Elsewhere) and RM4.50 rebate for (Shell Fuel). One year I get rebate of RM144. Please correct me if I’m wrong or tell me where to get a better deal from other’s credit card. Thanks for sharing.
To be fair, you get a misery 1.5% of rebate if don’t have any outstanding balance.
EG. 0 carry forward but you pump RM400 worth of petrol you will still get RM6 as rebate every month..
Source. Citibank website calculator.
http://www.citibank.com.my/APPS/portal/genericLoadPage.do?tabNo=3&htmlPageName=/promo/det/card_shell.htm
Hi,
Its good to have you as the finance police. Anyway i think something is not precise. Actually it’s not necessary to have carry forward balance in order to enjoy the petrol rebate. You can try their calculator at below’s website. Just key in the carry foward balance is ZERO. You will still enjoy petrol rebate based on your expenses of the month.
http://www.citibank.com.my/APPS/portal/genericLoadPage.do?tabNo=3&htmlPageName=/promo/det/card_shell.htm
Secondly, referring to the tagline by citibank
“Are you fancy of getting a credit card that offers 5% rebate on shell petrol and 1.5% rebate on other purchases?”
The above says nothing about rebate due to carry foward balance. It clearly stated that rebase is based on purchases. I hope no one else will confuse about this. Thanks
just came across your site. very informative and helpful for us consumers, especially as nowadays, the economic environment is not so good.
lately several banks are starting to come up with savings accounts that pay interests almost as much as fd rates. the ones i know of includes, cimb’s money multiplier, standchart’s esaver and hsbc’s easigrow.
may i suggest you do a article on this? perhaps this will be helpful to the savers out there.
thanks again for your site.
a gold card without any carried forward balance, you still get 2.5% on SHELL fuel you pump.
why must you carry forward a balance ?
I think the person that posted this article might misunderstand the rebate scheme. For example to be entitled for Classic Card tier 1 rebate, your carried forward balance must be less than 2,000 (based on the table given), so that means you still get rebate if you have 0 oustanding balance, not ‘at least 2,000) as mentioned in the article.
Belowis the statement copied directly from Citi Bank. Read it carefully and you would agreed what I posted. Don’t try your luck to call the bank as those outsourcing sales people are either poorly trained or were given a special set of intruction of how not to disclose the full information. When I was researching this article, I tried and called the bank for 1 week and none of them able to answer my question. My question was “would I enjoy the rebate if I have zero outstanding balance?” The universal answer I got was YES! I then read out the statement below and they then became speechless.
“Your cash rebate is calculated based on your outstanding balance from the previous month; less payment in current statement and total spend for the subsequent month. Here’s an example based on a Gold Card and Classic Card cardmember respectively across fuel purchases at Shell and purchases everywhere else.”
Any Citi-Shell cardholder who enjoyed the rebate without having any carry forward balance? Pls tell us your experience, as the calculator and T&A from Citibank is vague.
Read about Shell’s & Citibank’s clarification on the hoohah you have created:
http://www.shell.com/home/content/my-en/news_and_library/hse/hse_citibank_cc_rebate_20071224.html
After all, the big “hoohah” was actually a good one isn’t it?
To make the record straight, this post was written by first checking with Citibank (or more appropriate, its telemarketing center), and careful read through of the rather LIMITED and VERY VERY BRIEF T&C. The clarification statement is good, but shouldn’t it be done in the first place?
BTW, the statement “The Shell Citibank credit card is designed to help all customers, including those with carry forward balance, ease their monthly Shell fuel bills” is flaws. The rebate is based on the next-purchase of shell petrol & is only useable on shell petrol, those will carry forward still needs to pay the 18% interest - the rebate can not be used to off-set the charges/out-standing and the max rebate is capped at RM500 of petrol for classic & RM1,000 for gold.
rubbish site. waste of time. Please read carefully. You don’t need a carried forward balance to enjoy at least 1.5/2.5% rebate.
smartconsumerbanking konon. smart my @$$.