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Monday, September 28, 2009

Product Review: Yatra Barclaycard Platinum Credit Card

This Credit Card is a Travel Card, however it is not a co-brand with an airline, however it is a co-brand with a travel aggregator which is www.yatra.com. The plus point is the fact that the customer does not get tied down to a particular airline and can redeem points across airlines and holiday packages.

The strengths of this Credit Card are as follows

(1) It is a FREE Visa Platinum Credit Card (not many Platinum cards are free in the market) and hence the customer becomes eligible for VISA platinum Offers which are decent from time to time such as PVR Movie tickets etc. Check www.visa.com for the latest offers
(2) It is not tied to any airline and unlike the other travel cards such as Jet Airways Citibank Credit Card are not linked to 1 Airline only. This gives a lot of redemption options to the customer

For the 2 strengths listed above, this Card has several drawbacks

(1) The redemption ratio is the worst in the Industry. The last time I calculated 1 Yatra Mile was 0.25 paise and you get only 1 Yatra Mile for all spends other than those done on www.yatra.com
(2) You will have to spend at least 3 times what you spend on Normal Cards to get free flights. You are better of spending on any of the regular credit cards and using the regular Reward Program to convert them to JP Miles or King Club Miles
(3) Poor Quality Customer Service both at the Contact Centre where complaint resolution and turn around times are not managed well
(4) Barclaycard has got several serious customer complaints on www.mouthshut.com and other such forums
(5) No Internet Banking Platform, so you will need to call the Barclaycard Customer Service Helpline for any details you require (which is not a very pleasant experience)

On the whole this Credit Card is nor recommended for customers as the pitfalls far outweigh the strengths. Please think several times before you apply for this card because it is very unlikely you will get any value for it. Barclaycard has the Timescard offering which is awesome, so you could try considering that.

For other useful Personal Banking tips do go to www.simplybank.blogspot.com or you can mail me at Ask.Pranav@Gmail.Com and I will try to respond to your queries at the earliest.

3 comments:

Travel Credit Cards said...

I learned something. Keep updating.

Best Credit Cards said...

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Safe ePayments Motivator said...

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