Anything Goes

Which Credit Card Do You Prefer? … Locally

So which credit card do you have? Or credit cards? Some of us do have one more of those thin plastic cards that’s so tempting to use haha. I’ve been a BDO (well, BDO now, since Equitable’s non-existent anymore) user for more than 7 years so I’ve accumulated a good share of points for its usage. Recently, I got hold of a Metrobank credit card since my sister works there and asked me to get one so she could get a commission. I finally got to use it when I booked a hotel in Singapore and for verifying my PayPal account because my BDO credit card somehow doesn’t get accepted. I thought that local credit cards don’t get accepted for outside of the country transactions. I have never had the thought of converting my credit card to gold or something because the annual fee is just too big. Plus, I never do out of the country transactions so it’s pretty useless for me that is why until now, I’m still stuck with local. Equitable credit card was much more comfortable for me as a user. Whenever I had problems, I just emailed them and they’ll call me up. When they migrated to BDO that’s when things got messed up. They never placed any announcement in their credit card website that they will be shutting down the system for good because it will then be BDO instead of Equitable. And I just had my billing address changed to my hometown because billing statements are useless to me since I checked the net for updated transactions and all. This time, if I wanted to change my billing address back to where I’m working at, I’d have to fax them crap just to have it changed. That soooo pissed me off. That is just total hassle to me. It clearly showed they don’t give a damn with their customers since they have lots of money anyway. And get this. I wanted to inquire about their credit card points if they can be converted to Mabuhay Miles because I recently found out other credit cards let you do so. Problem was, they can’t answer that. I’d have to call up their hot line in Manila. Even if it’s toll-free, you can only connect to their number if you have a PLDT telephone. I’d have to scour to all my friends asking them if they have a PLDT landline number so they could call their hot-line. How stupid is that? I even asked the BDO personnel that if I wanted to apply for a credit card and wanted to ask first regarding their reward points, I would have to call their hot-line and ask (and hassle myself) because they don’t answer those kinds of inquiries??? The answer was yes. Again … stupid. I wanted to ask this because I was going to make some big credit card purchases and I didn’t want it to go to waste. Since I had a hard time finding someone who has a PLDT landline number, I decided that if I couldn’t find a way to contact them, I would use my Metrobank credit card instead and cancel my BDO membership while applying for either HSBC or Citibank. Luckily for them, I finally found a friend who has a PLDT number and called them up. Luckily more for them, points can be converted to Mabuhay Miles so I decided to stay with BDO … for now. I felt having Mabuhay Miles is more useful to me than any of their offered useless rewards items because it would save me a bundle if I take a flight anywhere than claiming any of their items that require super huge unbelievable points that only rich people can achieve. What about you? What are your credit card(s)? Are you satisfied? Or do you have credit card(s) in mind?

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Posted in: finance

Tags: BDO, citibank, credit card, hsbc, visa

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 11:42 pm and is filed under finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.