Sunday, January 14, 2018

HDFC Diner's Club - Hoodwinking Customers

I have been super excited for last week or so about this new card that I had applied for - HDFC Diners club black card. Read numerous reviews and read through HDFC official diner's club website for all the benefits. Most celebrated of all the benefits are the 10X program where you receive 10X reward points if you shop via smartbuy and their affiliated partners. I received the card today and the first thing I wanted to do was go ahead and book my flight tickets. we as a family do anywhere from 10-15 flight trips a year. An average of 20k/trip and assuming we do 10 trips would save me Rs 60,000/- outright. Seems too good to be true but this deal is from the most trusted bank in India and with all the reviews around there on the net claiming you can save 33% off of your flights had me hooked. A trip for 3 of us costs around Rs 12,000/- to Bangalore. I straight away went to smartbuy website and selected the flights I wanted to travel on. The cost came to Rs 15,500 and seemed a little on the higher side. So I went back to HDFC Diners club website from where you can book tickets but you will only get 1X reward points. I quickly did a search for the same flights. Cost of the flight came to Rs 11,300/-. So to get a 10X reward of 5000 points, I am having to shell out Rs 4200 additional on the flight tickets. If I were to do a simple math after deducting all the benefits, if I book tickets through a normal site I get the tickets for Rs 10,900/- and if I book the tickets through smartbuy it would cost me around Rs 10,400/-. This seems such a farce compared to the claim of 33% savings on flights. I will upload the screenshots of both the sites so that all you customers can check for yourself. I have only compared their flights and have not looked into hotel deals or restaurants. This review of the point system is only for flights. while I was on the net last one week trying to read through all the too good to be true benefits, there are tons of customers wanting this card just for the 10x savings. To all you guys out there you are not losing out on much if you don't own this card.