Credit card Festival Offer - Top 500 Spenders

HDFC Bank Credit Card rep had called to let us know that they are running a promotion during this festival season - Top 500 spenders get 500 assured gifts every month between October-December,2007. [No Lucky Draws]

• Top 5 spenders - Club Mahindra Holiday Memberships
• Next 10 Spenders - LG LCD TVs
• Next 35 Spenders - Apple iPods
• Next 450 Spenders - Gift vouchers worth Rs 2,500 each

They don't disclose the amount one has spent. In our Card Analyst's estimate, to win Rs 2,500 you may have to spend more than Rs 50,000 in one billing period. That is more than my Credit Card Limit :-) HDFC is also promising 0% interest on purchases at retail outlets. Please read the fine print and you will get to know their gimmick immediately.

CardBhai advises its readers to ignore all these offers if you can't payback within the due date. Have a good festival without over spending :-)

De-link Credit Card from Savings Account

After going through several posts on the CardBhai forum, we would like to advise you folks that, kindly De-link your credit card attached to your HDFC Bank Savings Bank Account.

What HDFC Bank Credit Card DSAs do is, they link the credit card account to your savings bank account. Advantage is, you have authorized them to take money out of your savings bank account to fulfill your payment obligation towards credit card. And the disadvantage is if there is any problem with Credit Card and if the bank decides to freeze your savings bank account then your salary etc will be locked up, cheques start bouncing. So we advise you to de-link the Credit Card account and Savings Bank account.

For our readers, we have uploaded a MS-Word Document which you can edit and submit to your Bank as well as HDFC Credit Cards division [I am in Bangalore and I had to send the letter to Chennai. Call Customer Care and ask where you have to send]. Make sure you have an acknowledgment of the letter.