And the credit card of the year award goes to ….

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• James67 says:

  28 Mar28 March 06:45

  Also, the most valuable use of skywRds was arguably the ability to upgrade cheap economy fares. This is being withdrawn slo the scheme as a whole and its credit card are now less attractive; burning is sumply too expensive and poor value.

  • Rob says:

    28 Mar28 March 07:13

    The current economy upgrade awards are a good deal, I admit – albeit at a miles cost almost equivalent to booking a BA redemption seat outright!

    • CV says:

      28 Mar28 March 10:10

      Emirates are downgrading the system (again) with little announcement, Skywards Savers fares (economy) will not always be eligible for upgrade using points – even at check in time, forcing people to buy the fully flex ticket.

      • Rob says:

        28 Mar28 March 11:00

        I know – although the current system is surprisingly generous. Look at BA – all you can do is upgrade to WTP and even that requires a semi-flex economy ticket. Emirates lets you upgrade super-cheap economy tickets to flat bed, bar-down-the-back, chauffeurs included business class!

    • CV says:

      28 Mar28 March 10:13

      Should also mention there is a targeted mail for the free emirates card at the moment which offers 5000 points and then an additional 5000 points after a conditional spend (forgot the detail of it as no interest)

• NEIL says:

  28 Mar28 March 06:53

  The Cap One card range is at the best of times baffling. I have the old Aspire World card which was replaced by the zero exchange fees one. I phoned Cap One and asked to move over to the newer one – no – said the agent – you have to apply for it. But, you can’t have two of the same card, so you have to cancel this one and apply for another. Also, the Aspire product seems to come and go on their website depending on the way the wind is blowing.

  • John says:

    28 Mar28 March 08:31

    Why does this make it baffling? Don’t know whether cancel and reapply is their official policy but it can be hit or miss for Lloyds. If they have a new customer number target and they have achieved the target then it makes sense to withdraw a product.

• Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

  28 Mar28 March 07:18

  I know those guys!

  The Card awards are good fun, but it’s more of an industry bash than a real awards show (I’m not a sore loser, honest!). You need to enter your own products – rather than being nominated – and this requires associated cost and effort. The Lloyds side of LBG were I think absent from the whole thing, perhaps due to their reorganisation, so no entry.

  I’d personally argue that it was a weak year for card launches, so the winner was always going to be disappointing compared to previous years’ such as Santander 123, which was a real blockbuster product.

  As you’re well aware, this blog does get industry attention, so you may indeed end up judging at some point. In the meantime, I’d be happy to get my black tie out for the HfP awards bash 😉

• Phillip says:

  28 Mar28 March 07:42

  The other downside of the Etihad card is that most benefits end after one year – double and triple miles are only for the first 90 days of opening the card, and the Silver membership, although I admit generous given that it is for ANY return flight (AUH-MCT RT can be had for £90), it is only for the first year. Same with interest free on Etihad purchases. Something more long term would be enticing!

• Flieduk says:

  28 Mar28 March 07:48

  *picks up dummy and gives it back to Raffles*

  In all serious though, it is interesting that non-Airline junkies view this all very differently/

• Aeronaut says:

  28 Mar28 March 08:18

  There are some, of course, who view the credit card industry with little more than utter contempt!

  (Some of the credit limits handed out willy nilly before the crash were absurd – of course people must take personal responsibility, but offering that kind of temptation to all and sundry was also pretty silly.)

• DAC says:

  28 Mar28 March 08:25

  I worked for the credit card company that, in the end, decided not to launch these cards after winning the initial bid. Simply, we knew we couldn’t build any kind of scale with such terrible propositions. Why launch a card that’s worse than BA or Virgin?

  MBNA succeed simply because the underlying functionality is no different across its cards – so its easy to bung on a new piece of plastic at little cost. But as you point out, no real value proposition for its customers.

  Having been to the Card Awards for a number of years, believe me you missed nothing!

  • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:

    28 Mar28 March 09:40

    That’s a tad mean, I’ve been impressed by the quality of the catering at the Grosvenor 😉

• Ed says:

  28 Mar28 March 08:56

  These sort of awards aren’t given out on merit… They’re effectively bought as advertising.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.