Banks: Fee waivers + promos at the Brunei Consumer Fair (24 – 28 Jan)

Dear loyal readers, just a quick one (literally) to tell you to check out the Consumer Fair that’s going on right now if you’re interested in any banking services or loan facilities.

This is the best time to:

1. Sign up for a credit card
2. Apply for a loan
3. Switch your salary from one bank to another

…if you’ve andang been meaning to do it. There are a lot of offers and, most importantly, fee waivers that I encourage you to take advantage of. For example, if you sign up for a Platinum Visa credit card with BIBD, they normally charge a BND 250 (!!!) annual fee (unless you spend a minimum of 18k or something ridiculous on the card over the course of the year).

I signed up for a credit card during a promo period about a year ago (possibly the Consumer Fair also) and had the annual fee waived for three years. That’s a $750 saving! And mind you, if it wasn’t for the fee waiver I wouldn’t have signed up for the Platinum card to begin with. It doesn’t make sense to me to pay high annual fees because dude banks should be paying me to use their credit cards not the other way round! But this way I get the extra benefits of a ~Platinum~ card for free (i.e. more rewards points per transaction which can be converted to cashback or Royal Skies points, better discounts at participating retailers and restaurants).

I know a number of people who signed up during non-promo period and that’s bye bye $250 each year just cos they didn’t time their sign up well.

And if you’re curious, yes I do intend to cancel the credit card after three years if they don’t offer me another fee waiver nanti.

I found this on the BIBD instagram page:

Baiduri and StanChart need to step up their social media game because I couldn’t find anything for them, but I’d encourage you to either go to the Consumer Fair or call them up to find out if they have any special offers, fee waivers, or promotions.

To answer the question of one of my readers who commented in my last post (MissJ), I actually haven’t decided which bank to commit my salary to yet now that HSBC has closed shop! For now, it’s done the natural transfer over to Baiduri – I’ve yet to pick up my new cards so I still use my HSBC ones – and I haven’t yet decided on whether I want to move to SCB yet.

MissJ raised a good point about Standard Chartered being an international bank unlike BIBD and Baiduri, and that happens to be one of the driving considerations for moving to Standard Chartered. But as I once discussed when I compared savings accounts across banks, Baiduri does have superior savings interest rates with their Multi-Tier and Multi-Rate offerings.

So the jury is split still with me and I’ve honestly been so preoccupied with everything else in life that I’m unable to make a decision (and am too malas to right now), so I’m going to let my salary remain in Baiduri for now. I may switch to Standard Chartered in the future and I’ll be sure to let you know if/when that happens. You can be certain that’ll happen during another edition of the Consumer Fair or any other promotional/festival period 🙂

 

But ya I’m aware we have yet to resume normal programming on Myn’s Desk; cannot even begin to tell you how hectic the start of 2018 has been. Work life, family life, newly-married life, social life… All of it; it’s a maelstrom of semi-organized chaos here.