Credit Cards for Foreigners - General Discussion

Which card is that? I only see 18$/mile domestically at best. Help a blind brother out.

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I think you win this thread :laughing:

Is that the “HSBC Cashback Business Titanium Credit Card”? Or do they not publicly advertise the diamond card?

I never really bothered with credit cards giving back miles, but maybe I should… How many percentage cashback does that equal roughly…?

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I apologise, 15 overseas, 18 domestic. Spot on! Better only the HSBC travellers visa infinite, but much higher fee

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It is, the name in Chinese though roughly transliterates to diamond.

It depends on the use you have with miles. But can have huge value if I use wisely and get lucky with redemptions. Already got 8 flights in business with Eva and starlux using mileage upgrades. Saved almost 500k NT. So it’s not an exact science to quantify. Also, if u don’t fly frequently, not too much of a point. I fly often, so I do use the perks and miles

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Don’t you have a gold card, or am I misremembering? The process with the Huanan combo card was definitely annoying for me, but nowhere near that annoying. I guess I’d caused them enough hassle in the branch that by the time I submitted the application it went through pretty smoothly.

I did have to go back to the branch to collect the card (as opposed to the post office with the others), but that’s it. I didn’t need to use a chop or make any phone calls.

One weird thing I had with Huanan is that they miscalculated the interest when I left a balance on there one month. I usually pay them all off in full each month but that particular month I had to transfer/convert some money over and didn’t get around to it in time, so there wasn’t enough money in my Huanan account — I just made a partial payment and left maybe NT$3–4k on there to deal with the next month (I was also just curious what would happen — whether they’d panic that the foreigner had left the country after they’d deigned to give him a credit card or something :grin:).

They ended up charging me like three times more interest for the month than they should have done (NT$218 vs. NT$65, something like that). When I called to ask about it, they apologized and removed all of the interest, but it struck me as odd that could happen at all given that they must have millions of customers and everything is presumably automated. :man_shrugging:

Agree with you about the staff being pretty helpful. Not exactly “foreigner friendly” — more like shocked that a foreigner has walked through the door into their bank — but nonetheless quite keen to do what they can to figure out how to deal with us.

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Not sure how banks do it in Taiwan, but in some countries it seems to be common practice to charge interest on the full amount (beginning from the date of the payment) if the balance is not paid in full, i.e. the interest free period from the payment (in store) to the payment deadline of the credit card does not apply for people who do not pay their statement in full. So even if you leave just one dollar unpaid, you’ll suddenly owe interest on your entire credit card bill.

Maybe they use a similar methodology…

I don’t think that was the case here — they agreed on the phone that they’d calculated it wrong, though they couldn’t/didn’t explain what had happened. It should just be the outstanding amount, I believe.

Yes, I’m a fellow GC holder (finally “graduating” to APRC next year).

But have no bloody clue why so messy this whole process. And, to be clear, if I hadn’t called the hotline to check on the progress, I guess no one would have checked and just hoped I would have forgot.

Another puzzling part is that technically they will need to apply for me for a debit card first (rn only have the crappy ATM card) and then once that is issued, they can apply for the combo card and cancel the debit and ATM cards. What a silly system!

Now waiting for them to post via registered post the “proper” application form for GC holders since they one they gave me at the branch is the one for peasants apparently requiring the guarantor. Srsly unnerving.

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Weird. I didn’t need to do that. IIRC, there was something on the application form (or maybe the teller just asked me) about whether I wanted the debit card if the credit card application was declined, but all I got on the day of application was a standard bank book that would later become tied to the bank account part of the combo card. I don’t think I even had to make a minimum deposit to open the account, but it was approaching 6 p.m. by then so it’s possible the staff just forgot because they wanted to go home. I didn’t get any ATM or debit card before the credit card arrived a week or two later.

I just checked through my photos, and it seems the application form I filled out in the branch was the one from the Huanan webpage about the scheme for gold card holders. I’d link it, but I just checked and it seems they’ve updated/replaced that page now, with no application form I could see. The form I submitted has “GOLD” in the project code field for the reviewer. I think it was actually me who gave them the webpage and they printed out the form from there.

If you want to complain on the next phone call about how they didn’t require all this or make the process so difficult for another gold card holder when they applied, well, you know my real name (hopefully that wouldn’t make them cancel my card haha).

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I will just send a complain once this charade ends

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I got the Huanan card about 8 years ago, no guarantor, $80k limit. They wanted a guarantor and I went to their office in person to chat about it :slight_smile: manager approved it as an override as I sat there and all the workers watched me lol

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Just out of curiosity, what does “office” mean here? Head office? The credit card processing office? The office area of that particular branch? :slightly_smiling_face:

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The credit card underwriting centre. They had a different address than the bank as I recall but still in Taipei. Had to go up the elevator. It was the good old days when you could take an elevator up and it would dump you right there in the work area without any security

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You mean you got off your arse like I did in the 90’s and achieved your goal. Life wasn’t meant to be easy.

Hi, would be interesting on how much time do you spend on applying for creditcards, choosing the right creditcard for the current purchase.
And how much money do you actually save over the course of a year?

I’m still looking for a creditcard with a high cashback for domestic and/or foreign expenses. And where the cashback promo (according to their website) is not over within 2-3 months…

I mean, I work in the credit card industry, so it’s a bit my job and hobby. I spend lotta time researching since I find it fun.

As said, money saved with miles for upgrades/flight redemption, this year already north of 300k (4 upgrades to biz class return flights to Europe with Eva and 1 upgrade to biz on starlux one way) plus all the discounts got at restaurants/hotels and the usage of lounges (so free food/shower/drinks at airport) and fee breakkie with hotel status. Yes, spending ~40k a year in card annual fees is not small change, but I’m on course to get 10x ROI (still need to book at least 1 return flight to Europe, hope I can get upgrade there too, that would add another almost 100k of saving).

I’m all for miles, which are so flexible that u can either get more or less values than actual cashback.

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You must have spent millions in order to get that kind of savings. I don’t think cc companies are in the business of giving people free money.

He is an employee who travels for his employer perhaps? I have good diving buddy who travels mostly business or first class for his employer.
He spends on average 25% of his work time traveling internationally.

not quite, probably around NTD 1M per year. With the right consumption strategy, you can rack up a lot of miles and get good value.

we r not, we still make money nevertheless, since very few clients exploit this well the facilities and perks, bottom line is still making money anyways. It’s my job to make sure of that.

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That sounds like a 1/3 rate of return if you spent 1 million and got 300k in savings. I doubt I can ever take advantage of that though. My credit card bill in an average month is about 10,000, and that’s mostly paying for essentials (I try to build credit by using cc on essentials and paying it completely off, barring a few bnpl purchases that I can manage).

I get maybe 100nt cash back per month from this, most of this is actually from the open possible card I got which gives massive cash back if you use it to pay your phone bill. But I also got the Costco card that I get Costco points for.

I’m guessing vast majority of the rewards is from flying? Hard to believe considering that airlines have razor thin margin. I wish I travel internationally all the time. If I could do it once in a 5 year period, I consider that an accomplishment.

So I’m guessing you need a bunch of different cards because each card has different reward schemes? It seems like it’s really easy to spiral out of control if you got way too much credit. Maybe that’s what banks count on.