Lots of discussion on this forum & youtube focuses on 1:1 redemption of smartbuy for flights/hotels, and this is used to compute reward rate.
However, based on my experience, SMARTBUY based purchases aren't cost effective, and your end paying more than other online portals (EMT, Paytm, MMT).
So your reward rate effectively becomes lower than generic computation.
Smartbuy shows slighly higher price for flights in most cases, and then you can't apply any additional coupon codes/direct cashback offers from website.
If you could've purchased flight ticket from paytm for 10k (with additional card based offers), you often end up paying 12-13k on smartbuy (70% reward point + 30% pay & 99+ redemption charge for few card variants)
So if you get 25k rewards on spending 5L, you may think that rewards rate is 5%, but since you purchase a ticket by paying extra amount than paytm/MMT direct booking. Effective rate of rewards goes down to 2-4%.
(Additional headache, if you've to reschedule/cancel smartbuy based bookings)
Same goes for Apple products. On flipkart/Amazon you can get lower list price + card based discount. However list price of same products on smartbuy is higher, & no option to get diff card based discounts.
(No experience with travel bookings as compared to direct MMT/Yatra bookings.)
I guess same holds true for reward redemption portals of Amex & others.
If we ignore Infinia+smartbuy returns, I guess for any other HDFC card, EFFECTIVE returns are absymally low on smartbuy.
In my limited knowledge, SBI cashback / Millenia are best value for money cards (or any combination of Amazon + Ace + Airtel + Flipkart) for middle class people.
However, based on my experience, SMARTBUY based purchases aren't cost effective, and your end paying more than other online portals (EMT, Paytm, MMT).
So your reward rate effectively becomes lower than generic computation.
Smartbuy shows slighly higher price for flights in most cases, and then you can't apply any additional coupon codes/direct cashback offers from website.
If you could've purchased flight ticket from paytm for 10k (with additional card based offers), you often end up paying 12-13k on smartbuy (70% reward point + 30% pay & 99+ redemption charge for few card variants)
So if you get 25k rewards on spending 5L, you may think that rewards rate is 5%, but since you purchase a ticket by paying extra amount than paytm/MMT direct booking. Effective rate of rewards goes down to 2-4%.
(Additional headache, if you've to reschedule/cancel smartbuy based bookings)
Same goes for Apple products. On flipkart/Amazon you can get lower list price + card based discount. However list price of same products on smartbuy is higher, & no option to get diff card based discounts.
(No experience with travel bookings as compared to direct MMT/Yatra bookings.)
I guess same holds true for reward redemption portals of Amex & others.
If we ignore Infinia+smartbuy returns, I guess for any other HDFC card, EFFECTIVE returns are absymally low on smartbuy.
In my limited knowledge, SBI cashback / Millenia are best value for money cards (or any combination of Amazon + Ace + Airtel + Flipkart) for middle class people.
