Free Extra 15% Miles When You Convert Bank Points to KrisFlyer
First discussed in the Telegram group. Subscribe to the channel, tap the channel name, then press Discuss to join the discussion!
Maybe I’m a little more enthusiastic because I have a lot of bank points sitting around, but this is indeed quite a good deal: from now until 27th December 2020, bank points converted to KrisFlyer miles will earn a bonus 15%, without any cap.
How incredible this deal is depends on how big your point stash is. If you’re a pure cashback user, this wouldn’t excite you. For those who have already earned their points, however, this just gave a sizeable boost to the points you have collected. You thought earning miles was a good idea, and your earn rate retroactively and magically increased overnight.
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Some things to look out for
Well, perhaps not so magically; you have to make sure the points convert successfully, and depending on bank that may take a few working days or even more, so don’t cut it too close to the 27th December deadline (this advice is more for myself than you).
Also, once converted into fresh KrisFlyer miles, they have a shelf life of 3 years before they expire. Under normal circumstances, it would be rather easy to expend your miles, but with Hong Kong as our only air bubble destination right now, being able to make flight redemptions doesn’t seem like very near future kind of thing.
Finally, there is always the risk of Singapore Airlines going bust. Unlikely, perhaps, but we’re in unprecedented times yada yada. This year has been anything but ordinary and who knows what the future holds for our national airline.
Shopping with miles?
Given how the entire situation with travel is, might this be a chance to use KrisFlyer miles for shopping instead? An Apple Watch that’s $599 costs 74,874 miles on KrisShop, but you now only need to convert 65,108 miles from your bank points to purchase this, which essentially means a 13% discount.
Another way to look at this would be that the 65,108 miles you are converting now will have an increased value of 0.92 cents per mile (compared to the usual 0.8 cents rate typical of KrisShop purchases). If you have clocked your points at a 4 mpd rate, this translates into a 3.68% cashback rate which is decent when it comes to liquidating your miles.
The Math works for things like their dining experiences too – if that interests you – since 0.8 cents per mile seems like the value SIA has fixed when you use their miles in place of money.
Moderation is key, I guess
A half measure is perhaps the dip toe in water move here: convert some points with a portion earmarked for future travel, and possibly spend some on KrisShop to realise the value right away.
This campaign being the first ever of its kind also gives me mixed feelings. On one hand, I’m guessing they get cash from banks whenever points are exchanged for KrisFlyer miles which would help them out with their predicament, and I do feel inclined to help out an important national icon.
On the other, the fact that they had to do this for cashflow also gives me pause about going really big on this campaign. I have already lost quite a fair bit to thwarted travel plans this year, and already have a sizeable number of KrisFlyer miles. Do I want to really want to step deeper into this and hope for light as well as business class champagne at the end of this tunnel? Hmmmm… I have a month to endlessly ruminate about this.
Full promotion details: Singapore Airlines
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