After being charged for the annual fee for my Commonwealth Bank Diamond Awards Credit Card, I went, as I have done for at least the last five years, to the Commbank Awards web page to use my accumulated award points to redeem points to cover the card cost. This has been an effective and economical way to use points while at the same time making the card “cost free” – or at least of avoiding an explicit charge. The only way I generally use my points is to cover this cost.
I was surprised that I could not find an appropriate item on the Awards page and so contacted the bank via their online chat line. IN a response from “Jake”, I learnt that “ we have changed the way you can pay your annual fee. If you would like to pay your annual fee you can do so through a cashback. ”
As I pointed out to Jake, this means that the bank has effectively increased the annual cost of the card from 54,390 points to 73,297 points. This represents an increase of almost 35% - surely well above any actual increase in costs associated with such a simple transaction.
Maybe there was advice about this at some point in the past twelve months, but I do not recall reading anything about such a change.
When I expressed my disappointment, I did get an acknowledgement to the effect that “I’m very sorry that the option was taken out.” I wonder, though, if the bank would share the sentiment expressed by their staff member!
