UOB is now offering a double miles promotion on all overseas spend for its PRVI American Express card from 11 November 2018 through 31 December 2018.

Instead of the usual 2.4 miles per dollar spent overseas, cardmembers will earn up to 4.8 miles on qualifying spend including overseas shopping, dining, accommodation and even online spend.

There is a minimum spend of S$1,000 of qualifying spend you need to make on the card (that new iPhone you buy in Hong Kong will count, but if you buy that iPhone at Changi Airport, it doesn’t count), and the total number of bonus miles you can earn is capped at 3,000 miles (equivalent to UNI$1,500, UOB’s reward programme currency).

To earn the bonus miles, you will first have to register for the promotion here.

The fine print

Sounds like a great promotion? Well here are the terms and conditions to dampen the mood a little:

1. You need to be the first 1,000 card to spend that S$1,000 qualifying spend. I can imagine how disappointed I’ll be if I go and spend all that money and realised I wasn’t within the first 1,000.

2. The cap for the promotion is 3,000 bonus miles. That’s equivalent to a S$1,250 spend cap. Couple that with the minimum spend of S$1,000, that makes the cap look really lame isn’t it?

UOB award points in blocks of S$5 spend

Don’t forget as well, UOB only award points (which you change for miles) in blocks of S$5 spend. That means, if you spend $4.95 on your card locally, you get no miles, but if you spend anything between $5.00 and $9.99, you get a block of UNI$3.5, or 7 miles, giving you the maximum effectively mile per dollar spent (mpd) of 1.4, although what the advertising doesn’t tell you is that you could also get as low as 0.7 mpd if you are unlucky enough to post a S$9.99 transaction.

With respect to this promotion, that also means that if you are the kind (like me) who post all small transactions to the card, you may end up with a much lower effective earn rate than 4.8 given all the residual amounts.

Let me give you an example:

Transaction 1: $7.50 – UNI$3.5
Transaction 2: $13 – UNI$7
Transaction 3: $49.99 – UNI$31.5
Transaction 4: $21.20 – UNI$14

Total spend: $91.69, but total UNI$ accrued is only UNI$56 (or 112 miles)

That gives you an effective MPD of 1.22, lower than the 1.4 that UOB advertises. So that is why, if I were you I will only use it in very specific instances, such as when I’m booking on Expedia, Agoda and UOB Travel.

In the meantime, why not look at the BOC Elite Miles card?