Shopping malls reward programs review

Even since Capitalmall introduced its reward program – Capita Star that allows one to earn points from spending in their malls, other shopping malls are catching up and introducing their own reward program to attract shoppers.

Frasers Rewards

Frasers Centrepoint Malls has its Fraser Rewards (link) that awards shoppers with 10 point for $10 normal spending or 2 points for a $10 supermarket spending in their malls.

Normal	Supermarket
Spend $10 = 10 Points	Spend $10 = 2 Points

As for the redemption, it is mentioned on the website that every 500 points earn 0.5% rebate, which it is hard to understand what is meant by 0.5% rebate and how does it work.  For members whom purchases spending is $8,000 or more, can be upgrade to Frasers Rewards Elite the following redemption year and enjoy DOUBLE rebates.

This is a reward program that 笨mummy has no experience on as she does not stay or work near any of Frasers Malls.

Suntec Rewards

Suntec Mall recently introduced its reward program – (link). A minimum of $20 spending in a single receipt is required. And the points awarded vary depending on the type of spending.

General	F&B	Supermarket
Spend $1 = 5 Points	Spend $1 = 3 Points	Spend $1 = 1 Points

Shoppers can redeem a $5 e-voucher with 5,000 points. It is launched in late Oct 2015. Fairly simple program – Shop/dine, scan and earn points.

Like Frasers, they also have special privileges for members that hit certain spending tier – 6,000 for Gold & 40,000 for Ultimate, in the way of more bonus points on birthdays and member discounts. 

JemX Rewards

JEM (Jurong East Mall) has its own reward program – JemX Rewards (link). It is a fairly straight forward program. $1 spending regardless of category would get 1 point. Minimum spending of $20 accumulated in 2 receipts for earning points.

CapitaStar

CapitaStar (link) allows shoppers to earn the CapitaStar points for purchases made in the shopping malls under Capitalmalls. Every $1 spent would get 5 points for normal purchase and for supermarket purchases, every $1 spent can only entitled to 1 point. A minimum of $20 for a receipt to be entitled to earning points.

A summary for the various programs discussed above and comparison on a $$ value level:

	Min per receipt	General	F&B	Supermarket	Redemption
Suntec Rewards	$20	$1 = 5 pts	$1 = 3 pts	$1 = 1 point	5,000 pts = $5 e-Voucher
Frasers Rewards*	$10	$1 = 1 pt		$1 = 0.2 pt	Every 500 pts =0.5% rebate
CapitaStar*	$20	$1 = 5 pts		$1 = 1 pt	5,000 pts = $5 Voucher
CapitaStar * (Passion card )	$20	$1 = 7.5 pts		$1 = 1.5 pt	5,000 pts = $5 Voucher
JemX Rewards	$20 in 2 receipts	$1 =1 pt			800 pts = $5 e-Voucher

*Capping:

Suntec reward – cap at$5000 spending.

Frasers Rewards - cap at 500 per day

CapitaStar - cap at 5,000 per day

CapitaStar (with Passion card) - cap at 7,500 per day

For every $20 spent:

Spending Type	Suntec Rewards	Frasers Rewards	CapitaStar	CapitaStar (Passion card)	JemX Rewards
General	$  0.100	Unable to assess	$      0.100	$       0.150	$        0.125
F&B	$  0.060		$      0.100	$       0.150	$        0.125
Supermarket	$  0.020		$      0.020	$       0.030	$        0.125

Looking at the points converting to dollar value, it seems that for supermarket spending, Jem has the best offer, and for all other type of purchases, CapitaStar (passion card) is the winner and for those without out passion card, Jem is still a better bet.

The little efforts that added up

Here are a summary of the small steps that 笨mummy takes to reap those little perks from her spending and saving that she often shares with her friends and colleagues. 

(1) Transport spending

(a) MRT expenses

This was previously blogged by 笨mummy before -Travel Smart reward (formerly know as Insinc)

Sign up and link up your Ezlink card. And you are on your way to earn a bit of money from your daily commuting if you are taking a train to work daily. 笨mummy earned $28 from this program in 2015.

Link to earlier point on Insinc- Insinc point update

(b) Taxi spending

A occasional taxi taker, 笨mummy, has signed up for the cabreward program introduced by Comfort to promote customer loyalty. She can earn points for taking cab and then redeem these points for comfort taxi voucher. It takes about a minimum 1,000 points to redeem a $5 voucher and that meant a spending of $1000 on cabs with payment ie. S$19 per week. Considering that 笨mummy needs to take her son to her mum's place every sun and the cab fare is estimated S$15 per trip. And adding some ad-hoc promotion for bonus points, reaching the minimum redemption points of 1,000 should not be any issue. 

Yes, this is previously shared in an earlier blog post - Points system for taking cab.

She also regularly checked the comfort website for update on their promotions that allows her to earn from taking cabs. Like the recent promotion with Dash, she can earn 5% rebate on taxi spending and 2x reward points, and 5 x points for birthday month.

(2) Spending on daily necessities

(a) Qoo10 for your diaper needs

There are some expenses that 笨mummy cannot avoid for her little one, such as milk powder,  diapers, wet wipe, etc. For diapers, she is not fussy and is willing to get from Qoo10, especially when they offered free delivery to her house (if above a certain amount) and the price is much cheaper than those from the super markets.

(b) Shopback and Redmart

She has been introduced to Shopback and Redmart and getting her milk powder supply online. As the price for the brand of milk powder is more or less standardised whether you get from a supermarket or other sources like Watson in Singapore unless there is a on-going promotion. By using Redmart and Shopback, she could get a 9% as a cash rebate and she can also tag along some cheap and bulky stuff, like toilet papers, tissue, detergent, etc, to the basket so that she can get a free delivery (total purchase of $50 to entitle for free shipping on Redmart) and avoid the need to carry the bulk stuff. 

Here is a link to Redmart and shopback via 笨mummy's referral link (Redmart), referral link (Shopback). for those interested to try out, so that she can earn some credit from referral and cut down some of her marketing costs. 


(c) Shopping malls rewards 
Nowadays, the shopping malls are like a duplicate of the other malls having similar shops and F&B outlets. But to 笨mummy, not all malls are ranked equally as some allow one to earn points (which can be converted to shopping vouchers).

She write a blog entry in the coming week to share the different malls reward programs and also a comparison table on these program .

(d) Credit cards rebates / rewards
One point that 笨mummy has always stress is the use of credit cards rather than cash or net. She is sticking to OCBC card as she needs to the spending to hit the criteria for the 0.5% spending interest to be awarded. As long as a purchase can be clocked with a credit card, she would use the card regardless of the amount, unless paying by NETS or cash is cheaper due to additional charge imposed on credit card payment.

This was mentioned before in a previous blog post - Why pay by credit card?

(3) Purchase of SGX shares

笨mummy has switched her primary trading platform to Lim and Tan Securities to take advantage of the award of linkpoint for the commission paid - for every $1 commission, 5 link point would be awarded which is 3.33 cents if converted to cash.

For low value purchase (anything with total purchase value below $8K), 笨mummy is using the Standard Chartered Bank Platform instead as it has no minimum commission.

(4) Incremental deposit promotion
笨mummy loves the incremental deposit promotions introduced by the various banks from time to time. She would move her cash from one bank to another just to take advantage of the special interest rate during the promotion and with the introduction of FAST, it is so fast just to move $50,000 from one bank to another.

She would find time to make a blog entry to discuss her strategy.

That's all 笨mummy has to share for now. If anyone has any tip, do share with her. Saving is caring. :)

Staying healthy and earning money for it

Want to stay healthy and earn money at the same time? Kiddo to the Health Promotion Board for coming up with the 2 mobile apps that allow users to earn points while keeping active and healthy at the same time.

笨mummy just found out about these 2 programmer  - HealthHub SG and the Healthy 365 recently from a colleague of hers.

• The first app - HealthHub SG award users with healthpoints for reading and sharing articles on HealthHub and the healthpoints accumulated can be used to redeem rewards such as NTUC linkpoint. They also award user 50 points for signing up and another 100 points for updating the user profile. 
• The second app - Healthy 365 is an app that is use to track the user's daily step counts. Users can then sign up for the national steps challenge that is commencing on 7 Nov 2015 and end on 8 May 2016. For every 10,000 steps taken, user is awarded with 60 points (maximum 60 points issue a day) and these points can be then use to redeem for vouchers. 

For more information on the two apps, visit the following sites:
HealthHub - > http://www.healthhub.sg/
Healthy 365 -> http://www.healthhub.sg/apps/25/healthy365

笨mummy did not get any benefit for sharing the two apps, but she feel that good things must share with friends as sharing is caring. :)