The USP of this card is the 5% cash back which card holders gets on a transaction of minimum Rs 1000 with a listed Departmental Chain or SuperMarket. And if you are planning to take this card because of this 5% cash back, please be cautious of the terms and conditions and read through.
You may not get the cash back even on the eligible merchants like BigBazaar, Auchan etc. And the reason is the edc machine you swipe your StanC ManHattan Platinum VISA card on. Whether you get the cash back or not depends enritely on the Bank whose edc machine you have swiped your card on.
Suppose a particular BigBazaar has swipe machines from HDFC, Axis banks. Then you will not get the cash back from the transaction done on HDFC machines; whereas the transactions you do on Axis Bank machines, will be valid for cash back.
I am not saying this just like that. I noticed it in my last two monthly statements. Probably this had been happening since beginning itself and with everybody, no body [including me] actually bothers to check for these things in details. We just tend to pay whatever the monthly statement says for us to pay without checking the transactions.
During my December’2012 billing cycle; I had done two transactions with my StanC ManHattan platinum VISA card; one valuing more than Rs 1000 each, at Big Bazaar, Old Madras Road, Bangalore [and please note that I am a every weekend customer of this Big Bazaar] and other one transaction with same card at Auchan, Old Madras Road, Bangalore, valuing more than Rs 2000. These transactions were on the same monthly billing cycle.
After the bill was announced, I just happned to check the transactions and found that I had not got the cash back on these two transactions. When I checked with StanC, I was told that the swipe machine Bank did not qualify for the cash back under the correct Mechant Category Code [MCC] and that I should first check at the counter before swiping, somebody please tell me, is it possible to check each of the 20 counters at stores and even if we choose to check, whether the operator at the counter will have this information.
And it is a coinincidence or what, but both these Big Bazaar and Auchan transactions were done on HDFC bank machines. Then I checked my other transaction slips on which I had received the cash back and those were done on Axis Bank machines.
So now, I know that there is some thing between StanC and HDFC and I have to first look at the swipe machine at every counter in the stores, and then only I stand in the queue.
I have tried to follow it up with every body involved, StanC, HDFC, Big Bazaar, Auchan and even VISA. But nobody is ready to take it seriously. not even VISA, which I understand is responsible for categorizing the merchants under Merchant Category Code which everybody has been using as an excuse till now.
So I would suggest first check which Bank machines are installed in the stores you visit regularly before taking the card. ?