I was told by some sales guy that ICICI rubyx card was lifetime free and no joining fees as well if I chose to not receive the bose headphones. I thought this might be true because he told me to not consider what is on the site and it is outdated. Anyways I triple confirmed it during filling up the form and also during verification. Finally I got the card which had the most important terms and conditions which mentioned 5000 joining fees(free bose ear phone)/25000 fee(life time free card with ipad). I ignored it because I was trusting the sales guy and the verification dept.
Finally it was time for me to get shocked when 5000 was added to my bill as joining fees. I tried telling customer care that I was cheated but the customer care guy continuously kept telling me that it was my mistake that I didn’t take the terms and conditions seriously and didn’t get back to customer care. The customer care people were always asking for the phone number of the sales guy and the verification guys. Arent they who should track this? I am sure they would have paid the sales guy for getting a customer and why would they not store calls of their verification department? Finally I could get the amount waived off but by then I was frustrated. I somehow was happy when this happened and agreed to the customer care guy to continue my card.
Now I had to spend atleast 250000 to avoid the annual charges. This changed my spending pattern because it was always running behind my mind. I was a conservative spender till then but then I did some unnecessary spending because I wanted to reach that milestone of 250000. Finally I got rid of the card without even thinking about using the points accumulated in my pay back account.
Features:
Free tickets: rider is the number of free tickets is only 2 per month/billing cycle(I am not sure). Also there is a cap on the max price of ticket 250. How many theatres in Bangalore sell ticket for 250 on weekends?
cash back on dining at many outlets: rider is not all hotels are available in all cards. I once swipe my card for 10000+ and was waiting for cash back which never came. I then checked on their site only to find that rubyx was not in the list for this hotel.:(
Fuel surcharge waiver: I don’t know whose problem was it - the merchant or his bank(the bank providing the swipe machine) or ICICI. Occasionally I had to pay 1-2 rupees for my swipes at the fuel outlets. The fuel bill was ranging from 200-500 and I had to pay 1-2 rupees extra depending on the amount spent. Also the extra amount was on certain swipe machines(banks) but not on some others.
Lounge access: I am not a frequent flyer so I really cant comment on this.
Golf access: I don’t play golf so no comments on this either.