My First Experience with an Australian Bank: awful!

[ThePennyMine]

(well, ok, second experience: I cashed travellers cheques at another one once, and it went perfectly fine)

My fiancee lives in Australia, and in the coming month or two I'm getting ready to move over there. As some of you may know, I'm a huge fan of cash back credit cards (well, huge might be an overstatement, but I use CB cards for all of my purchases) and did some research this morning to try and figure out exactly which card would be best for me when I move.

When I went to the website of one of the major banks, St George, and when I chose "rewards cards" in their credit card chooser, this was what their system told me:

Choosing the right credit card

A card with rewards
Think Again!
Reward schemes generally offer the promise of future benefits for a higher up-front cost.
To earn a $100 gift voucher on an average rewards card it would cost you over $16,000 in purchases*.
For this reason, St.George Bank does not offer a rewards scheme, but prefers to provide a range of low rate credit cards.
See our range of Low Rate Credit Cards.

I was appalled that they would write that!! I've rated more about the subject here, and I can tell you that company will never get any of my business! I've found a good card with one of their competitors which I will be applying for when I land.

I always pay my balance, I don't need a low rate card and no bank should tell me to "think again" when I know exactly what I want!

[khorrell]

Penny - Where are you moving? I lived in Canberra for a couple of years!

[NaturallyCheap]

Welcome to Australia! We are a ripe off and expensive to live in!

[MasterYourCard]

The good news is that our high yield savings accounts offer just under 8% per annum!

Seriously though, 'awful' is a bit of an overstatement isn't it?

[ThePennyMine]

I'm living in Brisbane as of next month sometime! I'm really excited, and I come from one of the most expensive parts of Canada to live in so prices aren't going to be all that much worse for me.

Awful is a little bit of an exaggeration, yes, but the way I see it is I use rewards cards as a way to be fiscally responsible. If a bank treats me like an idiot for that, it means that they're obviously not a good choice to deal with my investments and the like, since they basically ridiculed me for trying to make the proper choice. They didn't even consider the fact that I might pay my balances in full every month and just tried to sell me a low rate card!

It's just one of those little pet peeves of mine...

[NaturallyCheap]

Oh you will be surprise! I met people from NYC and they come to sydney. There eyes pop out with the price tags!

[ThePennyMine]

I've spent over 2 months in Australia before, so I am aware of the prices, no worries there! In Canada things are much more expensive than they are in the USA, which is why we go south of the border to shop, and would explain why New Yorkers are stunned.

I think part of it is also the fact that your price tags include the tax, whereas ours don't. We have to add 15% to whatever we see on our tags, whereas you guy need to take off 10% to see the "real" price.

Regardless, the price tags in Brissie look the same to me as they do in Ottawa and Vancouver! (though the housing prices are more along Vancouver prices).

Your pizza is so much cheaper though. 5 bucks for a large at Pizza Hut is amazing!

I really can't wait to go back down there!!