I Swapped My SBI Air India Signature Credit Card for Simplyclick

By | August 16, 2018

Its been a year with SBI Air India Signature Credit Card and i’m quite unhappy with this card as i didn’t enjoy any benefit out of it. Even i wasn’t able to utilize the free business class upgrade voucher (not being issued now) that came along with the card as Business class cabin was full the other day i tried to use it. Also the card got downgraded back to back multiple times over the period of past 2 years.

Above all, i had a never ending issue with SBICards/AirIndia that didn’t allow me activate the Flying Returns Ac that came with the card and so i wasn’t able to transfer the points. I went through all escalation levels and finally ended up escalating to CEO of SBIcards after which the issue got resolved almost after 10 months post card issuance.

Renewal of Air India SBI Signature Credit Card:

As its a co-branded card, its hard to get any waiver on the same and i have no plan to continue with it by paying Rs.5000+tax for a card that gave me no benefit. Hence, i transferred all my points to Air India Flying Returns A/c and requested for swapping the card to SBI Simplyclick credit card.

I was said that i may or may not get approved for this downgrade. However, after a week or so i got the confirmation that my card has been successfully downgraded to SBI Simplyclick and i received the card the following week. Here’s how it looks. I love this design! Do you?

SBI Simplyclick credit card

So Why Simplyclick?

There is truly no specific reason in opting for Simplyclick. Though, i want to keep the credit line with SBI with minimum annual fee and a decent reward rate for which Simplyclick served the purpose.

In meantime, i’ve decent amount of Airmiles sitting on my AirIndia Flying returns a/c and hoping for a one way business class ticket to somewhere nearby. I see that Chennai to Dubai to be one of the decent redemption option, however yet to explore the Air India’s flying returns booking system to understand how it actually works.

If it was you, where would you redeem your Airindia Miles for best value per mile? Do share your ideas in comments below.

43 thoughts on “I Swapped My SBI Air India Signature Credit Card for Simplyclick

  1. Ashwin

    What is the process for this SID? I wish to swap my Simply Click to IRCTC Card

    Reply
    1. Siddharth Post author

      Just talk to customer care. I prefer sending a “PROBLEM” sms to “9212500888” whenever i have a query with SBICards.

      Reply
      1. MANU KUMAR

        It’s not a premium card, but it’s capable of paying back its annual fee many times over…

        Reply
    2. Lakshminarayanan

      I have been using IRCTC card for the past three years. If u are frequent train traveller u can opt this card. Upon applying this card u will be registered as “Subh Yatra Member” you will get separate IRCTC account for that. You will get 10% discount as points to your Subh Yatra account for 2AC, 1AC, CC bookings . U can redeem those points for 1 AC, 2AC, CC bookings only. The card holder should be the primary traveller for bookings done through redemption.

      Reply
  2. Majumdar

    Sid,

    I intend to acquire this card- mainly because I dont have a green coloured card in my portfolio!

    Regards

    Reply
    1. Siddharth Post author

      lol. Good reason for a card freak 🙂

      Reply
  3. Vinay

    I am having both SBI platinum and SBI Air India World card. Though I don’t transact much on SBI AI card as they have devalued it now but since this is a lifetime free card, will still keep that in my pocket.

    Reply
  4. Anoop E S

    Hi Siddharth

    I’m holding SBI Platinum Card (Banking Tie Up – KVB) for the last 6 years. Although they increased my credit limit several times, they didn’t allowed me to upgrade to Elite/Signature. Although, I tried to convince them several times during last one year saying that I got top end cards from other banks (like HDFC Diners Black and ICICI Sapphiro) and this is the only platinum card I’ve, they blindly turn down all my request to upgrade.

    I was little bit fed up with them and thought about closing the card several times. This is also due to the low reward rate of 2 points per Rs.100 which this card is offering. Further, the value of 1 point is around Re.0.25. But I felt closing a card with a limit of Rs.6 lakhs which I am holding for last 6 years will adversely impact my CIBIL score. Further, their periodic offers for EMI conversion with 7.5% interest rate and zero processing fee is quite attractive.

    But now I feel like this Simply Click Card will give more value for my online spending. Could you please give your views on this?

    Reply
    1. Siddharth Post author

      I guess they’re not upgrading because its a tie-up card. You might need to close it if you want to move to SBI premium/proprietary cards.

      Reply
    2. SriKrishna Raajan

      KVB has tie-up with SBI card to issue only Co-branded Gold & More, Platinum and Signature cards, as I see from the SBI card portfolio. But I see only Gold & More and Platinum on KVB website and they might have removed Signature from the list due to fact that SBI Card have stopped sourcing Signature card and are taking up forms for Elite cards (SBI Card only and not co-branded). You may have to wait till KVB comes with Elite card from SBI card.

      Alternative suggestion would be to downgrade your card to KVB Co-branded Gold & More card if it is your first card and unsecured credit card. This is to avoid hurting your CIBIL score and to lower fees. Move your spends to other card and reduce the usage of this card. Charge the card to a minimum of Rs.1000 and above to enable CIBIL reporting.

      While this is in process, you can apply for SimplyCLICK card (if you think that would suit your needs) directly from SBI card based on your other credit cards.

      Reply
  5. Anil

    Even Simply Save is good card with cool blue design
    2.5% on grocery, departmental stores
    Recently SBI brought accelerated rewards which takes this to 3.5% on specified merchants like Grofers
    Plus SBI running 10% discount there so all in all good for users

    Reply
  6. Akash Kapoor

    Hi, I don’t have an account with SBI. Can I apply for this Simply Click Card?

    Reply
    1. SriKrishna Raajan

      Yes you can, if you have other bank credit card.

      Reply
  7. Lakshminarayanan

    Sbi card is providing personal loan on your card without blocking your credit limit @ 7% int P.A. Without documentation and address verification. The interest rate is quite low and attractive too. You can negotiate the processing fee !!

    Reply
  8. deepak

    it took me 3 months to get the flying returns account activated . it was a pain . i was also thinking of cancelling the air india signature card. Now this is a good option

    Reply
    1. Monu

      Sid and Deepak,
      Can you tell me the procedure to activate the Airindia Signature card. Its been more than 20 days. Airindia is saying SBI will activate and SBI principle nodal officer saying Airindia will activate.

      Reply
    2. Satpal

      How did you get login details. Is FFP number gets linked to SBI cards registered email id?

      Reply
  9. Shiva

    SBI has launched a new Prime card. Prima facie looks like a much better card than most top-end cards on offer. Any thoughts on the same?

    Reply
  10. UK

    Sid,
    I guess if you had delayed the swap of your SBI card by a few days, I am sure you would have opted for the SBI Prime card launched yesterday by SBI.

    Reply
  11. Praveen Perumalla

    A very unique card and a good one to hold. I would say it is a good choice.

    In general, I like the design and the colors of SBI cards.

    Reply
  12. Santosh

    I recently tried to apply for SBI Simply click credit card but it showing I have already applied for SBI Platinum Credit card. But I have not applied in recent times. I applied through some agent who calls for credit card in January 2017. And I got message later that I am not eligible for it. At that time I didn’t had a CIBIL score. Now my CIBIL is 756 I thought to apply online myself but it’s showing you have already applied with application number details. When I checked the status it showing regret to inform you that sbi credit card cannot be issued due to internal policy. Kindly help me.

    Reply
    1. MANU KUMAR

      Apply using a different mobile number.. It works..

      Reply
  13. PK

    Hi friends,
    I’m holding SimplyClick Titanium master card. I really wanted to know what’s the difference between SimplyClick visa platinum and SimplyClick Titanium Master card.

    Reply
      1. Siddharth Post author

        I guess its just Visa/Mastercard variant difference. I don’t see any major feature diff between those.

        Reply
    1. Siddharth Post author

      I don’t remember as i hardly had 1k or less points at that time.

      Reply
  14. Bibak kumar

    Sir I want this card on fixed deposit can you tell me how much minimum I have to fixed deposit to get this card

    Reply
  15. Rajesh

    In your simply click card there is no sign showing of contactless, have you contactless technology in your card? Please clarify more on this.

    Reply
  16. Kabir

    Hello Sid
    Somehow, SBI’s higher end cards are starting to make much less sense than the medium or entry level cards.
    Case in point is the Elite card vs the Prime card. While the annual fees is a full 200 INR more, the accelerated points options are less, the redemption option does not include statement credit (I may be wrong on this) and most interestingly, the priority pass card issued with Prime has 4 complimentary visits (I don’t know if they are annual or only for the first year) while the one with Elite does not have complimentary visits. They even lay these comparisons in a neat table on the sbicard website while trying to make people upgrade to the elite card.
    Is there a strategy there are is it plain oversight by marketing team in failure to keep up with their own mid level cards as they introduce new ones

    Reply
  17. Bhaskar

    Hi
    I am holding SBI AI signature card, crossed spend of 4.5L but now i got to know (through customer care) that i cant redeem these points for statement credit. Being a govt employee I have to use AI for official travel.
    I am also holding ICICI sapphiro amex and master card (life time free coz jetairways closed so icici “upgraded” it to free). I have recently applied for HDFC regilia (life time free again, classic customer) and amex platinum travel card (first yr free).

    What do you suggest, should I swap my SBI AI card for prime/elite/simply click cards or just cancel it and keep using amex and HDFC?

    I am looking for better value for spends. My yearly expenditures would touch 10L plus.

    Reply
    1. Shivi

      How much do you use AI in a month or year? AI signature card still holds value if you use AI a lot and can redeem the points at more than 0.5 paise/ point which effectively gives you a whopping 15% return! Even at minimum 0.25 paise per point you still get 7.5% return every time you book a ticket! That’s only booking the ticket for self though.

      Reply
  18. Bhavya

    Can you redeem the SBI simplyclick points as statement credit ? If yes then are there any charges for opting for statement credit ?

    Reply
    1. Himanshu Kainth

      Bhavya,

      No, you can’t as far as i know. Only two vouchers are available i.e Amazon and Cleartrip if i’m not wrong.

      Reply
  19. viswanathan S

    I applied and got a SBI credit card (Landmark, Spar) 15 days back. Although I applied for simply save, someone talked over phone and convinced me to get this card. I dont see much use of this for me in SPAR or Landmark. I want to go back to simply save. Also the annual fee is Rs 3500 as against Rs 500 of simply save. How can I change this?

    Reply
  20. ARR

    Dear all,
    I’ve been using the cards for 7 years now. But, I never missed a single due date. But, I forgot to pay the due amount in time of my SBI Simply Click recently. I paid the total amount within three days after realising about the missed due date. They refunded me the late fee on my request which was charged as a penalty. But, they reported the same to the CIBIL. Hence, my CIBIL score had been reduced to 711 from 788.
    Kindly help me to retrieve my score back.

    Reply
    1. Siddharth Post author

      Do check with SBI to see if they can update the same. If not, expect it to recover soon beyond 750 levels, usually in under ~4 months.

      Reply
  21. Arun Kumar

    Hey Sid,
    Would you go back to this card with the New AIRINDIA FR program?

    Now it looks much more lucrative!

    Reply

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