Grab has “important updates” on its GrabRewards programme today, making huge cuts to earn rates and increasing the number of points required for redemption of vouchers of its services like Grab Car and Grab Food.
The gist of things
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Platinum members will only earn 4 points per dollar (from 10). A 60% drop.
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To redeem a $10 Grab Car voucher, you will require 5,000 points (from 3,600). A 39% increment.
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Suitesmile now values Grab points at $0.002 a piece (from $0.003). A 33% drop.
If you want to find out more details about this devaluation, head over to Grab Rewards or check out this detailed article by Aaron from The MileLion.
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What is the best way to clear the points that you have now?
The silver lining here is that Grab has given us six weeks notice (how nice of them). Here are the redemption options that I would personally consider if I am getting rid of all my Grab points by 2 March 2020.
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Redeem vouchers for all your Grab rides in the coming weeks.
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Redeem Grab points for CapitaStar STAR$. This redemption will be at the future valuation of $0.002 but you don’t know when they will remove this redemption option. STAR$ can be exchanged for CapitaLand Mall vouchers
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Redeem Grab points for Krisflyer miles. There is now an option to redeem 20,000 Grab points for 2,000 Krisflyer miles. Again, this will also be at the future valuation of $0.002. As Krisflyer redemptions only clear every morning, you can only redeem once a day.
As I will not be in Singapore till 2 March 2020, I am picking option 2. Besides, there are much easier ways to earn Krisflyer miles.
Conclusion
Devaluations are part of the Miles Game. Opportunities come and go. As mentioned in Rule #7 in how I value my miles/points, be conservative with your valuation. There has been many negative news (in the miles world) involving Grab in recent months. There are currently only two credit cards keeping the GrabPay Mastercard from being completely useless to me.
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