I have always dreaded being at the mercy of the rickshaw wala’s at odd hours, especially when they know I have no other travel arrangements. Ever since Uber came in India, just the existence of an alternative gives us a bargaining chip. Uber has made my rickshaw travel cheaper!
We are here to find the perennial or semi perennial offers which will help maximize our savings during cab travel.
Uber
I have observed that Uber generally has the better rates compared to Ola so let’s start saving even more with it.
1) Amex Smart Earn Credit Card
· Earn 10X Membership Rewards on uber spends.
The offer is for spends upto Rs 2500 for each month which can net you a maximum of 500 reward points.
Depending on how much you value each point from Rs 0.25 (pay with points) or Rs 0.37 (24 carat gold statement credit)
The savings are 5% to 7.4%.
The actual savings will be lesser as points are given for spends in multiple of Rs 50.
· Supposing, your travel costs exceed Rs 2500, you can again add upto Rs 2500 to your Amazon pay wherein you get 5X Membership Rewards.
You can then pay for your cab rides via Amazon pay for savings of 2.5% to 3.7%.
Since, you can get all reward points immediately on adding the balance to Amazon pay, your savings are fixed.
2) SBI CashBack Credit Card
SBI CashBack Credit card gives 5% cashback for online purchases (this includes gift cards) upto Rs 2 Lacs in a month. SBI sometimes has offers combined with GYFTR & YONO wherein you can buy Gift card at upto 1.5/3% discount.
You can double dip and stock up Uber Gift cards at effectively more than 6.5% discount. The voucher limit you can buy is Rs 10,000 per month on SBI yono GYFTR.
3) Amazon Pay
My most rewarding payment mode has been Amazon Pay. There is no perennial offer for Uber. However, many times offers are running as good as 30% cash back upto Rs 75. The Amazon cash back comes promptly.
Additionally, many cards give points when you add balance to Amazon.
HDFC bank Smart buy gives 5% cash back on buying Amazon Gift card of Value upto Rs 5000 each month.
4) Uber Gift Card
Uber Gift cards can be purchased from e-commerce websites.
You then need to open you Uber app > go to wallet > go to Voucher > add the voucher code.
You can see the balance of the voucher you have added.
Then at the time of placing the request for a cab select payment method as the voucher.
Each time balance will be detected from the voucher as per the cab fare. Multiple cab rides can be used until the voucher is exhausted.
At the time of writing this article the following are the available discounts on Uber Gift cards
On Amazon 3% discount is given
On Paytm 2% discount is given
On Gyftr.com 1.5% discount is given
You can double dip by using credit card which will give reward points for these transactions too.
5) Axis Bank Flipkart Credit card
This card gives 4% cash back on partner Merchants which includes Uber. The good news here is that this cash back is unlimited.
Conclusion
· For monthly spends below Rs 2500, simply buy Uber gift cards from Amazon at 3% discount.
· For monthly spends upto Rs 5000, Amex Smart Earn Credit card each will save you around 5%. HDFC smartbuy portal’s amazon gift card will also give you 5% cash back.
· For monthly spends above Rs 6000, Axis Bank Flipkart credit card will give you cash back of 4%.
Ola
Ola cabs are many times cleaner and well maintained compared to Uber. As per my experience, Ola fares are upto 5% more expensive than Uber. However, this is up for debate.
In this post I have compiled offers which are almost always on-going. It might also help you choose which card to hold to maximize your cab savings.
1) Ola Money SBI credit card
Cardholder shall earn total of 7% Reward Points (1 reward point = Rs. 1) on OLA rides with cash back capping of Rs 500. This means you can spend upto Rs. 7,142. I think this is a fair limit.
This card gives 4% cash back on Ola which is its partner merchant. This offer has no cap. Additionally, this is an awesome card to hold even without this offer.
3) Ola Gift Cards
You may find Ola Gift Cards available on Amazon or Gyftr at heavy discounts. Presently, they are available for 10% discounts. However, note that they are one time use only. Eg. If you buy a voucher for Rs 500 and the cab fare is Rs 350, the pending Rs 150 after your journey will be lost.
STAY AWAY FROM THESE.