Where Is Your Road Taking You?
Citibank Ad: For a minimum single receipt purchase of Php1500, you can get a free movie ticket of your choice in some designated cinemas.
Aside from being very inaccurate, free is too strong a word. Okay, okay, the movie tickets have a potential to be free if you can find Php130 movies at your favorite movie haunt. But since the advent of THX and reserved seating and glamorized movie houses (great audio! superb video!), this is no longer the case. Movies typically range from Php170 to as high as Php400 nowadays.
So, Citibank, the right, er, more accurate, word is subsidize.
Let’s begin at the beginning. When I saw this ad one fine day, which took up more than half the size of a newspaper, and no fine print, my savings!savings! antennae went up and I began, consciously, to put more heart (and thought) into my purchases. I had a target, and that is to use my Citibank card for purchases Php1,500 and above. There were times when I would try to sweet talk the salesladies into cutting up my purchases (I remembered seeing in the ad, “a minimum of Php1,500 single receipt”, so I thought there had to be something there) so I would get different transaction receipts for every Php1,500. But, as I experienced at Charles and Keith Trinoma, I was not always successful.