Soooo it appears UOB has done it again. It is discontinuing my debit card and offering me a new card as replacement. Why do they always do that? Discontinue cards and replace them with some newer suckier programme? Apparently this time round, they are phasing out all their existing debit cards and replacing them with one card- Now. This effectively leaves you with no option at all. To be honest, feel a bit cheated by this entire fiasco.

Firstly, an $18 annual fee in place of a card that had zero annual fees is ridiculous and wholly unacceptable! Doesn't help that the only way to get it waived is to charge at least $2400 a year on the card. One cannot help but wonder who exactly they are trying to target with this card.

In addition to that, there doesn't seem to be a NETS function to the NOW card, which (correct me if I'm mistaken) is a staple when shopping in Singapore. Not the most practical thing to go without such an important function on a card which you are going to use to pay for things in cashless transactions, really. I mean, come on, not every establishment accepts visa or mastercard, but 9 out of 10 times they accept NETS transactions! Tsk tsk.. What were you thinking, UOB? Or maybe you just weren't.

Well, all those things and the fact that I happen to like my beautiful sleek black Campus card, which is a far cry from the new cheap looking Singtel-calling-card-wannabe ghastly fire-engine-red Now card.

Superficial, I know. *sighs dramatically* I'm still trying to decide if it's even worth the effort to activate it and make use of the first year fee waiver they are offering only to terminate it later on. Perhaps it's time to move on to greener pastures.. like say, the DBS CapitaCard, or the POSB Debit Mastercard which only requires 18 transactions yearly after the first 3 years FOC to get annual fees waived. I think I could deal with that.