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Thanks. I just added a couple of comments to the article (summarized below):
- You must maintain a checking account with BofA to get the boost in rewards on their cards. BofA reserves the right to close that account without notice and without reason. They just closed my account for lack of use. I'll have to open a new one, rinse and repeat.
- The Citibank Double Cash card pays 1% on purchase, 1% on payment. But I've read (haven't verified) that if you prepay what you owe, you won't get that second 1% back. Only if you wait until the amount owed shows up on your monthly bill will you get that cash.
Years ago I had one of them newfangled cash rewards cards. Not exactly sure how it worked except that there were cash back incentives based on how much you spent each month using your card. Damn. Began using it for groceries, gas, clothing and everything else. Why buy $4 / pound steak at the grocery when you could spend $12-$15 on the premium cut and get the additional bonus? The incentive robbed me of clear-headed decision making while shopping. After a few months I’d had enough. Now when I walk into a store it’s with a set amount of cash in my wallet. Easy to stop by he local bank’s ATM enroute and grab some cash without paying a fee. When the money runs out ... go home ... stop spending!
Credit cards still have a place. Indespensible for travel. What I want from the provider are service, convenience and to be treated with respect as a valued customer. No high pressure tactics. No cold calls. Real live humans who speak good English 24/7 if I need help. Have been happy using Elan Financial for more than a decade. It’s my only credit card. Signed up years ago for their cash-back program on travel expenses. Rewards accumulate for hotels and rental cars charged. Possibly airlines as well - but not sure on the last. Every year they kick back two-three hundred dollars - sometimes more - into the account as a reward. Frankly, for the service they render, with no annual fee, it’s almost embarrassing taking the cash from them.
Just a thought. Amazon has a 2% rebate on cash transferred from your bank card (but not credit cards) to “reload” your gift card with them. Requires Prime membership. On the surface it appears this is tantamount to receiving 2% off all Amazon purchases. https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=15452216011
I got in via “the back door” recently while shopping for gifts in the under $50 price range. On several, they offered to credit back $10 to me if I first reloaded a gift card with $100 - and than purchased the item from the gift card balance. Hence, a couple of $30 items ended up costing me $40 (rather than $60). Not good at math, but $10 back on a $100 gift card reload sounds on the surface, at least, like a 10% return on the cash.
Gets better - If you were going to buy a $30 item anyway, you received $10 back by giving Amazon $70 more than the item’s price to hold for you for later use. Thus, you’ve received $10 for making a $70 short term investment. Looking at it that way, the return on a $70 investment amounts to 14.28%.
That Amazon card seems interesting hank. On a recent purchase they offered me a $70 credit on my purchase if I bought my items by applying for one of their cards. Instant approval/denial they said. Two months later I'm still waiting (ended up using another card). It seems I maybe don't qualify since I never carry a balance on my cards.
It could just be me but I tend to think that all these point card offers are just a gimmick. Hence I just stick with my Elan Visa card which drops cash into my Fidelity account whenever I reach some magic amount of purchases. Oh, and my Costco card also.
What I’m wondering ... for really big ticket items (say a $2500 computer or TV) I’m wondering whether you could first dump the funds into their gift card and than turn right around and purchase the item (in effect for 2% less). A $2500 item would than cost $2450.
Suspect there are rules that prevent that type of gaming their system. On the other hand, Amazon has to deal with a flood of product returns. So the plan might pay for itself. First, they’d likely have fewer returns. Second, if one did return the product to Amazon, they’d still have all that $$ tied up in a gift card.
I tend to stick with either my Elan Card for the 2% put in my account, my PenFed Card, 2% as long as you have $1000/month direct deposit. But then for all my dining out or entertainment purchases, I use the Capital One Savor Card, gives you 4% cash back for those areas. I also link all my cards to both Dosh (gets me usually an additional 3%-10% cash back) and iDine (gets me an additional 10% cash back at various restaurants). So for example, my favorite bar/grill near me, I get 17% cash abck for going there, in addition to their own loyalty rewards, which I'm up to almost $2500 in free food/drinks coming my way!
The Amazon credit card (Morgan-Chase Visa) seems advantageous because in addition to the normal cash-back percentages on non-Amazon purchases you get (as a "Prime" member) a 5% discount on all Amazon purchases charged to that card. (The discount shows up as a credit on the card itself, and is not shown as a 5% discount on the actual purchase.) We buy a fair amount of stuff through Amazon, and almost never fly except as part of a travel package, so air-mile/hotel type rebates are of little interest to us.
My wife is not an Amazon "Prime" member, so I do all of her Amazon purchasing on my Amazon credit card. She has a high-end Morgan-Chase Platinum/Rubidium/Kryptonite (or some damned thing) credit card with pretty good cash-back features, and uses it for food purchases and everything else possible to maximize cash credits. That stuff adds up pretty quickly, too... especially the food.
We never buy anything mainly because it will generate cash-back points- but we do use the cards whenever possible for purchases where cash offers no advantage. One exception is gasoline- we use Arco exclusively because their cash-price is consistently and significantly lower than any other brand in the area, excepting perhaps Costco... but Costco gasoline stations are not particularly convenient for us on our normal travel routes.
@Mark- Just checked out iDine... no restaurants that we would be interested in for our area. Also, being a firm member of the "no free lunch club", I have to wonder if a restaurant that uses iDine or something similar doesn't offset the expense in some manner that is better left unknown to the customer.
What I’m wondering ... for really big ticket items (say a $2500 computer or TV) I’m wondering whether you could first dump the funds into their gift card and than turn right around and purchase the item (in effect for 2% less). A $2500 item would than cost $2450.
Suspect there are rules that prevent that type of gaming their system. On the other hand, Amazon has to deal with a flood of product returns. So the plan might pay for itself. First, they’d likely have fewer returns. Second, if one did return the product to Amazon, they’d still have all that $$ tied up in a gift card.
You might as well just use their card to get 5% back at Amazon........
I’m learning a lot here. Can’t imagine wanting to carry another cc in addition to the Elan one. (Carry a couple bank ATM cards as well).
But @Old_Joe has piqued my interest again. That Amazon card sounds enticing since I buy a lot from them and am a Prime member.
- Is the card free of fees?
- My calls to Amazon on various matters result in some of the poorest customer service imaginable. While quick to pick up the phone, many agents seem clueless about the issue you’re trying to resolve, barely speak English and are clearly on a tight time-line and eager to hang up. Is their service re their credit card up to the quality of other financial indtitutions?
@hank, not to complexify your no-fee researches, but beyond Fido Elan Visa, I and some others here have pointed toward Amex Blue, Costco Visa, and recently BoA CashRewards, I think it is, all of which have niche 3% (or sometimes higher) cashback.
@hank- I hope that you appreciate the following, because when I was reviewing the previous version in the "edit" mode I accidentally hit the "return" key, and erased the whole damned thing. So here goes one more time.
It's been some years since I obtained the Amazon (really Morgan/Chase Visa) card, so the details are a little fuzzy. I do recall that they offered some amount (a $50 credit, I think) to take the card, and the card also carries the 5% rebate on Prime purchases. Amazon was playing games with the shipping charges at the time, trying to push people into Prime, so the card offer made it worthwhile to pay the annual Prime fee.
I don't believe that there are any fees associated with the Amazon cc. With respect to "service", I've never had an issue with the card, so I really can't offer much info there. If there was a problem involving the card, I wouldn't talk to Amazon anyway... there's a large Morgan/Chase branch one block away, so I would just trot up there.
Earlier I mentioned that my wife uses a "Platinum/Rubidium/Kryptonite" card. That card is actually a high-end Chase "Sapphire" card, with an interesting history. To start with, we probably wouldn't have chosen Morgan/Chase as our bank. The present Chase branch was formerly a Washington Mutual branch, which was formerly a Home Savings branch, where we actually banked. It has been interesting watching the large neon signs get changed with some regularity on the outside walls of that building.
Actually, Morgan/Chase has been pretty decent with respect to good service. We have remained with them because our SS & retirement direct deposits were transferred when the bank changed owners three times. Because of those automatic deposits, there is usually a fairly large amount in our checking account there, which provides us with a "free" safe-deposit box and probably helps to account for the good level of service that we receive.
Some years ago Chase offered their new "Sapphire" card, which came with a $200 credit if you ran up a fairly large amount of charges ($2000, as I recall) within a few months. The card has a lot of bells and whistles, but also has an annual fee after the first year. My wife assured me that if she used it for food purchases and other charges she could rack up the required charge amount to get the $200 with no problem.
The young man trying to interest us in the card understood my resistance to the annual fee. He mentioned that they also were offering a slightly less wonderful version of the "Sapphire", which had no annual fee, but also no $200 credit offer. He then lowered his voice and observed that if we met the charge requirement and obtained the $200 credit, we could then wait a reasonable number of months, cancel the card before any fees were due, and then obtain the slightly less wonderful free version. When I asked him if Chase would really sit still for that, he informed us that he was doing that himself.
We also have bank accounts at First Republic, which has been just super, and Schwab, to make transfers between the brokerage account easy. Sometimes the differences in banking services can be very interesting. Can you imagine Wells Fargo or BofA suggesting the credit card setup that Chase did?
“He then lowered his voice and observed that if we met the charge requirement and obtained the $200 credit, we could then wait a reasonable number of months, cancel the card before any fees were due, and then obtain the slightly less wonderful free version. When I asked him if Chase would really sit still for that, he informed us that he was doing that himself.”
Yup - Nice when somebody bends over to help like that. I had a similar talks with a fund house rep. one time. But won’t divulge which one.
Nice summation @Old_Joe. Sorry it turned out to be extra work. I hate it when a draft disappears like that. One takeaway here is that Amazon’s name is on the card but Chase actually administers it. Much clearer now. In fact, I got my Elan card first thru a Michigan bank that essentially sub-contracted with Elan to service their card. After the bank folded, I was so satisfied with Elan’s service that I just continued on directly with them.
I had the American Airlines card for a number of years. The annual charge would show up, and I'd call and say - "Nah, go ahead and cancel." And they'd say - "What if we waived the fee?" Until one year, they didn't. And I dropped the card.
We just visited Costco to cash out the rewards certificate for the year. With 3% cash back on travel (cruises) and restaurants, it was large enough they wrote us out a check instead of just cashing out the coupon. Also, the Costco card now has no foreign transaction fee. Capital One is also good for foreign charges.
An oddity of the old 2% Schwab Visa card that evolved into the Bank America Cash Rewards card is that it retains one benefit of the old card: no foreign transaction fee.
We just got back from a trip and I tested this by purchasing one high speed rail ticket on the legacy card and one with another no foreign transaction fee VISA card. Both charges were processed the same day with virtually identical (except for rounding) exchange rates.
We don't have charge cards with either First Republic or Schwab, but we do have ATM withdrawal cards. We never use those domestically, but when doing foreign travel we use them, and both are no foreign transaction fee. So far they have worked very well for that purpose.
@hank- You are welcome. BTW, when I access our Morgan/Chase account via the internet, the whole shebang is consolidated right there: the checking account, a small savings account that we also keep there, the Amazon cc, the Sapphire cc, and one additional "plain-Jane" no fee Morgan/Chase Visa that I maintain for use in situations where I may have reservations about the trustworthiness of the entity that I'm dealing with. Sort of a "safety card". If I have to cancel that one because of a hack or other foolishness it's no big deal. Have had to do that over the years, twice in fact, when some phony charges started showing up from strange places.
We don't have charge cards with either First Republic or Schwab, but we do have ATM withdrawal cards. We never use those domestically, but when doing foreign travel we use them, and both are no foreign transaction fee. So far they have worked very well for that purpose.
Maybe.
Schwab absorbs the 1% Visa currency conversion fee: "If you use your debit card to withdraw foreign currency from an ATM or to pay for a purchase with foreign currency, we charge your account only for the U.S. dollar equivalent of the transaction. There is no additional percentage added for the foreign currency transaction."
First Republic may not be absorbing that conversion fee: "Foreign currency conversion and other usage fees vary by country and network and are not included in the rebated ATM access fees.
Fidelity sounds more like First Republic than like Schwab: "Your account will automatically be reimbursed for all ATM fees... Please note that there may be a foreign transaction fee of 1% that is not waived, which will be included in the amount charged to your account."
Yet last week, I withdrew foreign currency from an HSBC machine using a Schwab debit card, and immediately followed that by withdrawing the same amount of foreign currency from the same ATM using a Fidelity debit card. Both accounts were charged the identical amount. So it looks like Fidelity is absorbing the 1% Visa conversion fee, despite all claims to the contrary. (I also checked the conversion rate and it matched what I understood it to be - no fee added.)
Comments
- You must maintain a checking account with BofA to get the boost in rewards on their cards. BofA reserves the right to close that account without notice and without reason. They just closed my account for lack of use. I'll have to open a new one, rinse and repeat.
- The Citibank Double Cash card pays 1% on purchase, 1% on payment. But I've read (haven't verified) that if you prepay what you owe, you won't get that second 1% back. Only if you wait until the amount owed shows up on your monthly bill will you get that cash.
Credit cards still have a place. Indespensible for travel. What I want from the provider are service, convenience and to be treated with respect as a valued customer. No high pressure tactics. No cold calls. Real live humans who speak good English 24/7 if I need help. Have been happy using Elan Financial for more than a decade. It’s my only credit card. Signed up years ago for their cash-back program on travel expenses. Rewards accumulate for hotels and rental cars charged. Possibly airlines as well - but not sure on the last. Every year they kick back two-three hundred dollars - sometimes more - into the account as a reward. Frankly, for the service they render, with no annual fee, it’s almost embarrassing taking the cash from them.
I got in via “the back door” recently while shopping for gifts in the under $50 price range. On several, they offered to credit back $10 to me if I first reloaded a gift card with $100 - and than purchased the item from the gift card balance. Hence, a couple of $30 items ended up costing me $40 (rather than $60). Not good at math, but $10 back on a $100 gift card reload sounds on the surface, at least, like a 10% return on the cash.
Gets better - If you were going to buy a $30 item anyway, you received $10 back by giving Amazon $70 more than the item’s price to hold for you for later use. Thus, you’ve received $10 for making a $70 short term investment. Looking at it that way, the return on a $70 investment amounts to 14.28%.
It could just be me but I tend to think that all these point card offers are just a gimmick. Hence I just stick with my Elan Visa card which drops cash into my Fidelity account whenever I reach some magic amount of purchases. Oh, and my Costco card also.
What I’m wondering ... for really big ticket items (say a $2500 computer or TV) I’m wondering whether you could first dump the funds into their gift card and than turn right around and purchase the item (in effect for 2% less). A $2500 item would than cost $2450.
Suspect there are rules that prevent that type of gaming their system. On the other hand, Amazon has to deal with a flood of product returns. So the plan might pay for itself. First, they’d likely have fewer returns. Second, if one did return the product to Amazon, they’d still have all that $$ tied up in a gift card.
My wife is not an Amazon "Prime" member, so I do all of her Amazon purchasing on my Amazon credit card. She has a high-end Morgan-Chase Platinum/Rubidium/Kryptonite (or some damned thing) credit card with pretty good cash-back features, and uses it for food purchases and everything else possible to maximize cash credits. That stuff adds up pretty quickly, too... especially the food.
We never buy anything mainly because it will generate cash-back points- but we do use the cards whenever possible for purchases where cash offers no advantage. One exception is gasoline- we use Arco exclusively because their cash-price is consistently and significantly lower than any other brand in the area, excepting perhaps Costco... but Costco gasoline stations are not particularly convenient for us on our normal travel routes.
But @Old_Joe has piqued my interest again. That Amazon card sounds enticing since I buy a lot from them and am a Prime member.
- Is the card free of fees?
- My calls to Amazon on various matters result in some of the poorest customer service imaginable. While quick to pick up the phone, many agents seem clueless about the issue you’re trying to resolve, barely speak English and are clearly on a tight time-line and eager to hang up. Is their service re their credit card up to the quality of other financial indtitutions?
It's been some years since I obtained the Amazon (really Morgan/Chase Visa) card, so the details are a little fuzzy. I do recall that they offered some amount (a $50 credit, I think) to take the card, and the card also carries the 5% rebate on Prime purchases. Amazon was playing games with the shipping charges at the time, trying to push people into Prime, so the card offer made it worthwhile to pay the annual Prime fee.
I don't believe that there are any fees associated with the Amazon cc. With respect to "service", I've never had an issue with the card, so I really can't offer much info there. If there was a problem involving the card, I wouldn't talk to Amazon anyway... there's a large Morgan/Chase branch one block away, so I would just trot up there.
Earlier I mentioned that my wife uses a "Platinum/Rubidium/Kryptonite" card. That card is actually a high-end Chase "Sapphire" card, with an interesting history. To start with, we probably wouldn't have chosen Morgan/Chase as our bank. The present Chase branch was formerly a Washington Mutual branch, which was formerly a Home Savings branch, where we actually banked. It has been interesting watching the large neon signs get changed with some regularity on the outside walls of that building.
Actually, Morgan/Chase has been pretty decent with respect to good service. We have remained with them because our SS & retirement direct deposits were transferred when the bank changed owners three times. Because of those automatic deposits, there is usually a fairly large amount in our checking account there, which provides us with a "free" safe-deposit box and probably helps to account for the good level of service that we receive.
Some years ago Chase offered their new "Sapphire" card, which came with a $200 credit if you ran up a fairly large amount of charges ($2000, as I recall) within a few months. The card has a lot of bells and whistles, but also has an annual fee after the first year. My wife assured me that if she used it for food purchases and other charges she could rack up the required charge amount to get the $200 with no problem.
The young man trying to interest us in the card understood my resistance to the annual fee. He mentioned that they also were offering a slightly less wonderful version of the "Sapphire", which had no annual fee, but also no $200 credit offer. He then lowered his voice and observed that if we met the charge requirement and obtained the $200 credit, we could then wait a reasonable number of months, cancel the card before any fees were due, and then obtain the slightly less wonderful free version. When I asked him if Chase would really sit still for that, he informed us that he was doing that himself.
We also have bank accounts at First Republic, which has been just super, and Schwab, to make transfers between the brokerage account easy. Sometimes the differences in banking services can be very interesting. Can you imagine Wells Fargo or BofA suggesting the credit card setup that Chase did?
OJ
Yup - Nice when somebody bends over to help like that. I had a similar talks with a fund house rep. one time. But won’t divulge which one.
Nice summation @Old_Joe. Sorry it turned out to be extra work. I hate it when a draft disappears like that. One takeaway here is that Amazon’s name is on the card but Chase actually administers it. Much clearer now. In fact, I got my Elan card first thru a Michigan bank that essentially sub-contracted with Elan to service their card. After the bank folded, I was so satisfied with Elan’s service that I just continued on directly with them.
THANX. Take care Sir!
"Nah, go ahead and cancel."
And they'd say -
"What if we waived the fee?"
Until one year, they didn't. And I dropped the card.
We just visited Costco to cash out the rewards certificate for the year. With 3% cash back on travel (cruises) and restaurants, it was large enough they wrote us out a check instead of just cashing out the coupon.
Also, the Costco card now has no foreign transaction fee. Capital One is also good for foreign charges.
We just got back from a trip and I tested this by purchasing one high speed rail ticket on the legacy card and one with another no foreign transaction fee VISA card. Both charges were processed the same day with virtually identical (except for rounding) exchange rates.
The "real" Cash Rewards card charges 3%.
Schwab absorbs the 1% Visa currency conversion fee: "If you use your debit card to withdraw foreign currency from an ATM or to pay for a purchase with foreign currency, we charge your account only for the U.S. dollar equivalent of the transaction. There is no additional percentage added for the foreign currency transaction."
First Republic may not be absorbing that conversion fee: "Foreign currency conversion and other usage fees vary by country and network and are not included in the rebated ATM access fees.
Fidelity sounds more like First Republic than like Schwab: "Your account will automatically be reimbursed for all ATM fees... Please note that there may be a foreign transaction fee of 1% that is not waived, which will be included in the amount charged to your account."
Yet last week, I withdrew foreign currency from an HSBC machine using a Schwab debit card, and immediately followed that by withdrawing the same amount of foreign currency from the same ATM using a Fidelity debit card. Both accounts were charged the identical amount. So it looks like Fidelity is absorbing the 1% Visa conversion fee, despite all claims to the contrary. (I also checked the conversion rate and it matched what I understood it to be - no fee added.)