I know it’s not really the right market for this kind of question, and perhaps the product I want no longer exists. But I’m in the market for a new credit card - one that will give some kind of reward for purchases.
Martin and I are about to move to the states and will be furnishing a new apartment between now and Christmas. Consequently, I’d like to get a new credit card which will give me some kind of reward for using it - cash back, frequent flier miles, that sort of thing. My criteria are as follows:
Excellent online account access and easy online payments
No annual/monthly fee (I’ll consider a low fee if the rewards are very good)
A good/decent reward for use
If frequent flier miles, with an airline that runs from the Northwest US. My brother used to have one with Southwest airlines and was always getting free flights.
I don’t particularly care about the APR as I tend not to carry balances. My credit history is good.
I’ve done well with Discover, Capital One and Bank of America Visa cards. There are lots of sites that allow you to compare rates and rewards. I’d advise in favor of cash-back, rather than flier miles or other designer deals. They usually disappoint.
I have a rewards Visa card from Chase Bank. Although you can take the rewards in a variety of forms, I always opt for cash back in the form of a check. You can receive checks in $50 increments. If you save points until you reach $200, they will mail you a check for $250.
The Chase Freedom Card pays back 3% on your top three everyday purchase categories. If you have an active checking account with Chase, the same card pays back 3% on your top five everyday purchase categories.
There is easy online access for any of my Chase accounts, including my credit card (I have two reward cards with them). I don’t think that you need to have a Chase checking account to have a Chase credit card, but having a Chase checking account raises the rewards total and allows you to pay your credit card bill with a simple online transfer from your checking account. Otherwise you have to mail in a payment and worry about it getting there on time to avoid a late payment penalty.
You get a large rebate on BP / Amacco purchases, and modest rebates on everything else except competitor’s gasoline. The rewards come in the form of BP prepaid cards that you can use to buy gasoline or anything else at a BP convenience store.
It’s a good card if you drive a lot and have a BP station nearby.
Chase has a lot of different rewards cards. I don’t have any other type of account with chase but the Visa card.
Well, I’ve always had Visas . . . Bank of America has given me the best rate. As far as Discover goes, I’ve never had one because it’s the one card most stores don’t take. The big stores do but the little ones won’t . . . I believe the rate charged to the store per transaction on this card is very high. It doesn’t pay for them to accept it. I didn’t get American Express for that reason, as well, the local health food store wouldn’t take that, either.
My experience may be too different from yours to be useful, but I’ll share it anyway. I have an Alaska Airlines Visa card that generates 1 frequent flier mile for every dollar spent, and occasionally doubles that for particular purchases. I live in Alaska, and Alaska Airlines is my ONLY airline choice for year-round service into and out of my community. Alaska Air/Horizon Air is a major flyer in the “Northwest” of the Lower 48, so it may be useful to you. There have been some changes over the years, some making my air miles more valuable and some making them less valuable: The number of required miles per free flight has been raised from 20,000 to 25,000 for a round-trip ticket, AND they’ve instituted higher rates for more desirable flights. To get a workable schedule for a round trip to Oregon for a weekend festival in April '10, I had to use 40,000 miles. However, flights are expensive, so I got a ticket that would have cost over $1000 for my 40,000 miles – over 2.5% back if it had been from spending $40,000. (Actually, many of those miles were from other things, like air travel on paid tickets.) That’s still a good return, and, unlike cash rebates, it isn’t taxable (as far as I know!) (However, flights within the Lower 48 are a lot cheaper, so YOU might not get as good of a return as you would from a cash-back card.) Another benefit we get from our Alaska Airlines “platinum” card is a yearly “companion fare” ticket, which allows a second passenger to travel for $100 with a fully-paid friend or family member on the same round-trip flights. IF we can use that, it’s worth a lot, so it’s worth paying the hefty annual fee (I think it’s $75). We’ve had some years when we weren’t going to make a family trip Outside, so we used the companion ticket to help someone come up to visit us, or donated it. They have other, non-“platinum”, cards that don’t have as big a fee and don’t give the companion ticket.
You can check balances and pay online – I don’t have others to compare it to so I can’t rate it, but it works. You can also set it up to get immediate email alerts whenever your card is used.
We’re able to put nearly all of our regular expenses (food, gasoline, heating oil, electricity, phones, car repairs) on the credit card, and we pay it off every month so we don’t pay interest. It’s a handy budgeting tool: every month we can look at the bill and see nearly all of our spending recorded in one place. We get far more than our annual fee back in free airline tickets.
I’m sure you’ll be able to find a deal that’s worthwhile to you. Good luck!