Do you have a card that offers a good rewards program and doesn't get locked down when you charge something the system doesn't like?
If you want a card that's consistent in kickback I matter what you buy, Citi Double Cash. 1% back on purchases and 1% back when you pay, and since we always pay immediately it's essentially a 2% card. One minor nit with that setup, don't take the rebate as a credit toward balance or it'll really be a 1.999999% (kidding but you get the idea) card. The other minor downside is that you have to log into the website and tell them to send a check. (There's four choices, account credit, check, direct deposit, and something else I forget. The direct deposit link has always said it's "unavailable" for months and months. It's essentially a lie, but with "snap a photo with your phone" check cashing these days, it's little difference. Click "send check", confirm address, a couple of days later snap a photo of the thing and it's done. Wash, rinse, repeat monthly unless you want them to play like the rebate is a savings account and hold it for you.)
Other notables are Amex Blue Cash and Amex Blue Cash Preferred, which are essentially the replacements for the Costco card they had. Preferred has a per year fee but doubles the cash back on certain categories. You have to run the math with your purchases to see if it works for you. It has a large rebate on standard grocery stores, but WalMart and Big Box stores aren't included. We have a local grocer that has a
great points system toward cheap fuel, so combined with the Amex, we can make the regular grocery store marginally cheaper than WalMart, which is nice. Better quality stuff and cheap gas. (Our country gas station is $0.10 higher right now than the base price at the grocer's pumps and they give $0.10/gal on fuel for every $100 spent in the store. Plus the $100 spent in the store is actually $94 with the card kickback. So I'm getting fuel at a net $0.20/gal lower than he can do, but I'm not insane about it. If I'm out of gas and home, I'll buy from him. If I'm in town when the gauge says it's time to fuel, I got to the grocer's pumps.)
And if traveling and anywhere near where they had hotels, Starwood was very hard to beat. They were ranked best bang for the buck for a long time. But Mariott announced they're buying Starwood so buyer beware, stuff is about to change there. Mariott frankly has always had a decent program too, back when I knew the layout of every Mariott courtyard for every city in my territory as a field engineer by heart. But it's only "above average" and I don't travel for a living anymore.
Various airline cards all also have marginally lower deals than the cash back cards, if you want airline tickets. Southwest and Delta seem to have the best programs on a dollar spent vs dollars received basis if their routes and networks work for you. Frontier used to be good but it fell down and I highly recommend NOT doing business with any card program managed by Barclays if you want to retain your sanity. Worst customer service of any program I've ever used. I would probably still have a Frontier card if it weren't for having to deal with Barclays. Frontier should ditch them. Barclays does nothing but hurt the Frontier brand, IMHO.
Points cards are often horrible when you do the math on dollars spent vs received value. Some start out good, and then devalue their points over time. Others just suck from the start. I won't do "points" myself, but those who do and review the various cards seem to like various Capital One offerings. Some people like the variety of what you can get kicked back. Discounted show tickets, whatever. Not my cup of tea.
And there's also the perk for some where some cards don't charge fees to use them internationally. I don't need it but it's a big deal if you travel internationally a lot.
I got one slightly better than that. Right before they published that one, they were trying to get former Costco folks to jump over to the Blue Cash cards (either one) and they offered $300 direct cash back as a credit if you spent $2500 in three months. Better than 10%.
Not too much of a surprise with Amex either that there was ZERO screwing around getting the credit. It was AUTOMATIC. I literally bought lunch and got an alert that I had a $300 refund in my card within seconds.
That's one big difference between all the companies. Customer service. Amex still beats everyone in spades in this regard. Karen mailed a payment two days late once... I called... Five minutes later I was hanging up with the interest charges and late fee removed. "I see you've paid your bill on time for eight years, sir. Obviously this was just a mistake. Let me have a manager remove that." Done. Amex does not screw around.
COSTCO is switching to Visa I think, read where it was a good one. Go to Costco.com for the details. I'm thinking of getting it for the rewards.
I don't think the details are out yet and they postponed the roll out until end of summer. No word on if they'll let you walk in and cash the voucher every year for cold cash like Amex did, either. That was the best part. I suspect the new card since its Citi, will be similar to the Double Cash card mentioned above. Have to log in monthly and Jack around with it. Which is one of many reasons I finally dumped my Costco membership. Citi won't hurt their brand as much as Barclays hurts Frontier's brand, but Costco went from "top of the line" in the card game to a middle of the road vendor. Not what I'd come to expect from Costco.
I think I posted the story of how I went to Costco to cancel membership and left with a full tank of gas and $370 in my checking account more than I had when I walked in. Best day at Costco, ever! Haha. Filled the car up, walked in and cashed the annual voucher from Amex, they wrote me a check, I put it in the account with a photo while standing at one of the hot dog tables, walked over, canceled membership, and they refunded the annual membership to the Amex. A week later I asked Amex to send the negative balance as a check and shot a photo of that when it arrived. Heh.
By the way, I walked that whole store looking to see if they had anything I couldn't order for the same price or better, delivered to my door, via Amazon. Other than their enormous meat slabs in the butcher shop area, the answer really was no. They're all so competitive now they're within pennies of each other and all you have to watch are the ever changing sizes of the boxes and what not.
