Removed mentions of most signup bonuses (with the exception of extra rewards for 1st year like with Discover or Alliant), because bonuses change frequently and become outdated quickly, and this thread is not about signup bonuses.
Renamed “Airlines” to “Airfare”, removed airline-specific cards, and added a note to explain why – i.e., there’s no best Delta card, since only one bank issues all Delta cards and your only choice is a a trade off between annual fee and benefits. If you feel strongly about bringing them back, please explain.
I feel the same way about the “Hotels” category. There’s no best Marriott card – it’s a trade off between annual fee and benefits, not a true competition between card issuers. I rarely stay at hotels and I’ve never collected hotel points, so I’d like to suggest that this category be removed or replaced by a more generic “Travel” category. Anyone have opinions about this?
Why should we include hotel-specific cards at all? This topic is about the Best Rewards Credit Cards. It should not be a complete listing of all the credit cards available out there. Sure, the three Chase Marriott cards are the best cards to earn Marriott Rewards points, but they are also the only cards for Marriott Rewards points. What makes them the Best Rewards Credit Cards?
Perhaps we could list the dollar value range of the rewards points right after the bullet point, like we have for SPG. It should not be the percentage range that is earned in the various categories, but their actual value. For example, Hilton does not earn 2-9%, because the points are worth < 0.4 cpp, so “9%” is really 3.6% at most. Also the ones that include free nights every year should mention that, next to the annual fee.
Removed mentions of most signup bonuses (with the exception of extra rewards for 1st year like with Discover or Alliant), because bonuses change frequently and become outdated quickly, and this thread is not about signup bonuses.
Sometimes the best rewards of the card are the initial signup bonus. If you remove them, then it’s only about cash back and not the total experience.
i think it would be useful for people to just bump the thread whenever a new or obscure product comes out. Most everything else is covered well by the travel bloggers. It’s newsworthy if it has a high bonus or isn’t from the big 3 banks,
I completely agree that the initial signup bonus has lots of value, and in many cases a card with a bonus might not even be worth keeping afterwards. However, this thread was never about that. I think there should be a separate churning thread with all the best signup bonuses. Or just keep that info on reddit as they’ve done a pretty good job. I think I’ve even seen a spreadsheet with all the cards, bonuses, terms, etc, listed out, not sure if it was linked from reddit or DoC and I can’t find the link right now.
I think there’s value in keeping the Airline/Hotel/Store specific cards in the Wiki - at least at the bottom. The alternative would be to put them all in a separate thread, but I feel that would fracture the topic. For some people, focusing on Everything/category spend is going to be the best plan. Others will want to branch out to airline/hotel/store cards either for the pure rewards or other benefits of holding the cards.
[quote=“Argyll, post:69, topic:127, full:true”]PS I just noticed new cardholders can get $250 back for $1000 in purchases the first 3 months through the Refer Friends program (Referrer gets $75).
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It’s definitely a public offer. InPrivate browser mode, on a computer I don’t use for personal data, through a hotspot that’s not related to my home IP address.
Ok, I’ll take your word for it. I checked multiple ways, also using private windows, and that specific offer is not shown anywhere to me unless I log-in. I can find a refer a friend page but that specific offer is not mentioned without logging in, which makes sense, because you have to be an Amex member already to use it.
I’m referring to a “Refer Friends” offer where the referrer (an existing Amex BCP holder) gets a $75 statement credit and the new applicant gets a $250 statement credit after $1000 purchasing in the first 3 months.
Do you see the offer where you get $75 for referring a new cardholder?
Has anybody used the US Bank Altitude card? I just started reading about it and they offer 3X rewards on mobile wallet services like Samsung, Android and Apple pay. When you redeem for travel, it essentially makes this a 4.5% card. I’m really curious to hear how people have gotten along trying to use mobile payments everywhere. Looks like Samsung phones have a special feature to mimic a magnetic card swipe at the terminal so you can even use it at a non-NFC terminal, but Apple and Android pays still require newer terminals with support.
I use Samsung pay all the time, but still only average about 20 transactions per month and they aren’t that large. My wife doesn’t care about having a fancy phone, so she doesn’t use mobile payments. She does the grocery shopping. If she did mobile payments at the grocery store (probably our largest in person credit card purchases), it might make sense to get this card, but as things stand now, I just wouldn’t get the benefit. Walmart, another place we usually have large in-person purchases, hasn’t allowed me to use Samsung Pay in a while - I assume because they have their proprietary Walmart Pay app. No idea if that app is included in the 3X for US Bank Altitude.
Samsung pay is included for sure (it’s listed on their FAQs). What you’re describing about Walmart is what confuses me. From what I’ve read, their phones create some sort of magnetic field that the card reader recognizes just like a card swipe. There is nothing that they should need to do to ‘allow’ you to use the app. Just hold phone up to card reader and “swipe”. Anyone else have experience with this?
Samsung Pay works exactly as advertised almost everywhere, however Walmart must have figured out some way to have disabled it on their terminals. In my experience, right around the time that Walmart pay was released, Samsung Pay stopped working at Walmart. You’re right that merchants don’t have to do anything to “allow” Samsung Pay, but there might be something that they can do to disable it. That’s what Walmart has done (at least that’s my hypothesis).
The app I was wondering about being included in the 3x bonus is the Walmart pay app. I would be surprised if it was included.
