Agreed. I should have been more specific. I’m a senior citizen. I was not taking into consideration military recruits or the very youngest people in the military generally. I continue to believe military people of early middle age and older tend to be more straight arrow.
Also, NFCU knows my age. There are fewer older crooks as a percentage, military or not, than younger crooks.
Pay the bill yourself, then send payment confirmation to bank for reimbursement out of your escrow account. If they already paid, request a refund from the city. Use this as an opportunity to request them waiving the escrow requirement.
I’ve done that before and it took over a month to get my money back from the city. I vowed never to do that again. I really should let the bank make their own mistakes. But I’m not a deadbeat so I can’t help myself from butting in.
Shinobi, don’t be so quick to give up or write off rewards. I stress, be patient, especially with new cards until you learn their specific habits. For some issuers they take longer to post. I have had many new cards where I’ve had my first $2k purchase flagged for potential fraud and they’ve rejected those purchases until I verify it was me. It is also not uncommon for rewards to not post until the end of the billing cycle. In the case of initial signup bonus rewards, it’s also not uncommon to take 2 or 3 billing cycles for rewards to post.
I know you want immediate rewards, no hassle, and expediency, but in the case of credit card rewards, usually I wait at least 1 billing cycle for expected rewards to post and at least 2 cycles for signup bonuses before thinking about calling. It’s not abnormal. This is especially true if your high transaction purchases may be considered fraudulent and under manual review.
One current example: I have a business card from Wells Fargo, where 50k points are showing as rewards ($500 cash back bonus) from my $5k spend where the 2% cashback on purchases has already posted and automatically applied, but they say the 50k points for the signup bonus will not be automatically applied as cashback for another 90 days! I only called simply to ask if the bonus would be automatically applied as cashback or if I could deposit to an account. That’s when they mentioned the 90 day period, specifically for their bonus.
Thank you, Corndogg. I am respectful of your opinion and I appreciate your post.
My situation with NFCU Flagship at this point is as follows:
I received my rewards for small purchases almost immediately. I still have not received my reward for a single large purchase. My statement closed a week or more ago. I paid off the card prior to statement closure in accord with Argyll’s teachings. This means I have paid back the large charge I made to the card. My payment to NFCU was placed on hold for roughly a week. But now that hold has expired meaning they know my payment was good and they have accepted my payment and restored my credit line in full.
However, as of earlier today, they still have not credited me with the reward I should have earned for that large purchase.
Just for the record, I made a single large charge prior to statement closure. I have made no more charges to the card, large or small, following statement closure.
If they are treating me with “caution” it is being done with no notification whatsoever. They promise, for purchases, two points per dollar spent. They have not so far honored that promise. And they have not explained why they violated their own policy. Apparently they feel such violation is their prerogative with no warning or explanation.
By the way I know based on considerable experience, had I used any one of several other cards I own for that same large purchase, I would by now have collected a nice reward. The purchase did not violate terms and conditions commonplace with all USA cards.
However, as I mentioned to you prior, my large purchase DID cross the line established by the Singapore list of concerning MCCs (merchant category codes). If NFCU Flagship is operating beneath Singapore rules they have not so advised me, their cardholder.
ETA
I apologize to anyone who might not understand my reference above to Singapore and to Singapore rules. It is regarding an older thread here on this forum. Here is a link to that thread:
Maybe if you just speak nicely to them they’ll give you the rewards.
Agreed, Argyll. I will get 'round to telephoning them sooner or later. Want to give them a bit more time. Even if the reward is gone I need to know whether or not my large purchase will count toward awarding of the Flagship $500 bonus also promised to new cardholders. If the bonus is gone, so am I as a user of this card. After all, at $59/year the card is worthless if their rules are so very strict to where I cannot make any money.
Maybe back up and take a deep breath. 
You left out the part about when they promise to deliver those two points per dollar spent. It should be somewhere in the T&C.
Is the policy you’re referring to the same as the promise? If so, again, checking the T&C should give you some clarity on when to expect the points.
With any NFCU card, including my new Flagship, I have gotten rewards as soon as the purchase(s) post. That holds true for both my and my wife’s brand new Flagship cards. We each redeemed somewhere around $80 worth of rewards.
With ya on that. That is what happened with my small purchases. Rewards showed up very quickly.
But not with my large purchase.
Navy Federal is turning out to be problematic for me.
First, their multifactor authentication is seriously broken for Quicken users. It continues to prompt for MFA again and again and again, and only about 1 time in 20 actually completes to download transactions. If they just didn’t support Quicken downloads, that would be different. But they do … it just doesn’t work well.
But the main thing is that they refuse to allow customers to automate paying their bill. You have to manually trigger each payment. I’ve got waaay too many credit cards to worry about manually paying them each month. Every other of the plethora of credit cards I have across many servicers and across Visa, MasterCard, Amex, and Discover is set up to draft the full balance on the due date. Worse, Navy Federal blames it on ACH rules.
we do not have the ability to establish recurring payments of your statement balance from an external account. Automated Clearing House (ACH) will only allow payments of a specified amount for recurring transfers.
Was your large purchase something questionable? Could it be argued as a cash equivalent? Why so much secrecy?
Already answered. See up thread.
I know you weren’t asking me, but here’s the breakdown of our charges on each card:
Wife’s: paypal for $2650, geico for $1389.90, grubhub for $81.20
Mine: paypal for $4308.62
The two paypal transactions were technically ebay purchases, but I paid via paypal. And! I got full 2x rewards for everything on each card. So based on that, and the whole “NET PURCHASES” fine print, I’m going to assume I just have to wait the 90+ days. I’ve never gotten a bonus with NFCU, so I have zero previous experience to go on as far as that goes. Rewards have posted as expected though.
Just to follow up, I now have my answer from NFCU on my large Flagship charge. They are applying (what I above referred to as) Singapore rules . . . without giving proper notice to cardholders. Frankly, they are doing this without offering ANY notice whatsoever.
I have not encountered this sort of thing prior. In the past, when there was a problem or a question, the CC issuer would attempt to put such a charge through as a cash advance. Failing that the charge would be denied.
But NFCU put the charge through as a purchase, then turned around and denied rewards credit for that purchase, all without any notice whatsoever. Thus I never had opportunity to say: “Well, if you’re denying my rewards then I do not want to go forward with the charge”.
NFCU Flagship was not my first time charging this identical purchase. I have received rewards on this same purchase from at least nine other CC issuers. Not nine charges. Nine separate and distinct CC issuers, all different CC companies. So you can understand better why I did not see coming what NFCU Flagship did to me.
This will not happen a second time.
Hello, Argyll
NFCU claims my purchase amounts to a cash equivalent. They base this solely on the MCC.
I want to reiterate that in the instance of NINE other, distinct, credit cards, the exact same charge earned rewards with no pushback, no problems at all, and no assertion of it being a cash equivalent.
If you read carefully my Singapore thread, especially the OP there, you will have a better handle on what happened to me. If you look at the MCC list mentioned there for Singapore, you will have some clue as to the rules I think NFCU is applying . . . . without saying so.
If they said it’s a cash equivalent, it’s in the terms and conditions that rewards may not apply.
It all comes down to how broadly the various CC companies DEFINE cash equivalent. When the vast majority are going in one direction, and NFCU is going in a different direction, then I believe NFCU is the odd man out.
The Singapore rules point to the direction NFCU has taken. They are VERY inclusive of all sorts of “quasi cash” transactions. But until I ran into NFCU I had not encountered those rules being applied by any other USA CC issuer . . . . not even the most strict or notorious.
It is interesting to me that a credit union, of all places, appears to be this strict with members. Credit unions are supposed to be member friendly. NFCU is NOT member friendly. At least to me, the Flagship card is worse than worthless. That large charge they accepted and then denied rewards I could have made with any number of other cards and gotten rewards easily. I am finished with NFCU. This is America. I do not play by Singapore rules.
As you’re engaging in some sort of MS arbitrage that is so questionable you need to keep it secret, instead of high dudgeon why not be happy you’re getting away with it at a lot of other places?