<p>“Do you mind sharing card with the $400 sign-up offer?”</p>
<p>I always find my best cards on pointsguy.com, he has the info and the links.
This offer is for a Chase Sapphire, as geeps says, there is a minimum spend—it is a 5K spend in three months. Annual fee is free for the first year, then $95 afterwards. I personally would get the points, cash them in for cash or gift cards, then cancel before the fee came up. There is a Chase Ink Plus card that offers 50K points (to be converted into a $500 check). I just select the top deals at the pointsguy site, there are always new deals to be had.</p>
<p>…also Southwest personal card- 50k points, SW business card 50K points…10K more points gives you the companion pass where someone flies free when you book your flight, even if you book with points. Both my wife and I did this…2 companion passes, 2 kids…</p>
<p>…United Explorer card has a 55K sign up point offer…</p>
<p>…AMEX Premier Rewards Gold card has a 50k sign up bonus.</p>
<p>You can also sell your points online…I’ve been getting .01375 for Chase ultimate award points.</p>
<p>Yes, I am aware this can be done; I am just not interested in doing it. I review the paper cc bills each month, mark them with any questions, and hand them to my H if I have any questions about his charges, which he addresses when he has time. This works for us, as I do not think I could get him to go online to do the review, at least within the time frame that is convenient for me.</p>
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<p>It really comes down to what you are comfortable with. I review my bank statements online once a month, and my credit card paper bills when they arrive. I have a system that works for me, as most people probably do. I also think there is some confusion on the part of people who think that using debit cards is more of a hassle than it really is, which is not at all for a lot of people.</p>
<p>Wow, Bay! Wonder why you are a fraud victim every 6 months. That seems awfully frequent. Have hardly ever had that experience in our decades of CCards. Have you tried to pinpoint how your numbers and or info is being stolen and released?</p>
<p>I don’t know whether every 6 months is frequent or not. We are in CA, and the fraud charges have ranged from a casino in Las Vegas, to a “test” charge in FLA (I guess they charge a tiny sum to see if it goes through undetected), to a local tire store charging through its branch in Hawaii, to a lumber store in a city about 50 miles from here, and more. My cc fraud alert departments have caught these immediately, which is comforting, and replace the cards immediately. In the lumber store case, they could tell by the swipe that it was an actual fraudulent plastic card that was used. Supposedly, restaurant workers are suspect, as they remove your card from view when running it, and we dine out a lot.</p>
<p>Wow! We dine out a lot too, but have only had about two or three fraudulent attempts in all the decades we’ve used CCards, including many food and restaurant charges. Fascinating!</p>
<p>Himom,
I don’t want to reveal how much we charge on our cc’s, but it is a lot! I will venture to guess it is multiple times higher than the average cc user, which would probably increase the incidence of fraud by the same multiple.</p>
<p>I had that same mentality…which my older relatives felt was extreme considering it turned out they read my spending habits/mentality towards spending much better than I did…that I’m not the type to fall into that trap. </p>
<p>Ended up biting me when I tried renting my first few apartments in the Boston area right after graduation as landlords run credit checks and many with more desirable reasonably priced apartments won’t rent to those with insufficient/no credit history when there’s plenty of fresh college grads with 4 years worth of good credit history from credit cards and with other stuff I had like summer/part-time jobs, good checking acct history for 4 years, small loans paid back in timely manner, etc. </p>
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<p>If you’re not already shredding any junk mail, financial documents/errata, or anything else with your/your family’s name and address, start doing so. </p>
<p>One common way ID thieves rip people off is to dumpster dive for unshredded items like the above and use the name/address to open up credit card accounts and use them for as long as they’re undetected/sell off thousands of such names/addresses to other fraudsters/criminals all over the world.</p>
<p>Actually, I think Bay is right and it’s much easier for waiters, etc to just steal your info when they ring up your bill than to deal with spoiled food and worse in dumpster diving. Could never see why anyone would bother when they could get access much more easily and cleanly by being a cashier or waiter. </p>
<p>We are also careful to never mail anything out of our mailbox. We take all outgoing mail to post office and try to pick up mail shortly after delivery. Have heard of thieves stealing outgoing bill payments from mailboxes and trying to steal from accounts. Gain, much easier and cleaner than dumpster diving (thomthe methods of thieves are diverse and not mutually exclusive).</p>
<p>The last time I had any issue with theft of my debit card number I believe it happened at a no name ATM on the boardwalk at a small amusement park. A few days later my bank caught some test charges trying to go through.</p>
<p>My DH’s credit card number has been stolen twice. Once, years ago, charges of over $20K appeared on his monthly paper bill. One for $10K to a company in Florida that sells stun guns and the ilk and one for $10K to what appeared to be a South African Foreign Exchange Company. This last time was just a couple of months ago and it was smaller ($70) of items bought from an online cake supply company. The CC company reversed all charges in both cases (in the latter they even had the address to which the items were shipped).</p>
<p>I find it annoying that so many bills come in the mail expecting that you will write down your CC and send in to pay them. I never do this even though a good majority of the Doctors and Hospitals in my area expect this and have no system of online payment set up. I would rather personally go to the office and pay the bill than risk sending my account number through the mail.</p>
<p>On two occasions I’ve been notified by different universities that their records were breached and my social security number may have gotten loose on the street after the security breaches by them. The universities recommended I contact credit bureaus and request fraud alert be attached to my records. If I have fraud alert attached to my credit reports, will my credit be dinged or will it just maybe mean any credit I seek may be delayed being approved because of extra checks because of fraud alert?</p>
<p>I don’t use ATMs other than rarely, and these are in banks or stores with employees and customers all around to minimize Risha of tampered ATMs, which can steal your data and pin.</p>
<p>Your credit is NOT dinged by fraud alerts placed on them, but you may receive a phone call confirming its really you if you apply for credit. This is mild, minor inconvenience. Us really need to beef up cyber security. Our flagship U had its data hacked too.</p>
<p>They used to call customers “deadbeats” who used credit cards as a way of getting a few weeks “loan” for free (i.e always paid the bill in full every month) but when the economy took the big downturn and many people were unable to pay even minimum balances we “deadbeats” who faithfully paid our bills in full all of a sudden didn’t look so bad in their eyes. </p>
<p>And they narrowed the window between the closing date of the bill and when it was due. Now they are usually due 2-3 weeks after the closing date. No more free months loan.</p>
<p>For me, I like calling to pay by phone he day I get the statement. You can often state when you want the funds transferred from your checking to pay the statement.</p>
<p>It’s not “free” money when we don’t pay interest – the credit card company makes 2-3% off of every purchase we make in merchant processing fees. The more we use the card, the more the fees to the bank. That’s probably why they offer the cash back and points rewards – they are giving us a benefit for using the card, but they are getting that back (and more) in the transaction fees charged to the merchant. </p>
<p>So yes, those us who take advantage of all these offers are coming out ahead – but we are basically drumming up cash for the bank every time we run our card. </p>
<p>I don’t know if the payment times have gotten shorter or not – I do everything by ebill these days, and always pay online – so it’s all automated, with no lag time on either end for the paper to go through the mail. I always just set my electronic bills to be sent about a week ahead of the due date – so it’s always on time on my end.</p>
<p>Yes, up thread, it has been posted how companies issuing cards make $$$ from fees charged to merchants, late and finance charges to cardholders, sometimes annual fees from cardholders and sometimes fees for branding cards. These all add up and become a cost of doing business, where these forms of payment are accepted. </p>
<p>I have very few qualms using the form of payment most convenient to me, giving me the most benefit. If merchants choose to limit payment options or incentivize them, it is their choice.</p>
<p>I haven’t read all 14 pages of posts so I am sure something similar has probably been said but this past weekend we had a situation where my 20 year old son unexpectedly needed to rent a car. It was near impossible to find anyone that would rent to a 20 year old but finally we did but the first thing everyone asked was whether he had a major credit card in his own name and thankfully he had one with a high enough limit. Before he left for his internship we were able to increase his credit limit from $500 to $2000 and thank goodness we did! Now I have access to his online account and I can see that he has already paid that charge even though it only posted a couple of days ago. He regularly pays any charges he puts on that card from his checking account the day it posts to his account. He only uses it for gas, online charges, and such. Generally uses cash for most things but boy were we glad he had that card this weekend.</p>
<p>Most merchants benefit from taking the credit cards, even with the fees, because people tend to spend more money when it’s going on a card. So what they lose in the fees is more than made up with improved sales.</p>
I will venture to guess it is multiple times higher than the average cc user, which would probably increase the incidence of fraud by the same multiple.</p>