MyCardBlog

Just before Christmas Eve I received an email from one of my readers who wanted to make sure that the American Express Simply Cash Business Card is a nice card and worth a hard inquiry. My reply was very simple—“This is one of my dream cards. You certainly should apply for this card! ”

According to the terms and conditions, you can:

Earn 5% Cash Back on gas, office supplies, and wireless services (3% from July 1, 2008)

Earn 1% Cash Back on virtually all other purchases

No limits to the Cash Back

you can earn 0% introductory APR on purchases for the first 12 months

Rebate will be awarded into your monthly statement every month
No annual fee

And here is a list of merchants which are in the above mentioned 5% category.

Office supplies: Staples, Office Depot, OfficeMax.

Wireless services: T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, Alltel, etc

Gas stations: Shell, Mobil, Chevron, Hess, WaWa, Valero, BP, etc (Note: Wal-Mart, Meijier and other gas stations will not be included in 5% category.)

Here is the simple cash rebate estimator, and you can calculate how much cash back you can get from this card every month. Mine is about $12 every month.

One of my friends told me that he was trying to close the American Express business gold rewards card and was convinced to convert that card to this card. He said he was happy that they can do this. The only draw back is you can’t get sign-up bonus from this card. I remember that lots of friends jumped in the Business Gold Rewards card before Oct. 15, 2007. Because they will charge a $125 annual fee on that card, you might want to convert that card to this one. I can’t guarantee you can convert another business card to this card. But, at least, you can call them up and request them to do so.

How can you apply for a business card without a real business?

If you don’t have a business and want to apply for a business card for personal use, you can put Solo Proprietorship as the business type and your name as the busines title. You can use your personal SSN as ITIN. You can put $0 revenue and 0 years in business. It won’t affect your chance to get a business card (as a start up company). The credit card issuers will pull your personal credit report.

According to the new study conducted by Javelin Strategy & Research, Bank of America took top honors for the second year in a row in the report ranking the largest U.S. banks on how well they protect their customers from fraud and identity theft. JPMorgan Chase, Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo tied for second place, and Citibank came in fifth.

The study focused on 25 major U.S. banks that together hold 50% of U.S. checking-account deposits. One of the major drawback of this study is they just measured banks’ policies for preventing, detecting and resolving fraud. However, they didn’t get the feedback from their customers. So I don’t believe the ranking reported by Javelin Strategy & Research. As we all know that banks will have their own strategy to prevent the identity fraud. Every bank will try their best to protect their customers. To a certain degree, the policies mean nothing. How to execute the policy is much more important than how to make the policy. From my point of view, JPMoragn Chase will be ranked as the top safe bank, Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo will be tied for the second place. Bank of America will be ranked as the fourth safest bank. As for Citibank, I don’t believe they are a safe bank. They have way too many Indian customer service representatives, and you can imagine how they will “protect” your account.

You can see the full report here.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Fair Isaac, which created the popular FICO credit score, is making some small adjustments to the way it calculates American people’s credit scores.

The penalties for occasional slip-ups in making monthly payments will be reduced; while those who repeatedly make late payments will see their scores fall more.

People who are using more than 80% of their limits on credit cards will see their scores fall more. (It’s important to get a huge credit limit and lower the usage of your credit.)

Those who manage a variety of loans — such as having a mortgage, an auto loan, and credit cards at the same time — will see boost of their credit scores only if they can perfectly manage their credit—never a late payment.

Applying for credit too many times won’t hurt your score any longer, which used to lower your score. (This is definitely good news for those deal catchers.)

In a word, the changes seem to make clearer distinctions between good credit risks and bad ones.

The changes of the new credit scoring system intend to provide better prediction on whether you are a good borrower or not. If you are already have a good credit score, please keep doing what you are doing now. If you are always missing the payments, you’d better knock your head and figure out every method you can to make timely payments.

Hello everyone, I just want to let you know that I received the check card promotion as I posted here. I wrote a bank email to Chase about this bonus. Their responses were really disappointing. (see here) So I called them up and asked when I can get the $50 bonus. The lady told me that there’s a delay about the bonus. She also told me that the bonus will be available in the early Jan. When I logged in my account today, I saw the “12/26/2007 CHECK CARD USAGE PROMO $ 12/25CHECK CAR $50.00” in my checking account. Obviously they honored the bonus on 12/16. From my own experience, maybe it’s a good idea to call Chase if you haven’t received the bonus yet. Just tell them your check card number and they will investigate on your case. Attached is the replied email from Internet Service Center. They are useless! If you have any problem, you’d better call them up.

Dear David,

We appreciate your inquiry and we want to help. We have submitted a request for research on the issue and if the requirements were met, you will receive the credit in five to seven business days. We sincerley apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused you.

If you have any questions or require further assistance, please e-mail us via the Secure Message Center or contact our Internet Service Center at 1-877-242-7372.
Thank you,

XXXXXXX

Internet Service Center

Dear David,
I want to thank you for your patience and your business with Chase and wanted to write you back to let you know that I did receive a response from my inquiry about your promotion. Unfortunately, you did not qualify for the promotion as the requirement was to spend $500.00 with the card during the time period, but it appears only $328.41 was spent. I am sincerely sorry for any inconvenience and thank you for your time.

If you have any questions or require further assistance, please e-mail us via the Secure Message Center or contact our Internet Service Center at 1-877-242-7372.

Thank you,

XXXXXXX

Internet Service Center

Dear David,

Thank you for contacting Chase.

I apologize for any inconvenience you experienced due to the promotional offer. If you have not received a response from a previous inquiry, the inquiry may not have been submitted properly. Please provide me with the offer code related to the promotion you are requesting. Once I receive this information I can forward this to our research department to determine if your account will qualify for the promotion bonus. In addition to the time required for your response this may take three to five business days.

If you require further assistance, please e-mail us via the Secure Message Center or contact Chase By Phone at 1-800-935-9935. Chase By Phone representatives are available to assist you 7:00 AM – 9:00 PM, seven days a week with automated account information available 24-hours a day.

Thank you,

XXXXXXX

Internet Service Center

My post about redeeming ThankYou Points for an airline ticket to Europe or Asia turned out to be one of the most popular posts in this blog. If you can earn enough ThankYou Points from Citi, it’s really a nice plan. Anyway, if we assume that a ticket to Asia or Europe is about $1,000 and you have 60,000 points to redeem a ticket, your earning for using Citi credit card is actually 1.6 point per dollar spent. If you are using Citi mtvU card for college students, your reward will be 5*1.6=8 points for making purchases at restaurants and Amazon.Com.

Another way to get a free airline ticket would be using airline credit card such as AAdvantage Card issued by Citi and United Mileage Plus Card issued by Chase. Today I’m going to briefly introduce how to get enough AAdvantage miles to redeem for an airline ticket.

At Citicards.com, you can only get 20,000 AAdvantage miles for a new AAdvantage credit card. However, Citi sent me two flyers this month both of which will let you get 25,000 AAdvantage miles for a new AAdvantage credit card. That’s 5,000 miles more. The application website is www.away6.citicard.com and www.fly9.citicards.com. Phone number is 800-829-7535 or 800-871-7639. I don’t know why they have two different addresses, but they are actually the same. This offer expires on May 31, 2008. Trust me you’re not going to get two AAdvantage consumer cards, although you have many choices. Another way is to apply for a business card at Citicards.com which will give you 25,000 AAdvantage miles. Ok, you might have 50,000 AAdvantage miles from Citicards. According to AA, 50,000 miles are enough for an economy class ticket to Europe or Asia at off-peak season. (see the detailed requirement)

There are also many other ways to earn AAdvantage miles.

Starwood Preferred Guest Card from American Express is offering 10,000 bonus points right now. The 10,000 points can be transferred to AAdvantage miles on a 1:1 basis plus 25% bonus miles, that is, 12,500 AAdvantage miles for signing up this card.

Fidelity is offering AAdvantage miles for opening a new non retirement brokerage account. If you deposit $2,500 in the new account, you will get 5,000 miles. If you deposit $10,000, you will get 15,000 miles. If you deposit $50,000, you will get 25,000 miles.

The above mentioned methods are the easiest and quickest ways to earn a huge amount of AAdvantage miles. I believe if you collect all the miles from above mentioned sources, you can get enough AAdvantage miles which are redeemable for a ticket to Europe or Asia.

Ok. The next job is to manage your credit card account. You should be careful that if you miss one payment, your default APR will be applied. In another way, you lose the promotional 0% APR offer if you miss one payment.

You have to pay the credit card minimum payment on time every month. Basically, you can do this either by pushing the money via check or online billpay to credit card account, or by having credit card account pull money from your bank account.

Usually what people do is to send the credit card issuer a check once you receive the monthly bill. It’s OK in most instances.

Another way is to use your online billpay at your bank account. Believe this is a very basic service that any bank should provide. It’s free and must be free. The process is very simple. You have to add a payee in your bank account, enter the address of the payee and then put your account number there. Once you finish the registration process, you are ready to go. Every month you can simply add the amount you need to pay, and then schedule the payment date. The bank will handle everything for you. This is what I’m doing right now. You can also use the repeating/recurring payment service from your bank. I know Chase and National City bank offer such kind of service. You just have to set a scheduled amount at the very beginning, and then the bank will send a payment to the payee every month. Since the first minimum payment will be largest minimum payment, you can send a same amount for the following months. You are all set! (I strongly recommend using the repeating/recurring payment service.)

You can also pay the minimum balance from your credit card account. You can set up your payment method online. And then connect a bank account to your credit card account. In this way, you can schedule a payment online.

Anyway, current financial services are much better than before. Please make sure you won’t miss a payment.

The purpose of this series is to let you know how to make money by taking advantage of balance transfer offers. I can foresee that the balance transfer offers without any charges will be no longer available soon. If you want to take a try, please hurry up.

Bank of America is offering $100 Statement Credit for new approved Rewards American Express Card. In order to get the $100 statement credit, your new account must be used to make any purchase, balance transfer or cash advance transaction totaling $25 excluding any transaction fees, if applicable within 45 days of the account open date. I applied this card in July 2007. At that time, they were offering $50 statement credit after spending $25 with this card. I got the $50 statement credit within 2 weeks. It’s super quick! At the homepage of Bank of America, you can still see the $50 statement credit offer. If you want to get the $100 statement credit, you should use this link.

This Rewards American Express Card will give you 1 world point for every dollar. When you get 5,000 points, you can redeem them for $25. If you have 10,000 points, you can redeem them for $100 gift card.

Another good offer is $100 bonus for opening a new MyAccess Checking Account using the offer code AOU2612. (Click here to see.) In order to qualify for the $100 bonus, you have to deposit $100 in the new account. The $100 bonus will appear in your account within 45 days. The new MyAccess checking account features no minimum balance required, no direct deposit required and no monthly fees.

OK, this is the third post about making money off of other people’s money. Sure, we are still getting $100 or more for sign-up bonus. That’s the easiest way to earn money from banks, and we are all doing this. However, by taking advantage of balance transfer, you can make more, just more, from a single credit card.

The previous post is about how to distinguish whether a credit card provides good balance transfer offer. A good balance transfer offer should have three major features:

1). 0% APR Balance transfer length should be longer than 9 months;

2). 0 balance transfer fee is best. However, due to the reported loss of most major US banks, we seldom see 0 fees offers these days. Usually they will charge 3% of your transferred balance, and some are with capped amount like $75 or $99. You should read carefully with the terms & conditions. Usually $75 is acceptable. (Bank of America is charging 3% with unlimited caps.)

3). 0 annual fees, at least first year should be free.

Hare are some cards I would recommend if you want to have a try. (Maybe you will receive good balance transfer offers from credit card issuers. Those targeted offers are not considered here.)

Discover More Card

Miles Card by Discover

Citi Professional Cash Card

Citi Professional Card with ThankYou Network

Citi Professional Card (0% APR on purchase)

Citi Upromise Platinum Select MasterCard

Chase offers some 0% APR for 6 months with capped $99 fee. Personally, I don’t think is a good deal. If you need cash immediately, you can find more at Chase.Com.

Application process: All you have to do is to find out your favorite card and then submit application as usual. Maybe they will ask you whether transfer balance to another credit card. If you don’t know how to do this, you can leave it blank. You can do this later on in your online account. Or, if you do know how to use another card to do balance transfer, you can put an amount there. They won’t reject your application for asking too much. For example, if you ask to transfer $20,000 to another card and the issued credit limit is only $10,000, the card issuer will transfer the balance according to you credit limit.

Once your application is approved, what should you do next?

The answer is how to transfer the available credit to your high rate saving or CD accounts.

Most credit card issuers will send you some checks with new card. Or Citi will even allow you to get a balance transfer check online! However, you should read carefully with the associated checks. Cash advance? You can also call the card issuer to confirm what you can do with the checks. I can deposit the checks from WaMu directly to my checking account with the checks received along with my new WaMu card. I call them up and confirmed that I can do this. I also wrote down the ID of the customer service representative.

Another way to do balance transfer is to transfer the balance to another credit card (This card doesn’t have to carry balance.). For example, you have new card A with balance transfer offer, and another card B. You can request to transfer balance from A to B. Once your request gets approved, you can see the balance on card B is negative. Then just go ahead and request a balance refund check from card B. You can deposit the check to you personal account. Again, Citi is most friendly with credit refund!

I have a special page about high rate saving accounts. You may check out there to find one for you to earn free money.