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PNC just launched a new checking account promotion yesterday. According to the promotion page, you can get $100 bonus when you open a new PNC checking account with qualifying direct deposit. This promotion ends on June 14, 2008.

The latest mention of PNC bank is in this March when PNC was running a check card promotion. According to my previous “Use ING and PayPal to Make Direct Deposit” post, PNC accept PayPal transfer as direct deposit (At least, someone reported this.). However, this time PNC makes specific requirement on direct deposit. Following is from the fine print:

A qualifying Direct Deposit is defined as a recurring Direct Deposit of a paycheck, pension, Social Security or other regular monthly income electronically deposited into a Free, Performance or Performance Select Checking account. The minimum amount of any single Direct Deposit must be at least $500. Direct Deposits must be made by an employer or an outside agency. Transfers from one account to another or deposits made at a branch or ATM do not qualify as Direct Deposits.

The $500 requirement and actual direct deposit from your employer makes this $100 bonus a little bit difficult to get. It seems the only you can get the bonus is to change your direct deposit account to your new PNC checking account. There are three different checking accounts that you can choose from. Free Checking Account, Performance Checking Account, and Performance Select Checking Account. I strongly suggest you open the free checking account which doesn’t have monthly service fees and minimum balance requirement. The minimum initial deposit is $25. The free checking account features:

• No minimum balance and no monthly service charge
• PNC Security Assurance
• Free PNC Bank Visa^® Check Card
• Free Visa Extras Rewards Program when you enroll your check card
• Free Online Banking and Bill Pay
• Ovedraft protection and AutoAlerts

According to my “Hard Pull and Soft Pull” post, no hard pull is performed for opening an account at PNC Bank. This is a national promotion although PNC branches are located at Virginia, Kentucky, Florida, Ohio, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and the District of Columbia area.

PNC Financial Services is a U.S.-based financial services corporation, with assets of $92.0 billion. PNC operations include a regional banking franchise operating primarily in eight states and the District of Columbia, specialized financial businesses serving companies and government entities, and leading asset management and processing businesses. PNC is America’s 11th largest bank by deposits and is the third largest bank off-premise ATM provider in the country.

Today I received a credit card invitation from WaMu card services. The name of the card is WaMu Real Rewards Visa Platinum Card which offers 7,000 bonus points after first purchase. I have already had a WaMu Visa Platinum Card on hand which provides free credit score monthly based on my TransUnion credit report every month (The review on this card can be found here.) . So this card is not so attractive to me (not to mention the 7000 points). However, this seems to be a new credit card product from WaMu which is currently the 9th largest credit card issuer in US. I want to briefly introduce this card here.

The basic benefits of this card

This WaMu Real Rewards Visa Platinum Card actually is previous Providian Real Rewards Card. As many of you may have already received this card, this card offers 7,000 bonus points after first purchase which can be redeemed as a $50 gift card. If you request a balance transfer at the card application, you can receive a 0% fixed APR on purchases until January1, 2010! That’s equal to 18 months 0% APR on purchases. There is no minimum amount required to do the balance transfer, so if you can transfer $100 and then pay off it in 1 or 2 months, you lose nothing but a small amount of interests. However, the 0% APR on purchases is really sweet. Besides the 0% APR, you can also get 1 point for every 1 dollar spent on this card. After you accumulate a certain amount of points, you can redeem them for a gift card from BestBuy, Target, Macy’s, Hertz, Circuit City and so on.

What else?

This is a Visa Platinum Card, so you can enjoy the built-in benefits from Visa Network like $0 liability for unauthorized charges, free auto rental collision damage waiver and many others. Plus, this card also provide free online access to your FICO credit score like other credit cards from WaMu. With WaMu credit card, you can receive automatic credit line reviews every 6 months. If you don’t make any mistakes with your WaMu credit card, your credit limit will increase automatically. These benefits seem so tempting.

However, I also receive some complaints from my readers about WaMu. He told me that his WaMu Platinum Card was closed due to the following three reasons:

• Inactivity for the last several months
• Serious delinquency
• Too many accounts recently opened

My answer is: If you use your WaMu credit card regularly and manage your credit in a normal way, you can enjoy the benefits brought to you from WaMu credit card. Anyway, if you don’t have a credit card from WaMu, you can try this one or maybe other credit card products from WaMu.

If you’d like daily tips, thoughts, and suggestions on how to maximum your rewards and how to catch sign-up opportunities, subscribe to MyCardBlog for free by clicking this link.

This is my monthly updated list of credit card sign-up bonus. I have a special page for credit card sign-up bonus where you can find a complete list of credit cards which will offer you a certain amount of sign-up bonus. I hope this list will be helpful for those App-O-Rama planners. I think it’s necessary to keep a tidy list of credit cards with some fulfillment requirements. The aim is to keep you updated with sign-up bonus offers. There are two main requirements for a specific credit card entering in this list: minimum $50 sign-up bonus and must be a mainstream brand like American Express, Discover, Citi, Chase, BOA, etc. Thus all the credit cards on this list are available to everyone.

All the credit cards are listed in order of value and I will try my best to keep this list updated in a monthly manner. Basically, I assume 100 points/miles=$1. Because you can always redeem your points or miles for certain gift cards.

My post “How to Save Money on Gas?” turned out to be a very popular post here at MyCardBlog. “Best Gas Cards Roundup” and “5 Top Rated Gas Rebate Cards” are also very popular in the past one month. I believe this phenomenon is due to the sky-high gasoline prices. However, there are more frustrating times for SUV, pickup truck, and motor home owner: With the climbing gas prices, they have to pay more money at the pump. At the same time, the credit card quirk at the pump makes it difficult for drivers to fill up their tanks completely.

Many gas stations have a $75 limit on Visa or MasterCard transactions at the pump! Of course, Discover card has a $50 limit at many gas stations.  American Express has different policies for corporate card holders and consumer card holders at the pump. This policy seems stupid to me. If we assume a SUV has a 25-gallon tank, the driver might need $100 limit at the pump to fill up the tank completely. The driver has to do another transaction to get his tank full.

The reason why the merchants set a $75 limit at the pump is to reduce the risk of fraud use of credit cards. And Visa/MasterCard typically only reimburse merchants only up to $75 per transaction at the pump if there is a charge back or a fraudulent card is used.

What can you do about this?

You have two options:

1. Start a second transaction. The limit system is designed to cut fraudulent charges, but it’s a ham-fisted tool. The limit is per transaction. You can just start pumping again in a new transaction. Starting a new transaction is an annoyance for customers, but it can become a burden for retailers that pay a per-transaction fee.

2.  Go into the store and pay to a cashier, where the limit is likely higher because it will be a face-to-face transaction.

If you are a SUV, pickup truck and motor home driver, it’s quite likely that you have to swipe your card twice at the pump to finish filling.

I believe this is by far the easiest sign-up bonus you can get from banks. TCF Bank is offering $50 gas card just for opening a new TCF free checking account. This promotion doesn’t seem to be listed on their website but can be found here.

According to the advertisement, you can get a $50 gas card on the spot! The small print at the advertisement also indicates that “Gas card will be awarded at the time of account opening.” I have never seen a sign-up bonus offered at the time of account opening.

Overall, it’s very easy $50 gas card to get.

• Open a TCF free checking account!
• Get a $50 gas card on the spot!
• Go fill up your gas tank immediately!

The TCF free checking account features no monthly service fees, no direct deposit requirement, no minimum balance required, and free online bill payment.

This promotion starts from May 31, 2008. This is a limited time offer and only available while supplies last. Only new TCF customers without a checking account in the previous 90 days are eligible to get the free $50 gas card.

Because TCF Bank will issue $50 gas card to you on the spot, you have to visit a TCF branch to open a new checking account. TCF has branches located in Illinois, Michigan, Colorado, Indiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Arizona.

I have a post about TCF promotion which offered $100 sign-up bonus with direct deposit (here). TCF often offers sign-up bonuses for their new customers.

According to the latest class-action settlement, eligible consumers can get up to 9 months of free credit monitoring service from TransUnion!

Yesterday TransUnion announced that it will soon provide eligible U.S. consumers up to 9 months of free credit monitoring and related services. This result is part of a settlement of a lawsuit that has been pending for a decade and arose from a product has been terminated in 2001 by TransUnion. The lawsuit claimed that TransUnion has violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act when it sold consumer information to businesses for their targeted marketing products. As we know, Fair Credit Reporting Act allows TransUnion and other related companies sell publicly available data to other businesses but nor private information. TransUnion is claimed to sell private consumer information to businesses which is a violation of the law, although TransUnion said it had not violate the law. TransUnion discontinued that practice is 2001.

As a consumer, what can you benefit from this class-action settlement?

1. 6 months of credit monitoring service, giving you unlimited access to you credit report and credit score. You will also receive email alerts for any changes occur on your credit profile.
2. 9 months of credit monitoring service, plus unlimited access to your credit report and credit score. You can also use TransUnion’s mortgage simulator service.
3. You can also sign up for cash payment instead of free service provided by TransUnion. However, such cash payment will not be available in 2 years. At the same time, the cash payments can only be made when the 75 million fund has been used up for any post-settlement claims.

If you choose the first option, you will sacrifice your right to enter a class-action claim against TransUnion. If you choose second option, you will lose any further legal claims against TransUnion.

Are you eligible?

According to the settlement, any individual who had an open credit account or an open line of credit from a credit grantor (bank credit card, department store credit cards, retails store credit cards, mortgage, auto loans, personal loans, and student loans) located in the United States anytime from January 1, 1987 to May 28, 2008 is able to choose the above mentioned options.

This free credit monitoring service seems to be useful for you to bump you hard inquiries on your credit report.

This idea comes from the interesting story about a California man who has been indicted for an inventive scheme that allegedly siphoned $50,000 from online brokerage houses E-trade and Schwab.com in six months, yes, a few pennies at a time.

We all know that some online savings accounts and brokerage accounts will deposit a certain small amount of money when a customer links his/her online savings accounts and brokerage accounts to another bank account to verify the routine and account information. You have to enter the amount, which is typically from $0.02 to $1.00, from your online savings and brokerage account to claim that the account belongs to you.

However, the California man, Michael Largent, used an automated script to open around 58,000 online brokerage accounts and accumulated thousands of dollars in about 6 months. He also used the same way with Google’s Checkout and accumulated $8,225.29 in eight different bank accounts. (According to www.wired.com.)

It seems that this is a way to get you rich? Actually, “trial deposit” appears to be a standard way to verify your account information and most banks or brokerage services will not withdraw that money. So, the more you have bank/brokerage accounts, the larger the amount of trial deposits you can collect!

How much can you make if you try this in a crazy way?

Let’s assume that you can link unlimited accounts to every account you have, and each trial deposit is around $0.5 which is a typically number. Of course, we should also assume that every account uses trial deposit to verify your account information. In this way, if you have n accounts and you want to link them together with each other, you might need n*(n-1) deposits! The actual money you can earn is $0.5*n*(n-1).

Here is the result:

10 accounts—$45.00

20 accounts—$190.00

30 accounts—$435.00

50 accounts—$1225.00

100 accounts—$4950.00

200 accounts—$19900.00

500 accounts—$124750.00

1000 accounts—$499500.00

You can imagine how much you can make if you can open unlimited accounts and link them with each other. Please don’t take this seriously.

“Hard inquiry” refers to a credit pull initiated by you, and it does affect your credit score. If you are curious about your credit score, you might find out that a hard inquiry might drop you credit score 5~7 points. If you have many hard inquiries in a short time period, your application for a new credit might get rejected even if you still maintain your credit score at a relatively high level. The reason is very simple, you are requesting too many credits from credit issuers such as banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions. However, “soft inquiries” will never affect your credit scoring. Because soft inquires are invisible to credit grantors. (Hard Pull and Soft Pull)

Usually hard inquires will disappear from your credit report in about 25 months in all three credit report agencies (TransUnion, Experian, Equifax). But do you want to bump off those notorious hard inquiries from your credit report earlier than 25 months? If you want to knock hard inquiries off of your credit report, there is a very easy way. I personally was able to get rid of all of hard inquiries on my credit report at TransUnion and Equifax. I applied for many credit cards in last August: Blue from American Express, Starwood Preferred Guest Card from American Express, Citi CashReturns Card, Discover Open Road Card, BOA Rewards American Express Card, CapitalOne No Hassle Cash Card etc. There are more than 12 hard inquires on my TransUnion and Equifax credit reports. However, right now, there is no hard inquiry on my TransUnion and Equifax credit reports!

The method is popularly named as “bumpage”—the process of pulling your personal credit report repeatedly in a short time period (usually 1 pull per 1 or 2 days or several times per week). In this way, you can generate a lot of soft inquiries on your credit report and eventually knock hard inquiries off of your credit report. The reason why you can bump off hard inquiries is credit report agencies have only limited space to store your personal information. If you throw in much new information in their system, they tend to delete older information. (Note: only works for inquiries.) However, “Bumpage” only works for TransUnion and Equifax.

How can you generate soft inquiries? There are many credit services on the market which allow you to pull your credit report in a daily manner. The most famous one is TrueCredit.Com and other credit services from TrueCredit but under other names (e.g. NationalCity Identity Protect). If you have an American Express card, you can choose CreditSecure from American Express. My “Know Your Credit Score” post have summarized some credit services on the market for your reference. However, there are many free ways to pull soft inquiries for you. For example, the pre-determination process from HSBC and BOA can generate a soft inquiry on your credit report every time you check for a credit card offer from them. The credit limit increase button in your online account at American Express can also generate a soft inquiry for you for free!

If you use only one credit service and pull your credit report daily, it will takes you about 2 months to start bump your hard inquiries. If you use multiple credit services at the same time, the bumpage process can be accelerated.

However, you might get rejected by TrueCredit or other credit service providers due to your excessive access to your credit report! But it’ highly YMMV.

Important update: This trick is not working for TransUnion now. Some one reported that the bumped inquiries came back on their credit reports again.