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ArticlesCredit Card Rewards: Head to Head
First Posted: December 15, 2004 Credit Card Evaluations Part 2:If you have a CAA membership, here's one way to pay it off. You earn 1% on all purchases towards the cost of your membership. If you get the platinum, you get all the extras as well. Their deal with Sunoco is over, so you won't get any preferential gas prices. This card isn't really special in any way. MBNA PremierRewards Mastercard Very VERY straightforward. You get one percent back on everything, and that one percent is credited to your bill each January. The one advantage this has over enrich is that there is no cap on the amount of reward you receive! MBNA Starwood Preferred Guest Mastercard Hot Deal! This is my personal choice. I'm not going to pass up the prospects of near 6% returns. I will discuss this card a bit more than the others because it is a huge mosaic of rewards, points, exchanges, and exceptions. I talk more about the points than the card itself, but suffice to say it has all the extras. Earning: At the base, you get pretty much a point for every two dollars. Starwood gives you an extra 5000 points if you reach $10,000 in a year, 10000 points for $20,000 and 15000 points for $30,000, making your return one point per dollar. So, to maximize your return, make your goal one of those increments. On sign up, you get 5000 points, and another 5000 if you pay to stay at a Starwood hotel (Sheraton, Westin, etc.). So if you spent $30,000 the first year you have the card, and some of those dollars were spent at a Starwood Hotel, you could get 40,000 points! That's two return flights within the continent (excluding fees) or up to 20 weekend hotel nights. Wow. Redeeming: There are an unbelievable array of options. I'll discuss airlines first. You can transfer points pretty much one-for-one with a lot of major airlines' miles programs. Plus, for every 20,000 you transfer, you get 5,000 extra. Aeroplan? No. Don't worry, though, there are tonnes of other options. If you really must fly Air Canada, you can transfer your points to All Nippon and use them on Air Canada flights [Hint: Don't use the booking site, just call ANA. It's way easier]. If you're willing to brush up on your spanish, you can transfer the points to LanChile's program one-for-two! That means that you can get a flight on American within North America starting at 20,000 Starpoints with 5000 LanChile points left over. You want to spend your points at a hotel? Well, there are six different categories, the first and second being the cheapest by far. For a category 1 hotel on the weekend, it costs 2000 points, or 3000 during the week. Category 1 hotels have become increasingly rare, especially in Canada. Category 2 is 3000 on the weekend or 4000 during the week. You can also redeem 1000 points for half off the rack rate but beware; that can end up losing you money. For a room that costs $75 on the website, the rack rate is $249, meaning a net loss of $50. Yuck. There are more deals on the SPG.com website that I didn't mention. Unfortunately, there are Exceptions:
A note about the Categories Don't earn millions of points to redeem for a month's stay at that perfect Category 1 hotel. Each year, the categories are re-evaluated, with some hotels moving up, and some moving down according to demand, construction, and the niceness of the hotels. For example, the Montreal Dorval airport hotel became a Category 1 hotel in 2005 because it was undergoing construction at the time. It doesn't really affect the stay, except sometimes the pool is closed. Starwood Redemption Examples
President's Choice Financial MasterCard Since having severed ties with Petro Points and Sears Club, the PC Mastercard returns have dropped off considerably. Almost every reward PC offers works out to be 1%. They still do offer an extended warranty on purchases, but otherwise you're better off with one of the 1% cards. Royal Bank Esso Visa One of the few Visas on the list, this card offers the promise of instant redemption. You should be able to step into any Esso and just get something for free. You can also do that with Petro-Points, so this card would only ever be worth it for those that use an Esso often, to take advantage of the 2 points per dollar on purchases at an Esso station. Esso Extra Redemption Examples
Royal Bank Starbucks Duetto Visa Aside from the 1% reward, this card offers an interesting gimmick: you can use it like a debit card at Starbucks, charging it up and depleting it at your leisure. For the money that you add to this ancillary account, you get a whopping 3%, making this card worthwhile for any regular Starbucks patron. Scotiabank Scene Visa Card With an industry standard 1% return, the Scene Visa is worth a look. What puts it over the top is the 5% you earn whenever you spend money at a Cineplex theatre and a $20 opening bonus. TD GM Visa Card 3% seems nice at first, but that 3% is very very limited. You can only use it on a new model GM Car off the dealer's lot, and you can only use it for up to around 6% of the sticker price of the car. If you are one of the few that fits that profile, get the card until you've earned that 6% and then ditch it. 6% of a $20,000 car is $1200, so you have to spend $40,000 to earn that much. |
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