Just a quick reminder to keep track of your credit card rewards, and to make sure you’re receiving what was promised. I just logged in to check the status of our Citi Driver’s Edge rewards and found that we haven’t been credited properly over the past two months. When we originally signed up for this card in January, we were promised 5% off all purchases for nine months. But our July and August rewards were well below that mark. In fact, we should have received $147.10 and $101.20, but was credited just $75.00 and $20.24.
It appears that we prematurely fell back to the 5% off ‘everyday’ purchases (gas, groceries, pharmacy) and 1% off all else. Anyway, I gave them a call and was transferred from the regular customer service rep that answered to a Driver’s Edge redemption specialist. She looked up our account and confirmed that, while the promo should be in effect through October 1, we had somehow stopped receiving the 4% bonus on ‘other’ purchases. In order to fix this, she said that she would “re-apply the code” and that they would then refigure the rewards and make it right on my next bill. Sounds good but, for some reason, I suspect that I’ll be calling again next month. Anyway, I also realized that it’s time for me to start shopping around for another reward card, as we’re getting closer and closer to exhausting the $1, 000 reward limit on this card.
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That’s kind of the approach I’m taking — trying to stick with a couple options. However, I always get tempted with the new, “great” deals that I read about and think “am I missing something”. But there is a cost to changing (time, effort, etc.), so it has to be REALLY great for me to seriously consider a change.
I don’t spend much time on this. I only look for new cards when the gravy train on my existing cards is ending. And I don’t really dedicate any time to looking for these deals — I just seem to run across them in my normal travels across the web. As far as day-to-day maintenance goes, I log in every onece in awhile to request a check from my Citi cards that require that, and I look in on my Driver’s Edge reward balance every few months. We’ll probably be buying a car within the next year, so having close to $1,000 in credit toward that will definitely be worth the tiny amount of trouble. And the $300 in rewards for each of the other Citi cards is definitely worth the minimal effort required. They’re basically giving money away, so you might as well take it.
Nickel —
Question for you: How often do you re-evaluate your rewards program and decide to switch cards? Seems like a person could spend a lot of time with this and I’m considering the cost/benefit of frequently shifting. Any thoughts from you?
FMF