Tag Archives: Cash Back

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My Wife’s Super Easy Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card Retention Call

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Good morning everyone.  A few days ago, the $59 annual fee posted on my wife’s Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card.  Laura has been a loyal Capital One cardmember since before she met me and uses this card as her go-to 2% back everywhere card.  I told her she should call Capital One and ask them to waive the annual fee.  She looked at me strangely wondering why she should ask to waive the annual fee.  I told her that my Citi Double Cash Credit Card earns 2% cash back with no annual fee and we aren’t travelling, so we haven’t put any eligible travel purchases on the card that could be reimbursed.  Plus, she has never transferred Capital One “Miles” into frequent flyer miles.  She called the number on the back of her card and talked to a friendly Capital One rep.

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Overpaid Chase Credit Card? Receive Credit Balance Refund via ACH Bank Transfer Instead of Check

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Good morning everyone.  A few days ago, my Chase Sapphire Reserve Credit Card statement closed and I ended up with a credit balance of $349.34 because I redeemed 1/3 of my Chase Ultimate Rewards Points for several Pay Yourself Back transactions.  I called Chase to see if I could move the credit balance from my Chase Sapphire Reserve to another Chase credit card (to act as a payment), but the rep said that the Pay Yourself Back transactions were not eligible to be moved to another Chase credit card.  She then asked if I would like to receive a check in the mail for the credit balance.  Before I said yes, I asked if it were possible to get a bank transfer instead.  She said yes – Chase recently started offering bank transfers for credit balances.  She told me I would receive an email from Chase in the next day with instructions on how to set up my Chase Payments account and receive a bank transfer.  I thanked her for her help and waited for the email to arrive.

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PSA: Check Posting Date of Discover It Purchases Near End of Quarter (Don’t Miss 5% Cash Back Transactions)

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Updated 11:30am PT on 8/5/20: My August Discover It Credit Card statement showed the $16.00 cash back adjustment that I was missing on my July statement below.

Good morning everyone, I hope you all had a great Fourth of July weekend.  Yesterday, I was reviewing my Discover It Credit Card statement and noticed that I only earned $4.05 cash back on my last statement.  After reviewing my transactions, I saw that my $400 Costco online purchase posted on July 2 (2 days after the end of Q2).  In Q2, Warehouse Clubs (like Costco) were providing 5% cash back, so my $400 purchase should have earned me $20 cash back ($400 x 5% = $20).  I did some research and called Discover for help.

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Reminder: Chase’s Pay Yourself Back Feature Does Not Allow Multiple Partial Redemptions

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Good morning everyone, I hope your week is going well.  A few days ago, I wrote Why I Redeemed 1/3 of my Chase Ultimate Rewards Points with the Pay Yourself Back Feature.  That post received many great comments, but the comment from Al was especially relevant to me:

“I didn’t realize that the maximum redemption for an eligible charge (grocery) had to be made at one time. I redeemed $300 out of a $500 charge figuring I could redeem the remaining $200 at a later date. Well, I was wrong. But now I know for the rest of my eligible charges.”

According to the Pay Yourself Back terms, “Once you redeem any amount of points towards an eligible purchase for a statement credit, it will no longer be an eligible purchase.” I inadvertently tested this out on June 28 when I did a partial redemption (I did not do the max dollar amount) for a Trader Joe’s purchase.  As you can see, I only have 3 eligible Pay Yourself Back transactions available.

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Why I Redeemed 1/3 of my Chase Ultimate Rewards Points with the Pay Yourself Back Feature

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Good morning everyone, I hope your weekend is going well.  I recently had a change of heart and decided to redeem 1/3 of my Chase Ultimate Rewards Points with the Pay Yourself Back feature.  Chase introduced the Pay Yourself Back feature on May 31 and I wrote How to Redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards Points via Pay Yourself Back (1.5 Cents Per Point for Restaurants, Grocery Stores & Home Improvement).  Initially, I was not very excited about the new feature, since I convinced myself that I could use my Chase Ultimate Rewards Points in other ways and get more than 1.5 cents per point.

After realizing that I had no concrete travel plans remaining in 2020 (I recently cancelled trips to Boston & New York along with a big trip to Africa), I figured that my stash of Chase Ultimate Rewards Points would probably not be used much this year.  Before redeeming 1/3 of my Chase Ultimate Rewards Points, I looked at Chase’s travel partners to see if there were any major reasons to keep my Chase Ultimate Rewards Points.  Chase has 13 airline and hotel partners, but only has 4 exclusive partners (Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, IHG, and Hyatt), the remaining 9 travel partners are accessible with American Express Membership Rewards Points, Citi ThankYou Points, and Capital One Miles.

My wife and I have ~58,000 Southwest Airlines points and ~$150 in travel credit, so I would not need to transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards Points to Southwest Airlines.  I am not a huge fan of United Airlines and can usually book Star Alliance flights with other travel programs, plus I have ~$178 travel credit from a cancelled United flight.  IHG points are worth ~0.5 cents per point and I have ~222,000 IHG points in my account.  Last but not least, Hyatt is the only travel partner that stands out from the list.  I decided to save at least 60,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points just in case we stay at a Hyatt later this year).

I figured that normal spending on our Chase Ink Cash Credit Card, Chase Sapphire Reserve Credit Card, and Chase Freedom Credit Card this year would replenish our Chase Ultimate Rewards Points balance by the end of 2020.

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