Chase Freedom Plus World Card
I have been merrily using my Chase Freedom World card MasterCard. I chose the card when I fired Capital One as they decided to raise credit limits on all accounts in good standing that had a credit line below a certain rate. My 7.99% was in that rate, so they whacked my interest rate. I whacked them back - got a new credit card, transferred my balance, and used the capital one card just enough to keep it active.
The Chase Freedom World card has been pretty cool, and I even got sent a check when my rewards reached the $50 level. Awesome! So I did some more looking into the card. It let me change to points, so I flipped over there to see if I could get a better deal. My thought was for the equivalent of $40 cash, I might be able to get a $50 gift certificate from Best Buy. No such luck as the best they could do was a $50 equivalent for a $50 gift card, and they even had some at a lower rate where you were charged more points than the card was worth.
Are they crazy? I reckon they make a killing that way. Gift cards are risky anyway as companies can charge fees, expire the cards, go out of business, file re-org bankruptcy, or find other ways to make your card not worth the plastic it’s printed on. I’ve even seen stories of gift cards bought for a certain package, they quit carrying the package and refused to grant any kind of redemption or trade-off for the gift card.
I figured I’d be better off getting cash back, so I swapped it back. I also decided to quit using the debit/fake visa card attached to my checking account and make my purchases with my credit card so I’d get more of the cash back. Wow! It was a stunning success. I managed to earn $40 in rewards the first month! I was going to high-five my husband until he gave me a, “Why the heck are you so excited over a credit card?” look. So I high-fived the dog, and he gave me the same look.
Everything seemed fine and I kept on charging things to my account. I got everything setup so I could make weekly payments on my Credit Card. Then something very strange happened. I got a new credit card in the mail. I couldn’t tell what was different, except that glaring $30 annual fee that they were kindly waiving for the first year. My first thought was, “Huh? What is this?” as I scratched my head and read through everything.
I searched online and finally found the differences. All are good except that glaring $30 annual fee. You earn a 2% bonus (3% total) reward for items purchased in your top 6 categories rather than your top 3. And the best part, there is no limit on the bonus rewards! Woohoo!!!! The first month, I found out there was a limit when I saw $12 even as my bonus rewards. Some other benefits are that the rewards do not expire, and there is no over-the-limit fee. Apparently for new customers there is also a $100 activation reward, but I don’t expect to get that since I’m already a customer.
I called Chase to get clarification. They said I could activate the new card or revert back to the Chase World card without the plus. I thought about it and decided to go ahead and activate. I think it is pretty cool that when they saw I was being denied extra rewards on my spending, they went ahead and approved me for the new card and sent it out. The card number, history, and all that remained the same. I just wish they would have explained it a little bit better in the materials they sent, but it’s all cool now.
Once I started using my card for just about every transaction, I started calculating in my head how much I get back. My husband gives me a funny look when I make a purchase and say, “I’ll get thirteen cents back on that one!” but his look wasn’t funny at all when I told him I’d earned $40 for the month with the Chase Freedom World card. I can’t wait to see how much I get back on my next statement with the Plus earnings. 