Credit Card rewards vs customer service?

[omgtain]

My mom taught me a good lesson early in life, if ever calling someplace for customer service (be it your credit card, internet provider, bank, etc), hang up and call again until you get the person who WANTS to go above and beyond for you.

My experience: I had my savings and checking account hooked up to my CapOne card, in my 2 years of having it I've never payed with my old / unused savings account.. somehow things slipped up and it tried to go through and I got slammed with fees from my bank. First 2 calls they said there was nothing to do and told me to eat the fee. Third time they waived $50 of fees.

There are good ones somewhere, just gotta dig.

[chwebb1]

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@jetsfan2013 wrote:

What matters most to you - a card that has great perks with bad service or average perks with superb service? A friend of mine recently dropped a company due to the latter.

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For me, customer service is more important than rewards most of the time. I would rather know that if I run into an issue with a purchase, I'll have a company backing me up. I almost always use my AMEX, Discover, and Barclaycards because in my experience, the CSRs have been very helpful when I call in. I've even had to have my credit card replaced with AMEX (my old one was used fraudulently), and they overnighted me a replacement card free of charge. To me, that's worth giving up a few dollars in rewards every month. Discover's CSRs are great, as well as the CSRs on my Barclaycard Ring. I haven't had enough experience on my Sallie Mae card, but I'm pretty sure a different group handles those calls, and from what I can tell so far, they're not as good as the CSRs for the Ring.

[jetsfan2013]

seems like the answers are as divided as the discussion I had with my friends on this. For some, they agree that their cards they own (in this case, Discover IT and AMEX were mentioned) have superb customer service when needed. Others mentioned Cap 1, BOA as having poor service and the reason they closed/transferred balances from them.

[longtimelurker]

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@jetsfan2013 wrote:

seems like the answers are as divided as the discussion I had with my friends on this. For some, they agree that their cards they own (in this case, Discover IT and AMEX were mentioned) have superb customer service when needed. Others mentioned Cap 1, BOA as having poor service and the reason they closed/transferred balances from them.

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While from all the surveys it seems like Discover and Amex have the best service, individually things can of course be different.   The only time I had to do a charge back was with Cap One, which was effortless, and the charge went away.  (And later I discovered that the merchant had in fact delivered the goods as promised (the delivery person had covered them for protection) so, like with Amex, they sided with me, in this case incorrectly!)

[xXIDaShizIXx]

Customer service. Somebody that won't push papers and will help me out if something goes wrong instead of "making a note of it". I worked in a call center, that means generally nothing will be done of it and there is no record of a note. That means a lot more than a couple hundred dollars I could make each year.

[chalupaman]

I'd want the best of both worlds. Great customer service when I have an important question I need to ask or need their help with something in addition to good rewards to go with having the card.

[red259]

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@jetsfan2013 wrote:

What matters most to you - a card that has great perks with bad service or average perks with superb service? A friend of mine recently dropped a company due to the latter.

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Perks matter more. I rarely need to deal with customer service, but I can always use the perks.