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Well first and foremost let me say Hi, I've been a looooooooong time lurker and reader of many posts and I must say that I love this forum. Today I tried to contact capital one bank and tried to upgrade my platinum card to the cash rewards card. I was first assisted by a nice csr who then transferred me and then someone else spoke to me in regards to my request. The 2nd csr then told me that she was unable to fulfill the request for me and said that I would be approved if I applied for a new card, despite being with them for 5 years with no initial credit increases or late payments. I told her thanks but no thanks, and I'll be closing my card today!
I understand your frustration. Everyone with Capital One goes through the same thing. I did recently also.
I didn't close it because it's my 2 oldest accounts.
Cap1 doesn't accept consumer initiated CLI requests or PCs on the vast majority of their cards ~ they always would just rather have you open a new account.
Capital One has some great cards....often the best in class or pretty close to it. But they, as a company to deal with, just suck. If you can stomach their BS and get the card you want, it can be worth it. But if you are going after a card from them, make darn sure it's the best card you can get for your needs.
-The Venture Card is one of the best for Miles. It's straight forward and easy to understand. Sure, some others may be better under special circumstances but if you don't want to think about conditions or specific airlines or specific types of flights, it's probably the best all around.
-The Green Cash Rewards Card is great for cash back if you spend a lot. Others like the Freedom and Amex Blue Preferred are better under certain spending categories and purchase types and can have limits on categories (Freedom does). But if you only want one cash card and don't want to think about qualifying purchases or limits and spend a lot, the general limitless 1.5% will outdo the others everytime. Check out NerdWallet dot com and use the cash back calculator to see how it would work for you.
Finally, the Spark Cash Business card is the most lucrative as a stand alone card with 2% cash back. That beats everyone if you spend a lot on a lot of different categories that don't qualify for higher percentages. And if you own a business, chances are that your biggest purchases don't qualify for anything better than Spark's flat 2%.
Great Cards for big spenders with little desire to "strategize". But what a rotten bunch to deal with. I hate them.
@ztnjpv wrote:Capital One has some great cards....often the best in class or pretty close to it. But they, as a company to deal with, just suck. If you can stomach their BS and get the card you want, it can be worth it. But if you are going after a card from them, make darn sure it's the best card you can get for your needs.
-The Venture Card is one of the best for Miles. It's straight forward and easy to understand. Sure, some others may be better under special circumstances but if you don't want to think about conditions or specific airlines or specific types of flights, it's probably the best all around.
-The Green Cash Rewards Card is great for cash back if you spend a lot. Others like the Freedom and Amex Blue Preferred are better under certain spending categories and purchase types and can have limits on categories (Freedom does). But if you only want one cash card and don't want to think about qualifying purchases or limits and spend a lot, the general limitless 1.5% will outdo the others everytime. Check out NerdWallet dot com and use the cash back calculator to see how it would work for you.
Finally, the Spark Cash Business card is the most lucrative as a stand alone card with 2% cash back. That beats everyone if you spend a lot on a lot of different categories that don't qualify for higher percentages. And if you own a business, chances are that your biggest purchases don't qualify for anything better than Spark's flat 2%.
Great Cards for big spenders with little desire to "strategize". But what a rotten bunch to deal with. I hate them.
Venture is good so long as you are looking for domestic coach tickets. If you're looking to take an occasional international trip in first/business, Venture is not going to work for you.
Fidelity still has their 2% CC I think, so I haven't understood the hype with Cap One's 1.5% card. But I don't generally do cashback cards.
Venture is good so long as you are looking for domestic coach tickets. If you're looking to take an occasional international trip in first/business, Venture is not going to work for you.
Fidelity still has their 2% CC I think, so I haven't understood the hype with Cap One's 1.5% card. But I don't generally do cashback cards.
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I never understood it that way. I just thought it was simply a matter of adding up your miles and moving the decimal 2 spots to the left and that's the cash value.
So, 80,000 is simply $800 worth of airfare or travel related expenses. You want first class? It just takes more miles.
@ztnjpv wrote:Venture is good so long as you are looking for domestic coach tickets. If you're looking to take an occasional international trip in first/business, Venture is not going to work for you.
Fidelity still has their 2% CC I think, so I haven't understood the hype with Cap One's 1.5% card. But I don't generally do cashback cards.
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I never understood it that way. I just thought it was simply a matter of adding up your miles and moving the decimal 2 spots to the left and that's the cash value.
So, 80,000 is simply $800 worth of airfare or travel related expenses. You want first class? It just takes more miles.
Exactly. So a $6000 business class ticket to Europe will take 600,000 Venture miles. To get 600K Venture miles, you need to spend $300,000.
That same ticket will cost 100,000 airline miles in most programs. To get 100K airline miles, even if you only earn 1 mile per dollar, it takes $100K spend. When you add multiplier categories, and bonus transfers, that comes down even more. Take PRG for example. MR has frequent transfer bonuses such as 50% bonuses for transfer to Delta. Now you only need ~67K MR points to get to 100K miles. PRG gives you a 15K bonus for $30K spend. 2x gas/groceries and 3x airfare. It's not too hard to imagine scenarios where you get down to $40K of spend to get those 100K miles or that $6000 ticket. But even at the 1 mile per point earn rate, you're still going to earn a ticket like that 3x faster than using Venture.
This is the problem with the fixed value cards. They're not cost effective for aspirational awards.