I just went to see my account and noticed that my account is now labeled "Platinum Rewards Visa Signature" instead of just Platinum Rewards. I'm now in my second month under this new label according to my statements page.
Last month, I got a call about fraudulent charges on my card. They quickly closed the card and issued me a new one with a different number. But in doing so, they seem to have issued the new "upgraded" card (which is really a downgrade in terms of rewards from 5/3/1 to 3/2/1.
Has this happened to anyone else? I pretty much just lost my go-to gas and walmart grocery card. I'm kind of annoyed. I didn't want the so-called upgrade. :-(
My card still looks like the old one except for the chip on the left side.
Start (Sept 2011): low-mid 600s. NOW: TU FICO: 801, EQ FICO 808, EX FICO 798 (PSECU). Goal: Achieved! Now Maintain!
I went and checked mine and it's still the Platinum Cash Rewards Visa.
You should maybe give them a call and find out why they product changed you without getting approval from you first. Hopefully they can change it back without much hassle.
I never received a letter, e-mail, or online account notification of the changes to Penfed Cash Rewards card that other people got last year either so I was paranoid that they'd go ahead and change it up on me without telling me but that never happened. I do keep a small amount in my Penfed Regular Share account though (same with PSECU). I feel like it gives them less of a reason to mess with me or close out my accounts and allows them some capital to loan to other credit union members and earn some interest but I could be way off on that.
Lurker,
I'm calling tomrrow to get to the bottom of this. But I did look that the statement that just cut and I actually see no rewards totals listed (i never looked before on the statement).
That being said, at the very bottom of the statement, it does say that I earn 5/3/1. SO that's a good sign. However, the top of the statment has the Visa Signature logo.
The first thing that made me wonder was when I went to the rewards page. Normally, I would see the Plat Rewards card on the top left next to the PenFed logo. Now, I see the Sig card even though I don't have one....physically anyway. It could be nothing. I will call.
Well, I just got a new Visa Signature Platinum Rewards in the mail today....the vertical style. Same numbers front and back.
I called PenFed complaining. They said I had nothing to worry about. the rewards are staying 5/3/1. The CSR said there was talk about lowering the rewards to 3/2/1 but PenFed decided not to change it. I was surprised. First time I was hearing of this.
So, there it is....supposedly...new card but the same 5/3/1 rewards.
That is good and also how it is supposed to be. Why should the same card give better rewards for Platinum than for Signature versions? That simply would not make sense and would be a downgrade for the customer 
@lg8302ch wrote:That is good and also how it is supposed to be. Why should the same card give better rewards for Platinum than for Signature versions? That simply would not make sense and would be a downgrade for the customer
Well, the Platinum version is no longer available, so they were (originally) really planning the new card to be a downgrade. Then they would have to deal with what to do with existing users. They have already nerfed the point values, so I guess for now that was enough!
takeshi74 said:
As indicated above downgrade was the point for PenFed. It technically wasn't the same card. There was a lot of backlash (popular discussion topic on credit related sites all over not too long ago) and they backpedaled.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think that's exactly it. I remember all that talk on the credit blogs and here as well. The consensus was pretty simple: How is lower rewards an upgrade? PenFed thought the Visa Sig features would somehow dupe people into thinking it was a better card despite the lower reward structure. Well, customers spoke loud and clear and here we are with the 5/3/1 maintained.
Sure, they downgraded the point value from 1 cent to about .85 cents but it's still better than switching to 3/2/1 at a penny each.
All's well that ends well I suppose. I just don't like the vertical style. It's gonna take a while to get used to which side is "up" when I put it back in the wallet. I keep looking to see where the strip is before I put it back in the wallet. hahahaha