@thom02099 wrote:
Some of us are oldtimers, having been around a long time in the credit world. We can remember what it was like to get that first AMEX Green (when it was the only AMEX available), or that Diners Club and Carte Blanche were, at one time, the top drawer cards, long before Centurion and Palladium. I'm sure some of us will remember the advent of the Discover Card back in the 80s (it premiered during the SuperBowl of 1986), and was a part of the Sears network at the time.
Back in the day, credit cards were just that...a means to make a purchase on credit, basically a short cut loan. The only real criteria that was considered were income and the (early) versions of the credit scores, back when a 620 was considered a good qualifying score. I remember when credit cards did not offer benefits, and also when they DID start offering benefits. I remember the release of the AMEX Gold card, it was the standard that everyone who was successful wanted to attain. There were, at one time, just pain vanilla "Visa" cards, no frills/no bank affiliation on the card, just "Visa". I'm sure others of the "old timers" around here may have memories of the "olden days"! In some respects, I do miss those days, when credit was much simpler and we didn't all worry about FICO scores and AMEX FRs!
Right, back then credit cards were just a convenient option to cash tender and didn't come with perks or rewards. This is the reason ATT Universal came up with the "non annual" fee credit card.
Without perks and rewards, everyone refused to use a card with an annual fee.
Since I recall that era, even to this day I would refuse to use any card anything less than 1% return on spending, let alone one which didn't have any at all. Aside from reserving airline/hotel reservations and online purchases, I'd stop using credit cards altogther (let alone paying a fee for using one) if they ever decided to purge rewards on spending, sign up bonuses and perks. In this case, I'd go back to spending cash and gain the benefit of a merchant's good will.