topic Re: Interesting Credit Card Rewards Story in Credit Cards

Interesting Credit Card Rewards Story

Kforce — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 01:15:24 GMT

Rewards card with 3 points earned per dollar spend.
Points worth 1c each when transferred to CU savings.(1:1)
Rewards points being lowered (Nerfed) to 1.5 point per dollar of spend. (Had good warning)

Put exact spend to hit minimum redemption threshold before statement date, then stopped all use of the card. Next cycle, after reward points post, redeemed all points as money in savings. Continued with no use on card. Last week of 3x points before the nerf date. A $2,200 refund from switching insurance companies hits the card. Day the refund credits, I called and had the credit balance transferred to a linked savings.

Next statement the refund amount was given the negative 3x points to rewards system. Current rewards points balance = (Neg) 6,394, a negative $63.94. If one will lose all positive rewards when closing a card you also lose all negative points when closing a card.

Last week I closed the card

Came out $63.94 ahead of the game.

Re: Interesting Credit Card Rewards Story

gdale6 — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 02:01:49 GMT

LOL, a good one to post...

Re: Interesting Credit Card Rewards Story

ptatohed — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 07:03:02 GMT

Love it!

Re: Interesting Credit Card Rewards Story

BronzeTrader — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 12:28:56 GMT

@Kforce wrote:

Rewards card with 3 points earned per dollar spend.
Points worth 1c each when transferred to CU savings.(1:1)
Rewards points being lowered (Nerfed) to 1.5 point per dollar of spend. (Had good warning)

Put exact spend to hit minimum redemption threshold before statement date, then stopped all use of the card. Next cycle, after reward points post, redeemed all points as money in savings. Continued with no use on card. Last week of 3x points before the nerf date. A $2,200 refund from switching insurance companies hits the card. Day the refund credits, I called and had the credit balance transferred to a linked savings.

Next statement the refund amount was given the negative 3x points to rewards system. Current rewards points balance = (Neg) 6,394, a negative $63.94. If one will lose all positive rewards when closing a card you also lose all negative points when closing a card.

Last week I closed the card
Came out $63.94 ahead of the game.

I do not know what CC bank this is. But personally I would not do that. Burning any CC bank is never good.

Clearly if the CC bank did the wrong thing, I certainly would not mind. But if this is a refund and reward pulling back, CC bank has done anothing wrong.

I just would not want to burn that bank just for the $64. I can make that much in less than a day.

Just me. Do not burn bridge. That CC bank may just blacklist you.

Re: Interesting Credit Card Rewards Story

AlanGJP — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 14:16:20 GMT

@BronzeTrader wrote:
I just would not want to burn that bank just for the $64. I can make that much in less than a day.

Just me. Do not burn bridge. That CC bank may just blacklist you.

I was thinking the same thing while reading the above. Thinking you got away with something, when a bank is involved, is almost never a good idea.

Re: Interesting Credit Card Rewards Story

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 16:11:49 GMT

@AlanGJP wrote:
@BronzeTrader wrote:
I just would not want to burn that bank just for the $64. I can make that much in less than a day.

Just me. Do not burn bridge. That CC bank may just blacklist you.

I was thinking the same thing while reading the above. Thinking you got away with something, when a bank is involved, is almost never a good idea.

I don't think @Kforce has really burned the bank at this point. The card is closed, which is perfectly OK. The credit union is free to bill for the rewards balance, if that is what they want to do (although as @Kforce says, they might be happy enough to make users forfeit positive points, so.....). If they do, and then they don't get paid, that is burning (and probably unwise) but at this point nothing wrong has happened.

Re: Interesting Credit Card Rewards Story

AlanGJP — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 17:49:20 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I don't think @Kforce has really burned the bank at this point. The card is closed, which is perfectly OK. The credit union is free to bill for the rewards balance, if that is what they want to do (although as @Kforce says, they might be happy enough to make users forfeit positive points, so.....). If they do, and then they don't get paid, that is burning (and probably unwise) but at this point nothing wrong has happened.

I can't speak to this specific CU as I have no experience with them, but I know Amex will open your account with a deficit if you have a negative point balance when you close your account. (Someone posted about it here, (with screenshots) maybe 6-12 months back)

Just something to keep in mind if you ever decide to open an account with them again. IF they do bill you, I'd absolutely pay it right away.

Re: Interesting Credit Card Rewards Story

Credit12Fico — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 18:20:14 GMT

@Kforce wrote:

. If one will lose all positive rewards when closing a card you also lose all negative points when closing a card.

Re: Interesting Credit Card Rewards Story

ptatohed — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 19:59:00 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@AlanGJP wrote:
@BronzeTrader wrote:
I just would not want to burn that bank just for the $64. I can make that much in less than a day.

Just me. Do not burn bridge. That CC bank may just blacklist you.

I was thinking the same thing while reading the above. Thinking you got away with something, when a bank is involved, is almost never a good idea.
I don't think @Kforce has really burned the bank at this point. The card is closed, which is perfectly OK. The credit union is free to bill for the rewards balance, if that is what they want to do (although as @Kforce says, they might be happy enough to make users forfeit positive points, so.....). If they do, and then they don't get paid, that is burning (and probably unwise) but at this point nothing wrong has happened.

^^^

I agree with ltl. If the CU asks for the rewards back and you don't provide it, then you are burning them. Otherwise, this is likely a drop in the ocean to most financial institutions and not worth their staff time to pursue. It's simply a cost of doing business.

Re: Interesting Credit Card Rewards Story

BronzeTrader — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 20:15:56 GMT

Hard to understand what people are doing.

To play CC card game, we earn rewards. Keep our rewards. Because we play the rules and earn it.

But do not take what is not rightly belong to us. All those things have owners and have rules. It is just not worth it for something this small.

Re: Interesting Credit Card Rewards Story

ptatohed — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 20:29:20 GMT

OP didn't do it on purpose. It's how the cookies crumbled. You want OP to contact them and ask if he can give back the rewards? I'd bet the service rep wouldn't even know how to reply, lol.

Re: Interesting Credit Card Rewards Story

Kforce — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 22:56:29 GMT

@ptatohed wrote:
OP didn't do it on purpose. It's how the cookies crumbled. You want OP to contact them and ask if he can give back the rewards? I'd bet the service rep wouldn't even know how to reply, lol.

^^^^ This

Did not do it on purpose.

Decided to contact them after above post and ask if I needed to give back the rewards money.

( A MyFico experiment )

The service rep did not have an answer as @ptatohed said.

She needed to run it up the flag pole and would call me back.

Returned call in about half an hour and said when CC was closed all rewards points were zeroed out.

I do not owe them any money.

I then asked her to send an email stating the same for my records.

Re: Interesting Credit Card Rewards Story

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 22:41:05 GMT

@Kforce wrote:
@ptatohed wrote:
OP didn't do it on purpose. It's how the cookies crumbled. You want OP to contact them and ask if he can give back the rewards? I'd bet the service rep wouldn't even know how to reply, lol.
^^^^ This
Did not do it on purpose.
Decided to contact them after above post and ask if I needed to give back the rewards money.
( A MyFico experiment )
The service rep did not have an answer as @ptatohed said.
She needed to run it up the flag pole and would call me back.
Returned call in about half an hour and said when CC was closed all rewards points were zeroed out.
I don not owe them any money.
I then asked her to send an email stating the same for my records.

Breaking THE number one rule of reward "abuse", calling!* Good for the DP. However, as usual, what an individual CR says/emails is binding on no-one.... But as indicated above, I thought you were safe anyway.

* For those that don't know, on various forums related to such abuse, there are always newbies posting things like "So I called the CSR to ask if it is OK to [do something that the issuer clearly won't like]" followed by torrents of posts "What the [] did you do that for, you stupid [][][][]" And that's FSR!

Re: Interesting Credit Card Rewards Story

Kforce — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 23:08:07 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Breaking THE number one rule of reward "abuse", calling!* Good for the DP. However, as usual, what an individual CR says/emails is binding on no-one.... But as indicated above, I thought you were safe anyway.

* For those that don't know, on various forums related to such abuse, there are always newbies posting things like "So I called the CSR to ask if it is OK to [do something that the issuer clearly won't like]" followed by torrents of posts "What the [] did you do that for, you stupid [][][][]" And that's FSR!

You are correct the front line customer service people usually don't have the answer, and often give bad info.

The email has account numbers, good description of the issue, CS & supervisor name and a

confirmation number for reference.

The email gives me a bit more confidence.

Re: Interesting Credit Card Rewards Story

Remedios — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:38:26 GMT

@Kforce wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
Breaking THE number one rule of reward "abuse", calling!* Good for the DP. However, as usual, what an individual CR says/emails is binding on no-one.... But as indicated above, I thought you were safe anyway.

* For those that don't know, on various forums related to such abuse, there are always newbies posting things like "So I called the CSR to ask if it is OK to [do something that the issuer clearly won't like]" followed by torrents of posts "What the [] did you do that for, you stupid [][][][]" And that's FSR!
You are correct the front line customer service people usually don't have the answer, and often give bad info.
The email has account numbers, good description of the issue, CS & supervisor name and a
confirmation number for reference.
The email gives me a bit more confidence.

How you likin' this "lemme splain it to ya" stuff so far?

You have cards older than most of those telling you how to treat your lenders 😂

Re: Interesting Credit Card Rewards Story

Kforce — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 01:13:08 GMT

@Remedios wrote:
How you likin' this "lemme splain it to ya" stuff so far?
You have cards older than most of those telling you how to treat your lenders 😂

Usually just smirk to myself.

I was young once, did know it all, ask my dad.