wrote:I guess it depends how you define alienate and piss off others. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to know your target and care very little outside of that target. There are always going to be competitors that cater more to those outside of your market segment. If you try to make everyone happy, your target customers will be less happy; if you have too many balls in the air you usually can't catch them all.
I'll give a completely unrelated example to what I'm getting at. I run a sports bar. Our target customer therefore is obviously the sports fan. Lots of TVs, loud, simple food, etc. That's what 90% of our guests look for. The most common complaints I get (which are only say 1-2 times a week in serving 3000-4000 guests) are that it's too loud, the food sucks and most recently someone actually said we had "too many TVs, so it was distracting." These complaints are from guests that naturally aren't our target audience. The minute we start turning down the volume or making the food fancy though we take away from the experience that 90% of our guests are already there for, thus making it worse for them to please just a few. There are establishments out there for people that like better food, a quiet environment, etc. 90% of my guests don't go to them because they like what I offer. I think it's important to know who you are and stick with what you know.
Discover only has a certain amount of CLIs they they can give out. Maybe 90% of them go to their target group, where 10% is disbursed to those on either side (just to stick with my sports bar numbers above). If they increase that 10% to 30% going to their unintended market, their target share drops from 90% to 70%, meaning that they're taking away from their goal (if in fact, that is their goal, who knows). Basically they'd be catering to fewer people in number and therefore pissing off a greater amount of people toward the center of their bell curve.
Oh I absolutely understand it's just business and margin is king. I guess I get very displeased when an excellent FICO score and spotless payment history means I'm somehow "less creditworthy" than a 680 revolver.
Fair enough and they're obviously allowed to give credit as they see fit. But by the same token, I'm also allowed to use their card as I deem appropriate. Let's just say I went from "maybe less profitable" to "negative equity" because I'm only going to be using their card for the 5% and nothing else. Unless they charge 5% for each swipe, they're basically losing money every time I use their card.
I should've explained myself better.
I have at least $5000 in annual spend that never falls into any bonus category, and would earn 1% or 2.5% tops. Since I have 4 cards I can choose how to allocate this $5000+. Discover can give preferential treatment to their target segment all they want but they also don't need to make others feel slighted. Giving someone with 5 years of spotless history a limit and APR befitting of someone just starting to (re)build credit amounts to a slap in the face, and really makes one not want to put any non-5% spend on their card. Yes I realize swipe fees on $5000 is chump change and amounts to essentially nothing. But if their goal is to maximize profits then they've just lost at least $100 in easy money. Seriously, Chase felt comfortable giving me $9000 (granted it's a co-branded card), and even Barclays was fine with giving me $5000. Discover isn't conservative, just downright stupid.
And that's besides the point that $2500 isn't even enough to buy big ticket electronics, adding a severe practical limitation as well.
I'd never put any non-category big ticket items on Discover, that'd just be pure idiocy on my part. Hell if it wasn't for the 1st year cashback match the card would essentially be a failed Chase Freedom.
As it stands, right now my goal is to try and max out the $1500 5% cap for 5 straight quarters then SD this card. (I plan on getting a Chase Freedom at some point, so unless the 5% categories complement each other I see no point in using the Discover)