@Anonymous wrote:
Unfortunately, no one has given you a helpful answer and I sure would like to know as well. I assume we will have to call, inconveniently for me, Mon - Fri during the day when I sleep.
Hey there!
There were a lot of red flags with this card/company, so we decided to eventually go with another bank for our BT needs. Good thing we didn't stick around long enough to experience a legitimate disaster, but I will list some of things that made us go elsewhere.
- You have to call in to BT into the card and their customer service is the type of hassle that no customer service should be for a credit card issuer in 2021. Limited hours, long wait times, they have to escalate routine issues to someone higher up (who takes days to get back to you), etc. It was waaaay too complicated just to INQUIRE about a routine BT. I could only imagine if we had something super urgent like theft/fraud/chargeback, etc. Generally when a company ADVERTISES the 0% apr BT offer, they make it as easy as possible for you to actually TRANSFER THE BALANCE lol.
- You have to install the mobile app to redeem your cashback/reward points (including the $200 on $1000 signup bonus). You can't do it through the website. And the mobile app is HORRIBLE. Constant black screens or frozen screens, constantly needing to be uninstalled and reinstalled, etc.
- Even though we didn't BT into the card, my niece did put some big spending on it for school. So when we found another card, we wanted to BT from the Sallie Mae card to the other card. Well, Sallie Mae wasn't in their (Chase) system for automatic BT processing. So they had to send out a check (one of those things I've read about but never actually experienced in decades since everything is connected/streamlined now). We used her card number as the account number (something I've done since forever with BTs). But Sallie Mae had a separate account number for her (different from the card number) that's listed on the statement that cut after the BT was initiated. So after 2 weeks of the BT not showing up in her Sallie Mae account (after Chase said they mailed the check), we called in to let Sallie Mae know about the account number issue, just to see if the check was possibly rejected, applied to the wrong account, etc. It was a constant case of phone tag where different people gave different answers and nobody really had any idea WTH was actually going on (whereas Chase gave me an update on their end about the status of the check within a few hours of sending a secure message). Then out of the blue, after we decided that we were going to ask Chase to cancel the check, the BT payment appeared in the Sallie Mae account (about a month later after the check was sent). Thank GOD it eventually went through as intended, but so unnecessarily complicated and a complete lack of clarity.
- We are STILL waiting for the cashback reward from the $200/$1000 signup bonus to post. Two statements have cut since we satisfied the spending requirement. My niece has to keep that damned app installed on her phone until it posts and she can redeem it lol. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some crazy hoops to jump through to redeem the cash, based on everything else we've witnessed.
- This is kinda minor in the grand scheme of things, but still telling about how amateurish things are over there IMO. My niece's Sallie Mae account would still be logged in on my computer for DAYS after she was over here (maybe even longer if I didn't specifically log her out when I witnessed it). That seems HIGHLY unsecure. Nowadays, a lot of banks/CCs automatically log you out within MINUTES of inactivity (you get those popup messages with the countdown asking if you still want to continue your session). I'm surprised ANY financial institution would overlook this in 2021.
So yeah...my verdict on this card/company is to BEWARE and look elsewhere if you can. If all you do is spend and pay it off every month, then maybe you won't have any issues. But if you ever run into any other issue that needs to be attended to, I'd hate for this to be the company you'd have to deal with to get it taken care of.
I will say one thing nice about the card. They have some cashback rewards structure where they take the top 2 spending categories and automatically give you 2% cashback instead of the standard 1.5%. Well, my niece only spent in 2 categories for her school (books and electronics), so she technically got 2% cashback on ALL her spending lol. It was enough to pay for a few streaming services for a while. You take the wins where you can lol.
