Bank Of America Preferred Rewards wording

[IcyCool7227]

I was reading online about the Bank Of America Preferred Rewards and the way they worded this was a bit confusing until I read reviews. For Platinum Honors and above they offer a 20% boosted savings rate. I thought that originally meant you get 20% APY plus the 0.04 to make it 20.04% but it's only 20 percent of 0.04 which is 0.008. I just think the wording should be more clear on that. I have never heard of any kind of account offering a 20% APY. I am curious is anyone on this board a Diamond or Diamond Honors status with them? I think the 75% credit card rewards is nice when you get to be Platinum Honors but none of that $100k plus balance would be making much in the way of interest unless it's in CDs or Merrill Lynch investment accounts that they partner with.

[Anonymous]

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@IcyCool7227 wrote:

 I think the 75% credit card rewards is nice when you get to be Platinum Honors but none of that $100k plus balance would be making much in the way of interest unless it's in CDs or Merrill Lynch investment accounts that they partner with.

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Right, I don't think anyone here would suggest reaching the $100K via savings (or their CDs for that matter).  Just have it in ETFs or some mix of stocks.

As you said, no savings account currently is paying 20+%  (inflation would need to get quite a bit worse!) so the language isn't all that deceptive.   And we constantly see similar things in credit cards, where a bonus offer is a % of the rewards, rather than a % of the spend, making it much less dramatic.

[Dadof31978]

theres nothing deceptive in their marketing materials.  it's straight forward and clear as can be.  im not sure what you are talking about?

[coldfusion]

The  "interest rate booster" (their term) I think generally references a footnote that itself has a link to actual current rates which itself breaks them down both by account balance and by Preferred Rewards tier. 

BTW most of the benefits that require Diamond status compared to Platinum Honors are pretty esoteric.   Off the top of my head the only meaningful rate-related difference iis a larger HELOC discount for Diamond vs. Platinum Honors members. 

[K-in-Boston]

I suppose if you just looked at headers and numbers without reading the text next to them it might appear that way, but even Ponzi schemes rarely offer that kind of return.  It's no more deceptive than their generous 75% cash back card (still probably can't compete with Chase Ultimate Rewards cards [affiliate link here] if you look at TPG since you can get a transpacific business class flight with every coffee purchase) , 0.25% mortgage rates, or 0.125% HELOC rates.

https://promotions.bankofamerica.com/preferredrewards

[AndySoCal]

@IcyCool7227  You can get 3.5% or better in a high yield savings account. Which is 40 times better than B of A. Not to mention what you can get for a CD 18 Months is  around 5%.   You can do better than B of A savings rates else where.

[DONZI]

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@IcyCool7227 wrote:

I think the 75% credit card rewards is nice when you get to be Platinum Honors but none of that $100k plus balance would be making much in the way of interest unless it's in CDs or Merrill Lynch investment accounts that they partner with.

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Exactly, ML Edge makes the honors program realistic. The "Preferred Deposit" is okay at ~4.24% APY and AFAIK would be instant transfer (manually initiated xfer) to/from a Bank of America checking account.