Use Whatever Credit Card Is Best For Your Purchases

I want to begin and let you know that this post is not in regards to any manufactured spending as you already know which card you need to use. This post is more about your every day spend and possibly non category bonus specific spend. This post is not discrediting how useful the additional warranty protection is, I am not using that to sway my decision to make a purchase when large savings can be found.

Recently, in our hobby of points and miles there have been a lot of talk about the additional warranty behind a credit card purchase. In sum, it is basically an additional year’s worth of warranty. Depending on how long the original manufacturer’s warranty, the credit card warranty may not go over 3 years with the exception of American Express.

American Express is the best and it is below:

When an American Express Card Member charges an eligible product with his or her Card account, Extended Warranty can provide up to one extra year added to the original U.S. manufacturer’s warranty. Applies to warranties of 5 years or less. Coverage is up to the actual amount charged to your Card for the item up to a maximum of $10,000; not to exceed $50,000 per Card Member account per calendar year. Please read important exclusions and restrictions.

Below is Visa’s:

Warranty Manager Service Extended Warranty Protection doubles the period of repair service under the manufacturer’s written U.S. warranty up to a maximum of one (1) additional year on many items of personal property which have a valid original manufacturer’s written U.S. repair warranty of three (3) years or less and which you have purchased entirely on your eligible Visa card.

MasterCard’s terms are very similar to Visa’s:

Purchases are covered with an extended warranty (which duplicate the terms of the original manufacturer’s warranty on covered items) for up to 1 full year from the expiry date of the original manufacturer’s warranty and for a maximum of 3 combined years.

FatWallet has a great table summarizing this benefit in the Wiki:

Don’t Fall Into The Fallacy of American Express:

With that out of the way, you need to shop around deals and see what’s best. This is like buying a car, manufactured spending, gift card churning, or whatever the case may be when you are seeking a deal.

Let’s look at this deal, I was able to snag. It will be through a combination of a price match guarantee and a Bank of America BankAmeriDeals.

Bank of America sent me an offer to make a purchase at TigerDirect.com where I would be eligible for 20% cashback up to a $600 purchase.

I had my eye on this external drive enclosure, a Drobo 5d:

It wasn’t the cheapest price around at nearly $700 and approximately $20 in shipping. The plus side, no sales tax for this Internet purchase. The BankAmeriDeal wasn’t the reason why I purchased from TigerDirect. It was their price match guarantee.

Here is their Terms and Conditions to the price match guarantee (bolding mine, underline is TigerDirect’s):

BEST PRICE PROMISE

Shop with confidence! TigerDirect.com’s Best Price Promise includes competitive price matching at the time of order as well as after-sale price protection.

TigerDirect.com’s point of sale price match policy:

At the point of sale, TigerDirect.com will match any competitor’s price on identical items (matching manufacturer and model). The item must be in-stock, available for immediate shipment and be in the same condition as the TigerDirect.com advertised item. Price matched items are limited to a quantity of one per household.

For TigerDirect.com Phone and Web customers: At the point of sale, TigerDirect.com will match the advertised price of the product, including shipping charges, against other online resellers. Phone and web customers must call 800-800-8300 to request a price match and supply the customer service representative with proof of the lower price by providing the URL of the competitor’s web page or current advertisement that shows the lower price.

For TigerDirect.com Retail Store customers: At the point of sale, TigerDirect.com will match the advertised price of the product against local retail competitors with in-stock product. Retail store customers must provide proof of the lower price by bringing in a printed copy of the advertisement containing the lower price.

Exclusions from the Point of Sale Price Match Policy: The Point of Sale Price Match Policy does not apply to bundled items, free items, pricing errors, items of service, mail-in offers, offers including financing, out of stock, items offered below TigerDirect.com’s actual cost, or limited quantity items, clearance items, open-box items, and used/refurbished items.

TigerDirect.com’s Price Protection Policy:

If TigerDirect.com reduces it’s regularly advertised price, or if you find a lower advertised price from a Qualifying Competitor, during the advertised return period offered on an item you purchased from TigerDirect.com; simply contact us and TigerDirect.com will issue you a TigerDirect.com credit in the amount of the price difference good toward the future purchase of products sold by TigerDirect.com. This price protection policy only applies to regularly advertised products and it’s limited to two (2) Price Protections per item, per household.

Qualifying Competitors are: Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, Buy.com, CDW.com, Costco.com, Crutchfield.com. Dell.com, Frys.com, Gamestop.com, Kmart.com, Newegg.com, Officedepot.com, Officemax.com, PCmall.com, PCConnections.com, Samsclub.com, Sears.com, Staples.com, Target.com, Radioshack.com, and Walmart.com.

I knew Newegg had the best price at $571.99:

Now, all I need to do is get my purchase price matched for the difference of $127.01. While the $127.01 will be store credit, that does not bother me as their internal hard drives that I would need to buy are competitively priced.

Because TigerDirect offers after purchase price match, I clicked through ShopDiscover because they were paying 5%.

So we’ll wait and see how easy it is to price match with TigerDirect as we as if the portal pay out will happen. Stay Tuned!

**For those wondering why I bought such an expensive device it is because of the 5 drive capability with redundancy, simple and easy to use functionality geared towards backing up data and Time Machining my Mac. The Drobo also has awesome functionality for Windows as well. I have lost a decent amount of data due to my backup residing on a single drive and failed. Thus, vowed to repeat that again.