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The Brooks Brothers credit card promotion train keeps chugging!

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The Brooks Brothers credit card has been full of surprises lately. There was an uncapped 10X promo, a random $20 credit opportunity, an increased sign-up bonus, and now they’re offering me $30 to make a few utility payments:

I get offers like this on my Comenity Marathon credit card every once in a blue moon. They tell you that you get a credit for setting up automatic payments, but the payment doesn’t have to be recurring since they have no way of knowing whether or not it is. You just have to make one payment to somebody with the proper merchant category code. This particular deal is $10 for each new utility you pay. It’s only $30, but it’s only a few minutes of work, so I’ll take it. Who needs a stupid 100,0000-point bonus for the Chase Sapphire Reserve anyway?

Brooks Brothers also sent my annual birthday gift. If anbody’s curious, this is what they send:

There’s no minimum purchase, it’s a flat $20 off. The problem is that it’s only good for one month. Hopefully I’ll have some more gift cards in from that restaurant promo by the end of the month that I can stack with this one.

Brooks Brothers credit card offering a $100 sign-up bonus, I think

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The Brooks Brothers credit card, which as of late has had sent some nice marketing promotions my way, is now offering a $100 sign-up bonus (at least, I think they’re offering a $100 bonus), which is the best I can recall seeing. Here’s the ad you see when you go to their credit card page:

Why do I seem unsure? Two things. First of all the wording on the ad is “up to $100 in rewards cards”. Why the “up to”? Are there conditions in which you would only earn, say, $60 instead of $100? I’ve scoured the T&Cs on the product page and on the application page and I can’t find any clues. The marketing material below still says you get a $20 bonus with your first purchase. If you click on that “View Details” link in the ad, you get this:

*Subject to credit approval. New accounts only. Please allow four to six weeks after the promotional period ends for Rewards Cards to arrive. See the Brooks Brothers Rewards Terms for additional details regarding the Rewards Program. The Brooks Brothers Platinum Mastercard® is issued by Citibank, N.A. pursuant to a license by Mastercard® International Incorporated. Mastercard® and Platinum Mastercard® are registered trademarks of Mastercard® International Incorporated.

So… I think there’s some sort of $100 sign-up offer, but I’m not really sure what it is. Is it $100 after first purchase? Possibly. Are there other hoops to jump through? Possibly. Hopefully the Citibank store card marketing team will clear things up. For most of you out there a $100 bonus isn’t going to make you jump on this card anyway but if you’ve been thinking about adding this one to your collection to play retail card marketing roulette, this may be a good time as any to go for it.

Wawa credit card launches, causing everybody outside the mid-Atlantic states to ask, “What the heck is Wawa?”

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As if the excitement over yesterday’s Container Store credit card news wasn’t enough, there’s another new credit card to report: Here comes the Wawa credit card!

To those of you who don’t live in its footprint, Wawa is a convenience store / gas station chain in the mid-Atlantic and Florida. If you’re curious about the name: according to their website, “‘Wawa’ is a Native American word for the Canada Goose that was found in the Delaware Valley over 100 years ago.” I grew up near Philadelphia, so Wawa’s “We do it just a little bit better” jingle is indelibly etched into my mind along with the Tastykake song. (Nobody bakes a cake as tasty as a Tastycake.)

The new card is nothing special. It’s a store card, so no purchases outside of Wawa. The card offers 25 cents per gallon rebates for the first two months and 5 cents per gallon thereafter. The maximum rebatable amount of gas is 100 gallons per month, so it’s $50 if you max out the intro promotion. I really can’t see much rationale to anybody having this thing. As always, the baseline is a 2% cashback credit card, and you’d definitely be better off with one of those vs. the Wawa credit card.

What’s interesting is that the card isn’t being issued by Comenity or Synchrony but by Citi Retail Services, the private label credit card arm of Citibank. Everybody’s familiar with Citi’s credit card bounce-back this year, but their private label business is also making moves as they recently acquired the Brooks Brothers portfolio. Citi is building up quite a portfolio of retail credit cards. They now have the Best Buy card and they’re taking over the Costco card as well. If you’re a retailer, it’s a good time to either launch a card or shop for a new issuer for your existing card.

wawa credit card

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