A few days ago I wrote about my brief experience with the Gander Mountain credit card. To my surprise and delight, the piece went viral and I was featured on CNN! Just kidding, it actually generated comments like these:
- “Dude”
- “You’re an idiot”
- “Shame on us for believing there was a trick u could show us? Yeah shame on us. Smh.”
Ladies and gentlemen… the Gander Mountain credit card! As long as I’m writing about experimental cards, it’s a good time to give you all an update–and I know everybody has been waiting eagerly for this–on the Dick’s Sporting Goods credit card. So without further ado, here is a summary of my past six months with this card:
- The Dick’s Sporting Goods credit card, as far as I know, still exists.
And that’s it. Aside from receiving a generic brand awareness flyer in the mail several months ago, I have not heard a peep from their marketing department.
That’s disappointing because the card is issued by Synchrony, which as you know offers the Banana Republic credit card, which sends out all kinds of cool promotions. Maybe the Dick’s Sporting Goods marketing team works in a different city from the Banana Republic marketing team and they don’t swap stories too frequently? Then again, I also have a Toys R Us credit card, also from Synchrony, and they hardly ever do anything cool either.
Speaking of the BR card, I just got an offer from them in the mail today: 2X on all spending. Yawn! Next.
You’re an idiot
Nothing great can come out of having store branded cards. Sure you might get lucky and earn some coupon deal for free clothes or whatever. You’d be better off with a cruise line card (and those are lame also).
In addition, most store branded cards have a negative overall effect on FICO scores. The FICO folks seem to build into the formula that if you have store branded cards it means you aren’t good enough for real credit cards. Plus most store cards have fairly low credit lines so even if you pay it off each month you can have a statement balance reflected into your credit reporting usage which also effects your FICO score.
What’s next. A Fingerhut account?