It’s no surprise that cards like the Chase Sapphire or Citi AAdvantage get a disproportionate amount of coverage given the lucrative sign-up bonuses and marketing muscle in support of them. But there are plenty of equally lucrative cards out there which fly below the radar for various reasons. One area worth your consideration is retailer credit cards.
BEST BUY: I’ve written about the Best Buy credit card a few times before. It’s been a great card for lately, and I say that despite having only used the card twice all year. You get 5% back on your Best Buy purchases, plus an additional half percent if you’re Silver Elite, and the rewards are given for all purchases at Best Buy.
Additionally, the Best Buy rewards are somewhat fungible since they can be used to purchase Kindle gift certificates. And the part that’s made this so great for me this year is that Best Buy occasionally runs smoking hot promos where you get triple your base reward points, which means you get 9% rewards instead of 5%. They haven’t run such a promo in several months, however, though there is a double points event on December 8 from 8 pm to 10 pm. The bullet points say gift cards are excluded from the bonus points, though it’s anybody’s guess as to whether that refers only to Best Buy gift cards or is more inclusive.
TARGET REDCARD: It’s a flat 5% off everything in the store, except for gift cards and the like. But if you’re in the habit of shopping regularly at Target, this is a no-brainer.
BANANA REPUBLIC: Milesabound just had an eye-opening post about the Banana Republic card, which apparently runs some quite generous marketing programs:
However the reason I absolutely love this card is the ridiculous promos they run. For the past couple of years they have run targeted promos in the last two months of the year where they offered 200 bonus points (worth $2 in voucher) for each transactionduring a two month period. I got targeted last year and I distinctly remember getting the flyer in the mail and scouring the fine print to see some minimum transaction size or upper limit on the number of points you could earn, but those terms just weren’t there. A little trial and error and SlickDeals interaction quickly taught me you could do 20 transactions a day before your card locked out.
And the bottom line:
So overall we bought nearly $5k worth of clothes at Banana Republic, Gap and Athleta in 2013 that actually cost us maybe around $50. It was without a doubt the best deal of 2012!
If you’re at all interested, the post is most definitely worth reading. I decided to go ahead and get a Banana Republic card for Mrs. PFD and a Brooks Brothers card for myself so we could give GE Money a try–I’ll let you know about our experiences.
KOHL’S: Frequent Miler is a fan of the Kohl’s credit card:
Even though Kohl’s tends to have fairly high prices, they are one of the most dependable stores that I have found for stacking multiple discount and point earning opportunities. Unlike most other stores, when Kohl’s coupons say you get X% off everything, they mean nearly everything including electronics and clearance items. Plus, it is often possible to buy Kohl’s gift cards at a heavy discount (but not through the aforementioned coupons). Plus, Kohl’s frequently offers “Kohl’s bucks” for additional future savings. And, finally, Kohl’s has consistently offered 10 points per dollar through the Ultimate Rewards Mall for the past two years or so. In my experience, all of these discounts and point earnings can be combined (except when using Kohl’s bucks, but that’s another story…). In the end, these combined discounts usually add up to almost 50% in savings!
So back to the charge card. While Kohl’s regularly offers 20% off coupons to the general public, they often offer 30% off coupons for cardholders only.
Those are the best retail credit cards I’m aware of. Any good ones I’m missing?
Jon@2-copper-coins.com says
I’ve generally stayed away from retailer cards, but the Best Buy card has me intrigued. Do you get 5% back on all your purchases, or just on purchases made at Best Buy? If it was for all purchases I would definitely be interested because that would be a smoking deal.
pfdigest says
5% on Best Buy purchases, not all purchases–I’ll clarify in the article text.
MilesAbound says
Thanks for the shout out. Another promo they ran earlier in the year gave 5x everywhere *except* Banana Republic (which means everywhere because it already gives 5x in brand). I hit that one for a few grand of MS too. They repeated the 200 points per transaction with a cap of $50 but of course I still did it up to the cap. And then another $10 for any single transaction outside of their brands. Water bill pay $0.01 thank you very much! Hence my title “the gift that keeps on giving” – they just keep running so many promos! Of course the one downside is you can only spend the rewards at their brands. Which means I am a walking Gap/BR ad and my wife is a running/cycling Athleta ad
pfdigest says
That’s awesome! Hopefully they keep the gravy train going.
HikerT says
Is the BB card really getting you 2.5 points? Or just 1.5 additional BB points on top of the 1 BB points you would still earn if you used a different CC at BB? Compare to using 2.2% Arrival to buy AMEX GCs to use at BB to buy GCs. Would you rather have 2.2% Arrival + 2.25% TCB or 1.5 BB points? Even if you are Silver Elite I’d still say is not worth the cash back give up, not to mention you can do better buying BB GCs in the secondary market (~6% + credit card rewards).
pfdigest says
Good points. A BB point is worth $.02, so the extra 1.5 points are worth 3%. Since the rewards are exchangeable for Amazon credit, and since my personal preferences lean against messing with gift cards, the extra BB points are more valuable for me. YMMV, of course.
pfdigest says
Another point in favor of the BBY card: it frees up the credit line on your 2% card for other stuff. 🙂
HikerT says
I would peg the value of BB points closer to 1.8 cents. Otherwise you are valuing 5x UR at zero. While I don’t value UR at 2 cents, I think a 10% haircut is a reasonable considering the potential risks. In that case you are obtaining BB credit at a 5.4% discount. You can buy BB GCs at a higher discount in the secondary market, plus earn CC rewards on the purchase. I think the only thing the BB CC has going for it (vs. buying BB GCs in the secondary market) is if your BB is finicky about tender allowed to buy Visa GCs.
al613 says
Why Brooks Brothers?
pfdigest says
Because it’s issued by GE Money, who also runs the BR card. I’m curious to see if their marketing unit is similarly generous. So far, they’re not.
al613 says
I have Toys r us card that used to be Chase and became GE couple of years ago. Almost no promos on this one.
pfdigest says
Good data point, thanks!