It was the best of cards, it was the worst of cards…
A certain blogger has written up two similar cards: the Barclaycard Arrival Plus and the Capital One Venture. The two cards are pretty similar. Consider the relevant details:
BARCLAYCARD ARRIVAL PLUS: 40,000-point sign-up bonus. 2.2% rewards, which are “miles” that can be redeemed for travel expenses. $89 annual fee waived the first year. No foreign transaction fees.
CAPITAL ONE VENTURE: 40,000-point sign-up bonus. 2% rewards, which are “miles” that can be redeemed for travel expenses. $59 annual fee waived the first year. No foreign transaction fees.
It almost sounds like the same card, right?
You might think that the same blogger would have similar things to say about both cards… but you’d be wrong. See, this blogger has a credit card affiliate link for the Arrival Plus, but not for the Venture. If you sign up for the Arrival Plus using his link, he’ll make somewhere in the neighborhood of $100. If you sign up for the Venture using his link, he’ll get $0.
It’s possible to have affiliate relationships and still be ethical in your reviews of said credit cards. However, there’s always the temptation to let one’s judgment be clouded by dollar signs. I’m going to give you a few quotes from this blogger and let you decide whether or not he/she is doing things the right way.
Overall Review
- Capital One Venture: The article title: “Why You SHOULDN’T Get The Capital One Venture Card”.
- Barclaycard Arrival Plus: “I find that this is one of the best cards to recommend to friends.” And in another post: “One of the most compelling new offerings from Barclaycard is the Arrival World MasterCard, which is an extremely lucrative travel cashback credit card.”
On the Cashback vs. “Mile” Rewards
- Capital One Venture: “…unlike the Capital One Venture Card, the rewards earned on the Citi® Double Cash Card [note: the blogger also has an affiliate link for the Citi card] can be spent on anything, and not just travel.”
- Barclaycard Arrival Plus: “A lot of people would say actual cash back is more valuable than cash back towards travel. For me that’s not the case, and I am guessing for most people reading this blog, that’s not the case either. Unless you spend less on travel than you’d earn in rewards, it’s the same thing. And that’s simply to say that the same amount of cash back would be equally valuable to me regardless of which form it came in.”
See if you can guess the blogger without scrolling over these links.
Good find. Capital One Venture Rewards is still my go-to card for MS.
You are so, so right here; I particularly like the point about how the mechanics of extracting one cent of value from each mile are portrayed as either incredibly simple (Arrival) or mind-bogglingly complex (Venture). I was really disappointed to read this post from Ben… I had actually considered him to be among the less-dishonorable of the bunch. What a perfect example of how affiliate links influence bloggers. Great, great post.
To be fair to my namesake, he did mention the 3 credit bureau pull. For serious churners that is definitely a consideration. Also, you need to spend 45,000 already to make the Arrival more valuable than DoubleCash/Fidelity so you’ll already be above the 15,000 you’d need to spend to make the Arrival more valuable than Venture. He could’ve done a much fairer post to be sure though.
I don’t get it. Suppose someone had $50,000 to spend in year one. On the Venture, that would be $1,000 — with some real breakage if you don’t pay attention.
On the BA+, that would be $1,111. Plus the signup bonus is $44 more. So that’s $155 more.
How is that “bad” advice?
Love this. Thanks for sharing this.
“Lucky” is nothing more than a common credit card link pusher, even more of a sellout now that he has manufactured fame for himself online. Useless blog with monotonous reviews of luxury hotels and cabins that are nowadays a dime a dozen on FT and among bloggers.
Speak of MS, Cap One Spark business card is worth getting too. It’s straight cash rewards at 2x, and $500 signup bonus.
Thanks, didn’t realize Spark was so high.
On the flip side he didn’t mention that inquiries are combined with Capital One and thus you could get another $500-$900 in rewards by applying for multiples or different cards.
In SoCal TU and EQ are only lightly used. EX is the only bureau I need to watch. Therefore I could care less about a three bureau pull. It’s no worse than a bank that pulls just EX.
Any comments on the quality of Cap One customer service? My understanding is that’s it’s pretty abysmal. To many of us, that’s an important consideration. (Also, I basically just don’t trust Cap One – too many devaluations in their past.)
And hey, let’s give Ben a break. No one is perfect; I’ve found he is very generous with advice to help others “learn to fish” effectively.
Not to defend the cc pimping , but I wonder if the credit card companies would offer these increased sign up bonuses to us the consumer if they did not have such an easy path for advertising them to travel enthusiast, I remember seeing chase advertise on tv the united card with 30k while blogs were pushing their link with 50k , so indirectly we may be benefiting,
F Lucky
Great post. I wasn’t sure if it was going to be Ben or Gary. You can defend Lucky by coming up with any of your own arguments between the cards, but straight comparing his descriptions it’s hard to see anything but a significant bias toward cards that get him more money.
Man’s gotta pay for his first class caviar and champagne lifestyle somehow…..
That may be true but it has nothing to do with his completely opposing arguments about cash back vs. travel points, airline miles vs. capital one/arrival “miles”… He doesn’t justify one vs the other based on the extra 10% (soon to be 5%) you get with arrival.
Even when I first started looking at rewards cards, I noticed the disparity in what the bloggers were saying vs. what the cards were offering. The Mr Money Mustache blog did a nice personal exposé on the situation (http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/06/21/i-just-gave-up-4000-per-month-to-keep-my-freedom-of-speech/)
The numbers are staggering. I don’t think most people realize that certain bloggers’ incomes are almost entirely generated by pumping credit card links. I figured that there was some sort of kickback, but not the $100-$200 per referral these jokers are getting.
Greed has brought down many men over the years, even great men. It will do the same with the bloggers who strongly push cards they get $$$ for over others as well. If anything, the bloggers *should* be pushing cards they’re getting $0 referral bonuses for. Why? In hopes that the banks will see where the traffic is coming from and start offering bonuses.