True Earnings Card from Costco and American Express Review
Contents
Application Link
- This card no longer accepts new applications. See Citi Costco Credit Card for the new Costco co-brand card.
Benefits
- Earn 3% cash back at US gas station (including Costco gas station); 2% cash back at US restaurant and eligible travel spendings; 1% cash back on other purchases.
- No annual fee if you are a Costco member.
- With this card, you can get access to Amex Offer, which usually offers very good discounts at some stores, such as: spend $15 or more and get $5 back at Walmart; spend $75 or more and get $25 back on Amazon.com.
Disadvantages
- There’s no sign-up bonus.
- Only first $4,000 purchases per Annual Reward Year (12 billing periods in a row beginning with the one that includes January 1st) at US gas station can earn 3% cash back, after that you can only earn 1%.
- This credit card is on American Express Network, not Visa or MasterCard, so some small restaurants may not accept it.
- The 3%/2% bonus categories are limited within the United States. Well, the Foreign Transaction Fee exists anyway, so better not use it outside the US.
- You will get your cash back as Costco annual coupon, although you can redeem them for cash at Costco, it is still a little painful.
Recommended Application Time
- You can only get the welcome bonus once in a lifetime, so be sure to apply when the historical highest offer appears.
- AmEx doesn’t care about the number of hard pulls.
- You can try to apply for it when you have a credit history of 6 months.
Summary
There’s really no highlight for this card: no sign-up bonus, the highest cashback is 3% on gas station but it’s not as good as Sallie Mae (SM) 5%, it doesn’t even have a bonus cashback for Costco itself, only 1%, so basically this credit card is not a good card to have. Since Costco is Wholesale and not a supermarket, what is the best card to use at Costco? When it still has the relationship with AmEx, the best card is FIA 2% or SPG 1x (~2%). When it only accept Visa credit card after 2016.4.1, there will be no specifically good personal credit card to use, I think the best will be Freedom/CSP 1x (~1.6%).
Historical Offers Chart
This card is discontinued in 2016.6.20.
Application Link
- This card no longer accepts new applications. See Citi Costco Credit Card for the new Costco co-brand card.
If you like this post, don't forget to give it a 5 star rating!
[Total: 0 Average: 0/5]