When to use chip-enabled card?



  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    Or I buy gift cards. I'm again buying $100 for $100, and then spending $100, and they've now paid a transaction fee plus gift card processing costs.

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    I can understand why the CC company would discourage giving your bonus on cash-like transactions

    • You buy the exact amount you need for the bonus in gift cards
    • cash-like fuckery fees all around
    • You end up spending effectively $0, and get a bonus

    You pay face value for gift cards? I buy them from cardpool for less than face value. Plus I get 1.5% of the amount I paid back in my credit card's rewards program. 🚎



  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    lolololololol you pay an annual fee? lolololololol

    In Australialand, there's few, if any, rewards cards that have no annual fee that aren't Amex only or have a ridiculously earn rate.

    That said, the first year annual fee was free and I'm considering getting a new one with the new interchange laws.

    @Dragnslcr said:

    To some people, the additional benefits that you get with American Express cards are worth the annual fee.

    About the only Amex benefit I use is the Hertz discount. But they regularly have offers where if you spend a certain amount at a store they'll give you a rebate, but they've not had any that are in my town. Hooray for regional living! 😑

    Acutally, it does have one, albeit non-financial, benefit in that contactless transactions will process on the terminal near instantly compared to the Visa as it will let the terminal do a store and forward. (That is, assuming that it's not an NAB terminal because they continue to opt as if though Amex Contactless is not a thing.)


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Douglasac said:

    In Australialand, there's few, if any, rewards cards that have no annual fee that aren't Amex only or have a ridiculously earn rate.

    Larf-a-larf a larf-aloud-- I'm laughing at your economy, and I'm Canadian. Anyways...

    • I have an Amex, with no annual fee. I only use it to get early tickets to theatre things
    • Most rewards cards here offer no fee. Too much competition, I guess. There are some with an annual fee. They have a healthy fanbase called "suckers"
    • I don't carry a balance, so who cares about the lend rate


  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    Larf-a-larf a larf-aloud-- I'm laughing at your economy, and I'm Canadian. Anyways...

    Yeah, the populace had the bad sense to vote the conservatives in at the last federal election who seem hellbent on destroying the economy, whereas you had the good sense to kick them out.

    That said, our currency is almost at parity. So yay?

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    I have an Amex, with no annual fee. I only use it to get early tickets to theatre things

    I would get an Amex only card except not all retailers that take card take Amex here, while all who do take card will take Visa and Mastercard.

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    Most rewards cards here offer no fee. Too much competition, I guess. There are some with an annual fee. They have a healthy fanbase called "suckers"

    Yeah, "competition" here consists of one bank owned by the biggest of the big four, one group of three banks that differ only in name and card design that is owned by the second largest of the big four banks, one bank that runs around charging fees willy nilly, assorted credit unions that also run around charging fees willy nilly, Citibank and HSBC.

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    I don't carry a balance, so who cares about the lend rate

    Nor do I, but I meant the earn rate of rewards. There are three non-Amex no fee rewards cards. Two are offered as branded supermarket cards that, if you spent $3000 per month, would net you an annual return of $60 at said supermarket. The other is offered by HSBC and they aren't telling me what kind of return I'd get on it (probably very little).


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Douglasac said:

    Yeah, the populace had the bad sense to vote the conservatives in at the last federal election who seem hellbent on destroying the economy, whereas you had the good sense to kick them out.

    They got kicked out so hard that:

    • Ontario went from Liberal minority in the middle of some questionable activities to a Liberal Majority
    • Alberta-- basically the Redneck Deep South of Canada-- went to a fucking NDP majority. The NDP party are "liberal hippies". That was unexpected.
    • The country shifted so hard that federally we went to a Liberal MAJORITY in an age of massive "no one can agree on anything" attitudes that leads to slim minority governments eveywhere

    Thems some major fuckups.

    @Douglasac said:

    That said, our currency is almost at parity. So yay?

    🍁 is only worth about 70% of a 🔫. So if :kangaroo: is the same, we both suck equally. Yay. =(

    @Douglasac said:

    I would get an Amex only card except not all retailers that take card take Amex here, while all who do take card will take Visa and Mastercard.

    Oh, I don't actually USE the Amex (except to pay for those aforementioned theatre tickets). Almost no retailer around here will touch Amex. Must be the enormous processing fees. Who would have thought?



  • @Lorne_Kates said:

    They got kicked out so hard that:

    Ontario went from Liberal minority in the middle of some questionable activities to a Liberal Majority
    Alberta-- basically the Redneck Deep South of Canada-- went to a fucking NDP majority. The NDP party are "liberal hippies". That was unexpected.
    The country shifted so hard that federally we went to a Liberal MAJORITY in an age of massive "no one can agree on anything" attitudes that leads to slim minority governments eveywhere

    Thems some major fuckups.

    We had some interesting state elections here in the past couple of years. In Queensland (unique for being the only state with one house of parliament instead of two meaning that whoever wins gets to do whatever they want, which is usually undoing what the previous government did), the then LNP government went from holding all but 11 out of 89 seats to losing to Labor and being in a 1 seat minority.

    In South Australia, the Liberal opposition was virtually guaranteed a win but lost. If you ask me, it's because both sides are both incompetent. An exact quote from the SA opposition leader the day before the election: "If people in South Australia want change, they want a better future, they want to grow our economy then they need to vote Labor tomorrow". Then the Liberals suffered a defection to the government, a resignation, and lost a byelection.

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    🍁 is only worth about 70% of a 🔫. So if :kangaroo: is the same, we both suck equally. Yay. =(

    We've been hovering around there too. Isn't it fun to have a shitty economy?

    @Lorne_Kates said:

    Oh, I don't actually USE the Amex (except to pay for those aforementioned theatre tickets). Almost no retailer around here will touch Amex. Must be the enormous processing fees. Who would have thought?

    I use it at the supermarket and other big retailers, or online when the fee's the same as using the Visa.

    Amex have been doing a thing here to try and encourage retailers to give them more money to encourage people to shop with small businesses but I don't need boutique artisanal cheese stools or whatever crap small businesses like that here sell.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I don't understand the incentive for credit card companies to discourage using the card to get cash.

    When you buy something, the merchant pay them a fee. If you just use it for getting cash, who's paying them, other than interest?



  • @fbmac said:

    If you just use it for getting cash, who's paying them, other than interest?

    You're holding their card. Every year, a small percentage of responsible people who pay off their cards every month will get into a situation where they need cash quick - emergency home repair, medical issue, relative in jail, etc. If you have their card in your wallet, then you just hopped on their interest treadmill. It's all statistics - a particular person may never carry a balance, but out of a large number of people, some will.

    For every cash back card with interest rate x, there is a similar card that doesn't offer cash back that you qualify for with interest rate x - 1. If you succeed in never carrying a balance, you are better off in the long term with the first card. If you fail, you are better off with the second. Card companies that offer cash back are betting against you.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @Jaime said:

    Card companies that offer cash back are betting against you.

    I was wondering why they stopped offering Super Rewardz OMG Bubbles Back Cash accounts...
    Then again, I did do the opt-out thing on seven different sites/methods.


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