Priceline Rewards Visa: 2% Credit Card?
With the impending demise of the 2% Schwab card, there’s been a lot of scrambling to find a replacement. This post on FW describes a new targeted offer for the Priceline Rewards Visa that presents an intruiging possibility. This version of the card earns 5 points per dollar spent on “Name Your Own Price” Priceline purchases and 2 points per dollar everywhere else with no annual fee, a superior value when compared to the other publicly available Priceline credit cards.
How much are the points worth?
While the card’s FAQ doesn’t do the best job of explaining it, those who have the card say that each point is basically worth a penny’s credit towards a past purchase. Once you have at least 2,500 points (worth $25), you can apply your points as a credit towards a previous purchase. For example, if you had previously made a charge of $40, you could redeem 4,000 points for a $40 statement credit. You can, however, only apply points towards purchases of $25 or more made within the past 30 days. The exception to this are “Name Your Own Price” purchases on Priceline.com, which are eligible for point redemption within the first 90 days of posting to your account.
Another “undocumented feature” of this quirky rewards system is that you get an even better redemption ratio, possibly even up to 1.5 cents per point, when applying your points towards a “Name Your Own Price” Priceline.com transaction. This opacity is even referenced in the terms and conditions: “The amount of Points needed to redeem [for a credit] will vary by transaction.”
Caveats
In addition to the lack of transparency in the rewards program, there are a few less than ideal aspects to the card to be aware of:
- If you don’t use the card at least once every 6 months or keep a balance, your account may be closed and/or all your points forfeited
- Points expire after 4 years if not used
- Foreign currency transactions incur a 3% fee
Conclusion
This version of the Priceline Visa certainly isn’t as staightforward as the old Schwab card, but for the rate chasers, it offers a potentially viable alternative. There is hassle involved in the redemption process and there is a foreign transaction fee, but at its core it does offer at least a 2% rebate in a Visa product. For those who do use Priceline.com, it offers an even better value proposition.
What about the Capital One offerings?
http://www.capitalone.com/smallbusiness/cards/no-hassle-cash-premier/benefits/
http://www.capitalone.com/creditcards/cash-rewards-credit-card/rewards/?linkid=WWW_1010_CARD_TGUNS11_CP99101EW_C4_01_T_CP99101ER
@Jim
I already wrote about the Cap One Cash card here. It’s a fine card, but only gives a max of 1.5% cash back.
The Cap One Small Business card, on the other hand, is a 2% cash back card but has an annual fee of $59 (waived first year). The Priceline card is better in that it is a no annual fee card, plus it’s a personal credit card, meaning that it offers more consumer protection compared to a business card.
You have to charge $2.500 on the card before you can redeem points and then you ant redeem partial points..your have to have a balance that matches available points.Not worth it. Very hard to redeem points. I have 787 points sand they are worthless.
Priceline card is a joke. Says that the $25 credit will be posted to the account at the end of the 30 day billing and it will be there and applied to the trip you’re making. I applied for the ticket on the airline, filled out the credit card offer, was approved immediately and it finished processing my flight, then said that I needed to use another credit card since my ticket of $343 was over the approved amount of the card $3000. I called the Priceline credit card company and was told that sometimes there are computer problems and that they will put the $25 crdit on there but that the ticket that I am trying to purchase needs to purchased another way and sorry for any inconvenience. I asked if she would get a supervisor.. she said I’ll try but we are very busy. I told her I wanted the transaction to happen the way as advertised. She came back and said she is still trying to get the supervisor and would call back. I told her to cancel the credit card. I was afraid the deal would be gone but it wasn’t and I got it with a reliable bank card.