Using Credit Card Shopping Portals to Save Money
Monday, October 26, 2009 Posted by Christina
The following is a guest post from Ask Mr. Credit Card. For those of you who know me, I'm very anti-debt. But I'm not anti-credit card. Used properly, credit cards can actually help you save money. Read on for some great ideas from Mr. Credit Card on how to save money with your credit cards.
For those of you who use coupons, hunt high and low for bargains, you know the thrills that come when you spot great deals or figure out how to stack coupons to really get something for cheap. Many of you are familiar with stacking coupons, (i.e using manufacturers' and store coupons together and getting getting discounts or rebates (depending on how you look at it).
But you can save even more money at the groceries by stacking coupons and using cash back rewards credit cards or gas rewards credit cards. These rebate cards reward cardholders for using the card by paying back a small percentage in rebates for every dollar that is spent on the card (typically 1%). But the good ones pay more than 1% (usually 3% to 5%) on things like gasoline and supermarket expenditures.
But credit card issuers have been facing a big issue with their cash back programs. Smart consumers will typically only use their cards just to spend on the items that pay the most rebates. Because most pay in full and there is no annual fee on most of these cards, credit card issuers have found this to be a losing proposition. One of the more innovative features they have come up with is the concept of a credit card shopping portal.
What is a shopping portal?
This is how a shopping portal works with your credit cards. The credit card issuers arranges partnerships with many online merchants. They gather all their merchants onto a portal on their website. Cardholders can access these online stores via logging in to their accounts. By accessing these online stores through your credit card account rather than directing through the website, you can either earn cash rebates or extra points when you use your credit card.
So explain things simply and assume that you have a Discover Card as an example (since I've done an extensive review of their shopping portal program). Rather than going to say www.landsend.com directly from your web browser, Discover Card holders can login into their accounts and go to landsend.com from Discover. By doing so this way, every purchase you make will be tracked and (in this particular case) you will earn 5% rebates. If you went to www.landsend.com directly, you would not have earned any rebates at all.
List of credit card shopping portals that give you rebates
Here is a brief list of shopping portals offered by credit card issuers.
Shopdiscover.com - As I mentioned earlier most Discover credit cards have this feature in their cards. They have over 100 partner merchants and shopping with these merchants from the Discover site allows you to earn anywhere from 5% to 20% rebates. For their point based cards, you can earn extra reward points for shopping through Discover instead.
Citi's Extra Cash - Citi has a program called extra cash that is available to their vanilla MasterCard holders. They operate on the same basis as Discover's shopdiscover.com program. They just have different merchant partner (I'm sure some are the same) and have different rebate rates for different partners.
Chase Cash Plus - Chase also has a similar program called the Chase Cash Plus. With their new Ultimate Rewards program, they will be migrating that feature over as well. Like shopdiscover.com, you can earn up to 20% cash rebates with that program.
ShopAmex.com - American Express has a shopping mall called shopamex.com. If you use your Amex card at the mall, you can earn extra reward points and even use reward points when you shop online.
Things to be aware of
There are a couple of things that you have to be aware of when using these shopping portals.
Firstly, rebates do not apply to things like taxes and shipping cost - which I think is understandable and will not be a big deal for most people
Some items are excluded. For example, if you shop at bestbuy.com through Discover's shopdiscover shopping mall, you cannot buy certain items like laptops, desktops and hard drives.
You also will not be able to use other discounts or coupons. For example, to save money shopping at Walgreens online, you cannot use any other coupons. While this may bother some folks, I look at this as another way to get discounts if there are no coupons for the stuff that you want to buy
Most will not give you rebates for buying gift cards - which is perfectly understandable
Conclusions - So there you go, a new way to get discounts by using your credit cards shopping portal. Most people aren't even aware of this. But if you do your research properly, you can save lots of money with this method.
This guest post is written by Mr Credit Card from www.askmrcreditcard.com. If you are looking for a credit card, then check out his best credit card deals and offers section.
For those of you who use coupons, hunt high and low for bargains, you know the thrills that come when you spot great deals or figure out how to stack coupons to really get something for cheap. Many of you are familiar with stacking coupons, (i.e using manufacturers' and store coupons together and getting getting discounts or rebates (depending on how you look at it).
But you can save even more money at the groceries by stacking coupons and using cash back rewards credit cards or gas rewards credit cards. These rebate cards reward cardholders for using the card by paying back a small percentage in rebates for every dollar that is spent on the card (typically 1%). But the good ones pay more than 1% (usually 3% to 5%) on things like gasoline and supermarket expenditures.
But credit card issuers have been facing a big issue with their cash back programs. Smart consumers will typically only use their cards just to spend on the items that pay the most rebates. Because most pay in full and there is no annual fee on most of these cards, credit card issuers have found this to be a losing proposition. One of the more innovative features they have come up with is the concept of a credit card shopping portal.
What is a shopping portal?
This is how a shopping portal works with your credit cards. The credit card issuers arranges partnerships with many online merchants. They gather all their merchants onto a portal on their website. Cardholders can access these online stores via logging in to their accounts. By accessing these online stores through your credit card account rather than directing through the website, you can either earn cash rebates or extra points when you use your credit card.
So explain things simply and assume that you have a Discover Card as an example (since I've done an extensive review of their shopping portal program). Rather than going to say www.landsend.com directly from your web browser, Discover Card holders can login into their accounts and go to landsend.com from Discover. By doing so this way, every purchase you make will be tracked and (in this particular case) you will earn 5% rebates. If you went to www.landsend.com directly, you would not have earned any rebates at all.
List of credit card shopping portals that give you rebates
Here is a brief list of shopping portals offered by credit card issuers.
Shopdiscover.com - As I mentioned earlier most Discover credit cards have this feature in their cards. They have over 100 partner merchants and shopping with these merchants from the Discover site allows you to earn anywhere from 5% to 20% rebates. For their point based cards, you can earn extra reward points for shopping through Discover instead.
Citi's Extra Cash - Citi has a program called extra cash that is available to their vanilla MasterCard holders. They operate on the same basis as Discover's shopdiscover.com program. They just have different merchant partner (I'm sure some are the same) and have different rebate rates for different partners.
Chase Cash Plus - Chase also has a similar program called the Chase Cash Plus. With their new Ultimate Rewards program, they will be migrating that feature over as well. Like shopdiscover.com, you can earn up to 20% cash rebates with that program.
ShopAmex.com - American Express has a shopping mall called shopamex.com. If you use your Amex card at the mall, you can earn extra reward points and even use reward points when you shop online.
Things to be aware of
There are a couple of things that you have to be aware of when using these shopping portals.
Conclusions - So there you go, a new way to get discounts by using your credit cards shopping portal. Most people aren't even aware of this. But if you do your research properly, you can save lots of money with this method.
This guest post is written by Mr Credit Card from www.askmrcreditcard.com. If you are looking for a credit card, then check out his best credit card deals and offers section.
0 comments:
Post a Comment