Back a few months I received a Kindle and a $100 Amazon gift card for singing up for an American Express “Premier Rewards” card. All I had to do was charge $300 or so, which I paid off promptly. I’m assuming they would hope I’d stick around and pay the annual fee, is excessive IIRC, but they waived it for the first year and there was minimal hassle in canceling the card.
Years ago there was some deal with free tickets for American Airlines, but I was young and my father handled that one so I don’t remember the details.
I have never gotten anything from a credit card compay except screwed over so bad I will NEVER deal with one of them again. AND I had an excellent credit history; didn’t stop them from finacially violating me.
I got much the same thing. Plus of course the usual 1 years no interest, whcih back in the days I carried balances was pretty nice.
Also, once they had a booth at a sparsely attended fair, with your choice of 4 free gifts. I told the guy(half joking) if he gave me all 4 I’d sign up and he said business was so slow, he’d taker me up on it. Likely they only paid about $5 each for them, but I thought they were cool.
I still use my Disney Rewards card, which gave me a $50 Disney gift card. Pretty sweet.
Um, 15% off my first purchase? Credit card companies don’t really give me stuff, except points that I need jillions of in order to redeem anything, and will take lifetimes to accrue.
I just got 40,000 frequent flyer miles on American for doing nothing but charging something and then paying it right back. I am going to use it for something good like a trip to Hawaii or the Caribbean.
Just last month I signed up for the Capital One Venture card during their “Match My Miles” promotion (now defunct). They matched up to 100,000 miles in airline accounts. Plus, if you spent $1000 in the first three months, they’d throw in another 10,000 bonus points. I have 150,000 Delta SkyMiles, so it was a no-brainer. I charged $1000 of my regular spending on the card within the first 2 weeks, and lo and behold, the first statement showed a bonus of 110,000 CapOne points!
To redeem, you charge travel related expenses to the CapOne card like normal, then request to be reimbursed, at a ratio of 100 CapMiles per $1 spent. In other words, if you charge $500 on a flight, they’ll reimburse you that $500 in exchange for 50,000 CapOne points. Plus, since you paid cash for the ticket, you get to pocket the regular airline miles! (Award tickets booked through the airline don’t earn miles.)
Bottom line, they gifted me $1100 for signing up for their card and spending $1000 bucks on it (which I promptly paid, so no interest) for a $59 annual fee. Best bonus so far.
Before that, the best bonus I’ve ever gotten was the British Air Visa promo when they offered a 100,000 BA point signing bonus – enough for two round-trip flights to UK, IIRC. I canceled the card after a year, though, because I discovered that award tickets came with a fairly usurious fuel/tax surcharge. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with the miles.