I have an American Express Blue and a Visa through my credit union. I heart them both. The credit union ones are usually great if you want good service. Mine just turned into one of those reward ones where you get stuff, but I don’t care about stuff, I care about service. The Amex Blue has always had rewards and I’ve liked their service too. And my interest rate is low.
I like to earn fun stuff instead of money back. My favorites card is the Starwood AMEX (free first year then $30/year) which earns 1 SPG point per dollar spent. And the points can transfer to most airlines at a 1:1 ratio with a 5k bonus when you transfer 20k. That gives flexibility in choosing airlines for award tix. And my Delta SkyMiles Amex was $55/year to earn 1:1. I have no idea what the APR is because I never carry a balance.
My next favorite is the Chase Marriott Premium card, which is $65/year. It comes with a free Cat. 1-4 stay upon enrollment and a free Cat.1-5 stay upon each anniversary. I just passed my first anniversary and received the voucher for the free night. I booked a night at the Renaissance Asheville on our way down to Hilton Head and saved over $125 after the annual fee.
Mainly responding so I can subscribe to this thread. I may need to make a switch.
I currently have a Chase Contiental World Platinum (or some similar name). The annual fee is about $80 though so that is why I may change. I get a 1:1 ratio for miles:dollars spent and easily build up 20,000 or so miles a year.
My wife had a Chase Shell gas card (no annual fee) which is no longer offered. We get a 5% rebate on any gas station purchase so we use this strictly for gas and the Continental card for everything else.
She also had a Discover card that was primarily only used for Sam’s Club purchases but they now accept Mastercard so we’re going to dump it (I think it gave a 1% cash rebate, no annual fee).
Previous to the Chase card I had a Southwest Airlines Visa (I forget the bank) but the RapidRewards didn’t last indefinitely and I wasn’t flying enough to build up rewards so I cancelled it and switched to the Continental Mastercard.
I have no idea of the APRs since I also pay them off every month.
My primary card is Discover with another for backup for those rare times Discover is not accepted.
I am content with it. I get some cash back and they have a method for me to generate a new number for each place I make a purchase. That number then can only be used at that place. It makes it safer to buy online, because even if my number is hacked, it can’t be used elsewhere.
I love my american express, great rewards (has been voted #1 for 8 years in a row) low annual fees and fantastic customer service. Based in the us I might add.
I have a Washington Mutual card. I got it a bit over a year ago and it was my first real credit card (I’m not counting the one JC Penney card I had a bit before that). It’s a platinum (not that that really means anything anymore) and I started out with a $1,000 balance and 9% APY. I went with their offer because you get constant access to your FICO score online, which totally rules.
In this year, they’ve upped my limit twice (to still comfortable levels) and they recently offered to upgrade my card to a points card. Their online account access is easy (I make all my payments online) and I have never had a single problem with them.
I have a UPromise Mastercard from Citi, and I’m very happy with it and charge between $3-4k monthly or more. I get UPromise cash into my kids’ 529 account with every purchase, and depending on what I’ve bought, additional cash for some items. We’ve never had a problem from Citi; on two occasions we had our cards stolen and we called them, they covered the couple hundred dollars of charges that were made immediately after the theft, and sent us new cards. I don’t know what the interest rate is because we pay everything monthly.
For the very rare occasion that the place doesn’t take Mastercard, I have an Amex Blue card. Also no complaints, but in the last five years have probably only charged a couple thousand on it.
USAA Mastercard is my card of choice. Their customer service is amazing. I had a duplicate charge from a hotel in China I found about after I got back. Instead of making me call the hotel, they removed the charge immediately.
I’ve also got Amex Blue and Discover that I’ve been happy with but it’s more that they’ve never gave me any problems.
I’m happy with Amex, mainly because there’s no temptation to run up debt. Their service has been very good except for one hiccup 20 years ago, where I lost my card, and they failed to update the card number, so that I got stranded in a restaurant. But that’s the only bad thing that’s happened. I have no other card.
With their customer support and technical staff based in India… :rolleyes:
DEAR OG!
We’re nearly twins on this one!
My Amazon Visa is, to me, the Card With The Biggest Rewards Catalog In The World™ attached to it.
Nifty.
I buy all my gas on it, & covert my unleaded into Heinlein novels or Doc Savage books.
In defense of my brethren in the Risk Management department, AmEx has no way of knowing that you’re traveling unless you call and notify them. Looking at it from their side, what are they supposed to think when all of your charges are from a certain area and suddenly there’s a slew of charges from across the country? Should they just assume you must be travelling or should they protect themselves by suspending the card?
Well, it wouldn’t be 100% effective (your ticket could have been paid some other way or the ticket could be for someone else), but they could have some idea if there was a large charge to an airline in the recent past.
In answer to the OPs question, I have an American Express card that gives me 1 air mile per cdn$20 with no annual fee, and a Bank of Montreal Mastercard that gives me 1 air mile per cdn$40 with no annual fee. The Mastercard is used only at places that don’t take Amex. I don’t know and don’t care about the interest rates (since I’m a firm believer that it is extremely silly to not pay off your credit card balances in full every month).
They might ASSUME that a business card user for a 3-letter computer company is actually traveling for business since that is what about 100% of that card-base does for a living. Also, when the card holder gets on the phone with them, provides identification (complete with all the secret handshakes) and they STILL do not authorize the charge while I am standing in the lobby of a hotel at 11:00 at night after the flight that was charged on the same card from my home city to the destination -and- after taking the car rental using the same card, I was NOT amused! That is not protection. It is LOUSY customer service plain & simple.
Exactly. I’ve been a primarily AmEx user for over ten years now, and think this sort of proactive fraud protection is a HUGE plus, not a minus.
I have only had this happen to me once while using my AmEx, when I used it to make a single very large purchase many thousands of dollars more than my usual monthly bill in an out-of-state location (a piece of furniture). When the charge was declined I simply picked up the phone, called AmEx using the 800 number on the back of the card, confirmed my identity and explained the purchase, and they cleared the charge to go through.
Another time, AmEx themselves called me at work and asked me if two or three strange-seeming charges that they had declined earlier that day had come from me. They had not. So they immediately canceled that card and sent me a new one via overnight FedEx. I have never had my AmEx number successfully stolen.
On the other hand not one but two of my past Visa cards, one through Chase and one through Citibank, have been cracked, and I had to dispute the charges and get new cards on my own initiative. Fortunately I’m the sort to scan my financial records online several times a week, and caught on before more than one or two such charges had been made; if I were a monthly statement reading type of guy, either of those two incidents could have snowballed into a major pain in the butt.
Both of my AmEx experiences came while using their no-fee Optima card. I did however “upgrade” last year to one of their premium cards (the “Platinum” card), accepting what was essentially a free one-year trial offer. I’m still not sure the perks are completely worth the extra fees, but they have definitely come in very handy a few times in the past year, in one case basically rescuing my wife from being stranded at an airport without me.
No argument there. I hope someone got fired over that. (At AmEx, obviously.)
But they DO have a Limit. It’s just that only they know what your limit is. Admittedly the limit is flexible. I don’t like the fact it has a fee, either, I won’t accept a fee.
I use US Bank REI. But I have about six back up cards for various specialized reasons.
Note that any bank or any CC company will screw up sometime. Do not cancel a card or drop a bank that has given your decades of great service just for one fuck up.
In the case of the OP, I would get another card, sure. But I would write the CEO of Citibank/American Airlines and explain why I was going to cancel their card. I have found some banks will get down on their knees to stop you from canceling. I have been offered a $100 credit.
I doubt that happened. American Express was also a client of mine several years later & I got a peek inside their world. There is a reason why the people at the front line are not the most competent. Like many other things, it starts at the top and flows down. It is all about what is cheap - not really about quality. 
I am happy with Discover, and use it for most large purchases for the cash-back, but it isn’t accepted everywhere and can’t be used overseas. I’ve never had any trouble with my Chase MasterCard either.
I did have an MBNA card that was recently absorbed by Bank of America, and I’ve just learned that they charge a fee for out-of-U.S. purchases–which I’ve never run into before with any card I’ve used, even this one when it was MBNA, and am irked about it. This used to be my travel-and-fun card, but I guess Chase is coming with me from now on.
I use a prepaid Mastercard from MoneyMart. I have no credit.
I was happy when the prepaid cards appeared, because after five years without MC or Visa of any sort, I could make online purchases through MC again. I still have to load the card first, though.