Today I got a credit card application from Barclays Bank Delaware for their BLACK CARD ™ Visa credit card. The benefits beyond a regular Visa are kind of vauge–“Black Card members are ensured the highest caliber of personal service. Cardmembers enjoy a 24-hour Concierge Assistant, Exclusive Rewards Program, and Luxury Gifts from some of the world’s top brands” but doesn’t give any concrete details about what this entails, although I think it might mean I’ll get to spend some time along the French Riviera hobnobbing with James Bond. Oh, there’s also: “Made with carbon, the Visa Black Card is guaranteed to get you noticed”, which of course is a great selling point, or would be if I was about 13 years old or had some sort of carbon fetish. (It doesn’t say, but I suspect this is the same carbon that you can only get though sophisticated chemical manufacturing techniques, like, for example, burning toast).
However, despite the lack of specifics, all this must be some sort of wildly valuable opportunity, because the card has an annual fee of $495 (plus $195 per additional person.) Interestingly, the annual fee is charged on the first bill, but according to the Terms and Conditions the credit line may be as low as $250. Thus, I can forsee getting my first statement stating that my initial fee of $495 exceeds my credit line of $250, therefore I am liable for an additional $39 for an “Over Your Credit Line Charge”, all to be paid at the Penalty APR of 26.99% plus the Prime Rate. It’s a wonder the application doesn’t ask “To which debtors prison would you care to be sent?” (The application does ask “Are you a married Wisconsin resident?”, which I find only slightly less ominous than “Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?”)
Showing remarkable restraint, Barclays Bank Delaware is limiting their BLACK CARDs ™ to just 1% of Americans, so, a mere 3 million people will have the opportunity of filling the Barcley coffers with $1.485 billion each year for the privilege of obtaining their noticeable BLACK CARDS ™ – I fear the Barcleys management will make so little from this generous offer that they will need to go on food stamps to survive.
My one fear is that all this is part of a new trend, and that at some future time I will rue the day I passed on getting a credit card with “only” a $495 annual fee. But is there any legitimate justification for a $495 annual fee Visa card?
At least Amex is widely known for their high level of service, even down to the lowly basic green charge cards.
I’d be willing to bet that their free-spending customers don’t give paying $200 a month for concierge service and a host of nice travel-related amenities a first, let alone second thought. In the US, you have to charge at least $250,000 per year on the Centurion card to keep it. And yes, it’s a charge card - not a credit card, so you have to pay it off at the end of each month.
Barclay, on the other hand? Their customer service center is staffed by ill-mannered offshore people that don’t have much grasp of US laws - particularly the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
If you don’t mind my asking, did they tell you the credit limit? Because I can’t imagine the most status hungry person on Earth paying $495 for a $250 limit (since the Nigerian deal that didn’t come through ruined his credit).
Does anybody know what the real world benefits of “concierge service” are where credit cards are concerned? Will they make travel reservations for you or find you seats on a sold out flight or something?
Click the link in my prior post. Examples of things they will arrange for you include having 12 Arabian horses shipped from Dubai for your daughter’s wedding.
My wife has the $400 Amex card. It gets us into the business class lounges at airports with normal tickets. This is a huge benefit if you need to rebook due to delayed flights. The agents manning the lounges are the senior agents who know how to get things done and who to call. Last Christmas our flight to Boston from New York was canceled. So suddenly there are 80 people in line in the terminal with complicated problems and only a couple of agents to handle them. It is taking 5 minutes per person to sort things out. If you go up to the lounge there are 3 agents just hanging out waiting for their shift to end. We got booked on a later flight on a different airline. The guys behind us spent an hour in line and just barely made the flight we were on. If you travel the cards can save you a lot of hassle. If you don’t travel much then it is probably a waste of money. There are other travel perks that we have used over the years.
Now I have an image of horses in bulk packs of 12, all shrinkwrapped on a pallet and stored on a rack in our local warehouse. Every few hours, an underpaid warehouse employee comes by to check the water and food levels in the dispensers, and clean out the bottom tray on the pallet.
My dad (and, therefore, all of us) has the AmEx platinum card because when he was working, it was worth it for the flight insurance for him. (If he had died in a plane crash, we would have been set for life. It was something he worried about.) I have never tried the concierge service, although I have a little book that tells me that restaurants around the world are keeping tables open for us.
It does get you into the Delta Crown Room, which has saved my sanity more than once.
I had an AmEx Plat (after getting the first year at a much reduced “introductory rate”) and it came in handy a few times… Whether those few times were worth it, is still a matter of review and discussion.
Just about all the benefits are travel related, so if you don’t fly a lot and/or don’t stay in a lot of 4-star hotels while doing so, it’s definitely not worth it.
The best story is where the concierge thing saved my wife once, when a flight of hers with a stopover in Chicago was canceled due to a March snowstorm. Not just her flight either – ALL American Airlines flights out of O’Hare were canceled until further notice. The hotel reservation phones/desks at the airport were swamped (many people were going down the list of nearby hotels and getting “sorry we’re full”), as were the desks for any alternate flights on other airlines. It was a total free for all, whatever was out there to be had hotel-wise or airplane-wise was going to be first come, first served…
I wasn’t even with her for this, but I called the AmEx Platinum Travel Concierge when she called to tell me all this and in about 15 minutes they had found her a hotel room for the night that had a free shuttle to/from O’Hare, AND booked her a flight on JetBlue the next morning that actually took off.
A few times the concierge has been able to get us dinner reservations at nice restaurants on short notice that OpenTable or calling the restaurant directly could not produce. That was pretty nice, but really, it wouldn’t have killed us to find another place to eat.
We’ve taken advantage of the airport lounge access for flights with long stopovers (much nicer than hanging out by the gate), and we’ve also gotten quite a few room upgrades in nice hotels (such as the Boston Harbor Hotel), to junior suites or rooms with better views.
But all in all, that’s about 10 times or so over 3 years we’ve really made good use of the card’s benefits, and only one that was really a “lifesaver” one as opposed to getting us something a bit more comfortable, more conveniently and/or an ego stroke. All of which I’m willing to pay an annual fee for, but not $395 a year.
The card is made of carbon for starters. “This card is targeted at the top 1% of Americans, with great income and high status.” Then it pretty much talks about the concierge service and airport lounge access.
But the black Amex Centurion is made of titanium. Sounds like the Visa black card is a ripoff of the Amex version.
Heh, I got that very same “invitation” a few months ago–the “black card made out of carbon”, $495 annual fee, “limited to only 1% of U.S. residents”, etc. The funny thing is, it didn’t actually come to my mailbox; it was sent to my name, but to my parents’ house–an address I have never actually lived at. (They moved out of the house I grew up in and to the address the “invitation” was sent to a few years after I had graduated from college and permanently moved out.) And at any rate I haven’t lived with my parents, even nominally (as in “He’s really off at college but this is still his official permanent residence”) for over 15 years.
So clearly we can tell that this $495-a-year Credit Card Made Out of Carbon[sup]TM[/sup] is very exclusive–only Certain Types of People, who are very carefully vetted first are even sent an invitation to receive this remarkable Credit Card Opportunity. Whitetho should be honored just to have been considered.
Sounds like they are trying to imitate the AmEx black card, but for a cheaper price, which pretty much defeats the purpose of the black card (i.e., allowing its owners to feel really elite).
Not only is the annual fee for the Centurion/black card $2,500, as friedo notes, but you must have spent at least $250,000 on your Amex card in the past year (and paid it off), there is a one-time initiation fee of $5,000, and it is available by invitation only (although to get the invitation, all you have to do is spend $250k).
In my time in the restaurant business I saw exactly 2 AmEx black cards, and when someone came through with one of those thick titanium babies, trust me, we noticed. But we also knew that it meant the person was loaded beyond belief. If they’re giving these Visas out for $500, it’s just a gimmick.
There is no mention of what the credit limit would be, just standard boiler-plate that they would review the application and let me know: “This ‘pre-screened’ offer of credit is based on information in your credit report indicating that you meet our criteria. This offer is available only to applicants of the United States with the exception of Puerto Rico. Depending on our review of your application and credit history, we will assign a credit line with a minimum of $250.”
The application is a standard “answer these questions and send in the form using this prepaid envelope”. Then, the fine folks at Bankcard Processing Center in Deposit, NY – presumably wearing white gloves – would review my request and let me know. Since I got a mailing, I’m assuming you don’t have to own a yacht to qualify. And I’m not willing to gamble – the last thing I want to find out is that I had received the honor of paying them $495 (annually) for a credit card.
yeah just sounds like a rip off of the centurion, which in itself only makes sense if one is a frequent business traveller (the much lauded concierge service on it is shite).
This sounds like it is targetted towards the kind of people who buy entry level rolexes not realising they’re essentially mass produced jewlery these days
