Bank of America 5% cash back Offer

Bank of America has been mailing to its credit card customers about a 5% cash back offer this holidays. The categories are pretty broad and includes stores that sell Books, Toys, Electronics, Sporting goods and Department stores.

For more clarification, the codes are as follows:

The above MCC codes are helpful since you can ask the cashier about the code to which your card would be billed to and get your card eligible for some discounts.

The email is along the following line and read the fine print carefully. From what it seems, multiple cards could be eligible for this promotion. Since the category of stores are so wide and almost anyone buying a gift will have a high probability of visiting one of these stores it is free 5% cash back on top of the promotions that most stores are running during the holiday season. There is nothing in the fine print related to gift card purchases. So I plan to stock up gift cards and then use them at a later point of time.

The original activation email:

There is a $25 limit on each card, which means a purchase limit of $500. Since the average Thanksgiving/Holiday season gifts fall in this range, this offer is applicable for the vast majority of users. There is no other bonus category card across the board, including Chase and Discover or Citi, that have the 5% on such a broad range. Discover has 5% cash back for online purchases.. same as Chase Freedom which has similar offer for Amazon purchases. So in all, this card from Bank of America stands out as a real winner. I have this card and it is pretty versatile in terms of design and usage. Usually, Bank of America is not the first bank that springs to mind when it comes to big bonus rewards or category rewards. But this holiday season, Bank of America seems to have really done well with this program. There is quite a bit of Twitter and social media buzz around this campaign and good user adoption would mean more such programs in future.

Transitioning back to Blogger

There are advertiser issues and other issues with Wordpress including freedom of expression. It seems Blogger is a better home for this blog at the moment. I will be tweaking this in the coming weeks and playing a bit more before finding a final solution. If nothing works, I guess the only option would be to host it in a separate new domain. Maybe that is the best solution as that gives maximum control to bloggers like me to have their own creative space as well as freedom.

Recent Credit Cards worth applying

In the past month or so, a spate of credit cards came by. Again, nothing much worth applying if you are hard-core user. There was nothing exciting in the bonus world as the new cards were pretty much the rehash of existing card offers or they were discontinued for some time and again rebooted keeping in mind the holiday season.

The main cards and the links were as follows.

Citi AAdvantage card: A bit higher rewards than the original one. Right now, it gives 50,000 points but the kicker is no annual fee for the first year.

Chase Southwest credit card: Gives 50, 000 points after account opening and if you accumulate 100k points, there is a free companion pass which lets your companion travel for free when you book the tickets. This is one of the best offers out there. They generally recur it and based on past data, this offer should go on till at least April 2015.

Chase British Airways Credit card: A much better version of the previous credit card. I have this card and had to shell out $95 annual fee. However, this current version, for the first time has the annual fee waived for the first year. This card is good to accumulate points that can be used in American Airlines flights. Pretty much everywhere else, you are going to get dinked. With AA though, you get pretty good flight deals which surprisingly is not even there in the AA website - whether you want to pay in cash or points. Anyhow, for now, it seems a good deal. In general, this card is versatile and good addition to your wallet,. Never mind, the annual fee. It gives good gas points, rounds of lots of categories. So all in all, it is not a bad card to have.

Barring these three cards, nothing really has kicked in high gear as of yet. So for 2014, the big card was the Citi AA Executive card which so far seems to be the only 100k card, though with a reduced annual fee. The BA card - original offer seems to be still available where you can get 100k points but the spend is simply too high at 25k .. which is fine if you do not have any other card to put your spend on.

So, hang in tight!

Recent Credit Cards worth applying

In the past month or so, a spate of credit cards came by. Again, nothing much worth applying if you are hard-core user. There was nothing exciting in the bonus world as the new cards were pretty much the rehash of existing card offers or they were discontinued for some time and again rebooted keeping in mind the holiday season.

The main cards and the links were as follows. The links point to the direct bank account link and no referral fee whatsoever to this blog or me.

Citi AAdvantage card: A bit higher rewards than the original one. Right now, it gives 50,000 points but the kicker is no annual fee for the first year.

Chase Southwest credit card: Gives 50, 000 points after account opening and if you accumulate 100k points, there is a free companion pass which lets your companion travel for free when you book the tickets. This is one of the best offers out there. They generally recur it and based on past data, this offer should go on till at least April 2015.

Chase British Airways Credit card: A much better version of the previous credit card. I have this card and had to shell out $95 annual fee. However, this current version, for the first time has the annual fee waived for the first year. This card is good to accumulate points that can be used in American Airlines flights. Pretty much everywhere else, you are going to get dinked. With AA though, you get pretty good flight deals which surprisingly is not even there in the AA website - whether you want to pay in cash or points. Anyhow, for now, it seems a good deal. In general, this card is versatile and good addition to your wallet,. Never mind, the annual fee. It gives good gas points, rounds of lots of categories. So all in all, it is not a bad card to have.

Barring these three cards, nothing really has kicked in high gear as of yet. So for 2014, the big card was the Citi AA Executive card which so far seems to be the only 100k card, though with a reduced annual fee. The BA card - original offer seems to be still available where you can get 100k points but the spend is simply too high at 25k .. which is fine if you do not have any other card to put your spend on.

So, hang in tight!