If you’re going to use a credit card, you might as well get compensated for it. But the cash rebate is just the one of the many features that attracted me to the card in the first place.



Why I Chose The American Express Cash Rebate Card

Up to 2% cash back on purchases.- From $1 to $2000 its ¼%. Then we go from $2001 to $4999 and get ½%. Anything in excess of $5000 will yield 1.5 % in cash back. The keywords here are “Up to” 2%. If you carry a balance on any given month, you’ll earn that extra ½ %. This my friend, is not a good thing, regardless of how low the interest rate is, even at the 3.9% introductory rate. Let me see…carry a balance, earn an extra ½%…no, I think I’ll pay the entire balance thank you!



Buyer's Assurance
This is basically an extended warranty on your purchase. The warranty will double, up to one year. For example, if you purchase a Sony Walkman with a 90 day warranty and made the purchase with your AmEx card entirely, the warranty will be covered for an additional 90 days by AmEx.


Purchase Protection
90 days from purchase with the card, the item will be covered by this plan that will basically insure your item from theft or accidental damage. Should you drop that new Digital Camcorder off the Niagara Falls or Empire State building, it’ll be covered. Just make sure you drop it within that 90-day window! ;)


Free Internet Service
A little advertised fact that AmEx offers free service to its cardholders, this thanks to an Epinions member who informed me of this.

Without going into a full-blown review here, I will say that the service has surpassed any of my expectations. An unobtrusive “American Express” overlay can be placed anywhere on the screen. Clicking on it brings up a menu of useful links to enhance your AmEx membership. These include checking your monthly statement, paying online, and a host of non-AmEx related links. Since there is no banner sucking up bandwidth, it doesn’t impair your surfing ability and system stability hasn’t been an issue, this with about 400 hours of use since December 2000.

The connections are quite stable but I have noticed the inactive “trigger” to be less than 5 minutes, so you’ll have to keep an active connection to keep from being disconnected. Connection speeds are similar to my paid ISP and at times somewhat faster.

If you’re a AmEx card holder and desire a free ISP, the link is:
http://www.amexol.com/
I think you’ll like it! ;)


Customer Service

Available 24/7 and the few times I had used it, the person was always polite and answered my questions thoroughly. The on-hold times were never a factor. Maybe I called at the least hectic times though.



Ouch!!!

The one thing that really kills me is the lack of acceptance on the many Internet shopping sites that I frequent. Most, if not all of the “big boys” accept the card, but the smaller retailers seem to shy away from it.

Some places like to make it a point to inform you that that don’t accept American Express. This, a crafty marketing campaign by Visa and MasterCard. I make it a point to avoid these establishments.

There’s nothing like placing your merchandise on the counter, whipping out your AmEx and having the clerk tell you that “We don’t accept American Express sir, but would you like to apply for our _ _ _ Visa card?”. I reluctantly put away my AmEx card and hand the clerk my Visa debit card. :(



Overall

My wife and I used Discover card exclusively, until that is, Costco Wholesale stopped accepting Discover and partnered with AmEx. We had a choice, either use our debit card and get $0 cashback, or apply for the AmEx card. The bulk of our purchases are made at this store and decided to breakdown and apply. My Discover card now sits in my wallet collecting pocket lint.

We agreed long ago to never carry a balance on any of our credit cards, instead opting to pocket the interest we were paying to the credit card companies and direct this to our mortgage principal. It took some manipulating back then to bring all of our outstanding credit card debts to that magical $0 balance, but it was well worth the effort and knocked quite a few payments off our mortgage.






Recommended: Yes