We’ve had the Toys R Us Visa Card from Chase Bank since May 1997. I had seen an ad in a Parenting magazine where they had advertised with the slogan of “Earn free toys”. At the time, we had a 15-month-old son and I was pregnant with my second child so I figured that we could use some free toys. I applied over the phone and was approved with a generous credit limit of $5000. There is no annual fee and they have steadily increased our credit limit over the years.

GEOFFREY REWARDS
This is the rebate program offered by the Toys R Us Visa card. You earn a 1% rebate on general purchases and a 4% rebate on any Toys R Us, Kids R Us, or Babies R Us purchases. For every $1000 you charge at other places, you earn $10 in rebates. For every $1000 you charge at a Toys R Us, Kids R Us, or Babies R Us store, you earn $40 in rebates. The rebates are awarded in the form of Geoffrey Dollar coupons, in $10 increments. These Geoffrey Dollars can only be applied to future Toys R Us, Kids R Us, and Babies R Us purchases. Your Geoffrey Dollars are mailed separately from your bill and usually arrive within a day or two of each other. The Geoffrey Dollars have an expiration date of one year after they are issued.

You can use more than 1 coupon at a time. If you have 3 $10 Geoffrey Dollars and your purchase is $40, you can use all of your coupons at one time for a total of $30 off. Since these are only coupons, you will NOT receive any cash back if your purchase is less than the amount of the Geoffrey Dollars. There is a way around this. You CAN purchase Toys R Us gift cards for the amount of your Geoffrey Dollars. If your purchase is lower than the amount of the gift card, you will still retain the remaining amount on the card. Since these are rebate coupons, you CAN use them in conjunction with other manufacturers and store coupons.

Within the 4 years we have used this card, we have earned over $500 in Geoffrey rewards. We have used these rebate coupons to buy Christmas and Birthday presents, car seats, and an outdoor swing set. We use our Toys R Us Visa card for everything that accepts credit cards. We use it to pay at the grocery store, for utilities, medical co-pays, and other purchases.

We charged our new windows for $6000 and earned $60 in Geoffrey rewards. We later transferred this amount to another card at a lower interest rate, but at least we earned the Geoffrey dollars for this purchase. I usually save up the Geoffrey dollars throughout the year and then use them for Christmas shopping. At the Toys R Us after Thanksgiving sale, I purchased a bunch of sale items that was worth $150. After I gave all the coupons, I only paid $10. That really helped us out on our Christmas budget considering all of the kids we have to shop for. We have purchased 2 of our $80 car seats from Toys R Us. With the Geoffrey Dollars, they came out to only $20 each, a total savings of $120. We also purchased a $180 outdoor swing set for $100 with the use of our Geoffrey Dollars and the in store coupons.

INTEREST RATES
As far as interest rates go, this card isn’t that great. Our annual percentage rate (APR) for purchases has generally been over 18.4%; currently, it’s 18.9%. For Cash Advances, the lowest APR was 19.4%; this is currently 20.55%. I didn’t apply for the card for their interest rates. We have never carried a revolving balance on this card, so we don’t accrue any interest charges.

SECURITY
At my husband’s last job, he was required to go on business trips. On one trip to Japan, he charged his hotel bill (which was later reimbursed by his company). My husband had called me to let me know he was about to check out of the hotel. A few minutes later, I received a call from the Chase Bank security. They had received a charge being made in Japan (we live in California), for over $1000. I let them know that my husband was on a business trip there. It felt good knowing that they keep an eye on these things.

CUSTOMER SERVICE
On one occasion, we have had the same charge show up twice on our bill. The charge was for automotive services in the amount of $400. Since we had only serviced our car once, we knew this was an error. Besides, both charges were made on the same day and for the same amount. I quickly called customer service and they told me to write a letter describing the error in the billing. They credited the amount on our next bill. There were no problems at all.

They have an automated computer phone service that will list your balance, last 5 transactions, and other account information. On the occasions that I have needed to speak to a customer service representative, the wait time on the phone has generally been around a minute or two and most of their representatives have been friendly and polite.

They have never lost any of our payments (knock on wood) and they normally post our payments within 1 week of our mailing it to them.

BALANCE TRANSFERS
There is a balance transfer fee with this card. The fee is 2% of the amount being transferred, up to a maximum of $35. Occasionally they offer a promotional balance transfer interest rate of 5.99% or 9.99%. We don’t take advantage of this.

Normally when a credit card offers a promotional balance transfer APR that is lower than your current APR for purchases, any payments that you make will go directly to the amount at the lower interest rate, regardless of how much you have purchased on the card. In other words, if you transferred $2000 at an APR of 5.99% plus you charged $10 on your card, any payments you send in would be credited ONLY to the $2000 you transferred over. The $10 you charged will start to accrue interest at 18.9% until you pay off the amount that you transferred over. Since we always charge on our card, this is not a good option for us.

MISCELLANEOUS AND OTHER FEES
Their grace period is never less than 22 days. We normally pay our entire bill within days of receiving our bill, so we have never paid interest charges. The minimum finance charges are either 2% of your new balance or $10, whichever amount is greater. The Cash Advance transaction fee is 3%, with a minimum of $3 but no maximum. For returned checks, late payments, or exceeding your credit limit, there is a charge of $25. We are usually diligent in paying our balances in full, on time, and charging less than our credit limit. Because of this, we have not had any problems with any of these fees. There used to be a year-end summary of all of your charges for the year, but the last summary I received was for 1998. I guess they stopped doing this.

We do receive quite a few courtesy calls from Toys R Us Visa trying to get us to sign up for extra programs like their payment protector plan or some other saver plan. We normally tell them we’re not interested, but they still keep calling.

WEBSITE
We have only recently begun using their website to access our accounts. You must first sign up to be able to access your Chase accounts online. You can sign up at chaseonline.chase.com. We have Internet Explorer 5.0 on Windows 98. We were required to upgrade our browser to have 128-bit security by downloading the Internet Explorer High Encryption Pack. On a 56k modem, I was able to download this in about 2 minutes.

There are a lot of security features that you must go through to sign up. You must choose 3 different security questions and answers that only YOU know. You must find certain numbers located on your card that you never knew had any purpose. There were a few normal questions such as your credit card account number, social security number, and other personal information.

What I really like about accessing your account online is they have all the up to date transactions listed. Unlike listening on the phone, the website describes in detail what transactions took place. It looks like your credit card statement, except it’s online. You do need to contact customer service if you are requesting a balance transfer or a credit limit increase. You can also use online bill pay. Knowing that I can access all of my current and past transactions online is definitely convenient.

OVERALL
I absolutely love using this card for the rebate program. I highly suggest not keeping a revolving balance on this card because of their interest rates. You should transfer any balance that you cannot pay to a credit card that has a lower interest rate. Do NOT get this card if you cannot afford to pay it off every month. If you charge $1000 and cannot pay it off at one time, at 18.9% APR, the interest charges for that month are $15.53.

This amount is calculated using the daily periodic rate of 0.05178%, 30 billing days within the cycle, and an average daily balance of $1000.

0.0005178 X 30 X $1000 = $15.53

The $10 in rebates that you earn does not justify charging to this card.

RECOMMENDATION
This credit card is a definite must for parents with young children. You say that you don’t have kids? Maybe you have friends or relatives that have kids and you have to buy a present for them. The rebates from this card would come in handy. You can buy a gift card for them. You don’t know anybody with kids? If you’re into video games, Disney and other movies, and sports you can buy your supplies at Toys R Us with your Geoffrey Dollars.

Although a 1% or a 4% rebate may not seem like much at the moment, the savings DOES add up over time. The only other cards we have are the Citibank Visa and the American Express card for Costco, but we always try to use our Toys R Us Visa Card first.


Recommended: Yes