If I Could Have Only One Credit Card...
Written: Feb 01 '02 (Updated Feb 05 '02)
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Pros: Great service, travel service, frequent flyer points
Cons: None
The Bottom Line: If I could have only one credit card, my USAA Eagle Points Platinum Mastercard would be the one.
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| murasaki's Full Review: USAA Savings Bank |
I’ve had a Mastercard with USAA Federal Savings Bank for about five years. I started with the standard card and have gradually upgraded over time. I now have an Eagle Points Platinum Mastercard with USAA and I’m very happy with the services and benefits that come with USAA credit cards.
Standard Card
The standard card is fairly basic: 25-day grace period, cash advances, checks, optional insurance, etc. I had a $3500 credit limit when I first got the card, although I could have upped that to at least $5000. I prefer, however, to keep my credit limits low on my credit report and did not take advantage of the extra credit offered. This card has a variable annual percentage rate that can go as low as 10%. I’m also one of those people who pays off the balance every month so I’ve never really paid much attention to the interest rates on the card.
USAA gives a five-day grace period for late payments during which finance charges do not accrue. They allow an additional ten days grace period before a payment is considered "late" and a $20 late is applied, but finance charges also accrue during the ten days.
Finance charges for cash advances begin to accrue immediately. We've made a couple of cash advances from ATMs, for $100 each, and the finances charges for both withdrawals were less than $2 by the time the card was paid off the next month.
Gold Card
My Mastercard was quickly upgraded to a gold card within a few months. The gold card allows a credit limit of up to $10,000, of which I did not take advantage. The gold card provides a year-end summary of charges that I find somewhat useful. Many of my purchases for the year are sorted into categories so I know how much money I spent on gas or on restaurants. The only disadvantage of the year-end summary is that an unrecognized merchant will be placed in the miscellaneous category when it’s quite obvious to me that the purchase was gas or clothing or food.
The gold card also has rental car protection so I don’t need to make the additional purchase from the rental company to insure the car from loss or collision damages. Fortunately, I’ve never had to take advantage of this aspect of the card. The card also has up to $400,000 in travel and emergency assistance insurance.
Platinum Card
I upgraded to the platinum card a little over three years ago. This card has a credit limit of up to $25,000 (or more with a special request) and all the benefits of the cards listed above. In addition, the platinum card comes with a travel service that offers 5% cash back on travel booked through the service and paid for with the card. I’ve used this service frequently and will discuss it in detail down below. This card also has up to $1,000,000 in automatic travel insurance coverage.
Eagle Points
I first obtained the Eagle Points Platinum card from USAA about 15 months ago. The Eagle Points has all the benefits and advantages of the platinum card, including the travel service, but also has a reward points program. When I make charges on this card, my charges accrue a comparable amount of points toward frequent flyer mileage--mileage that I can redeem with any airline, any date, any destination, no travel restrictions, up to $500 for any ticket.
Since we’ve only had this card for a little more than a year, I have yet to redeem my mileage. In the meantime, I use this card for every purchase possible so that I can continue to accrue points. The Eagle Points Platinum card does have an annual fee of $40; however, after the first year, I can opt to pay the fee outright or use 4,000 of my points instead.
[Note: Our points are over the 25,000 minimum needed to redeem, but, as of yet, we have not used them for travel. I will update this review with the redemption process when we do so.]
Travel Service
From the time I got my platinum card, I’ve used USAA’s affiliate travel service for most of my private travel arrangements. The travel service (called Cendant) can book just about anything, from flights to cruises to hotels and rental cars. I’ve even booked a couple of Contiki tours through this service--and gotten 5% cash back on these rather large purchases. There is no minimum amount that one has to charge to be eligible for cash back (I’ve done it with $40 hotel rooms).
Before I call the travel service to book a reservation, I usually check online for flight or hotel rooms prices, etc. Every time, the travel service has gotten me a price within a few dollars of what I found online, or significantly lower. My in-laws use some sort of discount travel brokerage and Cendant has beaten their deals as well. When I asked how they were able to get such low fares, especially for flights, the lady assisting me replied that Cendant gets various corporate/group discounts and deals.
When I flew to Germany a year and a half ago, I got a great deal on a flight, but the catch was I needed to book a rental car. The person helping me suggested I book the rental car to get the low fare and then cancel the rental car a few days before I left, which I did, since the airfare, by that point, was already locked in at the low rate.
Even when a company does not show up in their computers, the travel service agents are willing to make phone calls. Last spring when I was apartment hunting in New England, I called and needed a rental car, to be picked up in a small town. Although no companies were listed on their computers for that town, I supplied the phone number of a rental car agency that I had found on the internet and they placed the call and made the reservation for me so that I was eligible for the 5% cash back.
My only complaint about the travel service is that they can’t always book me into a hotel that accepts pets, but I find that more a shortcoming of hotels than the travel service.
Convenience
A credit card holder with USAA can access their credit card account at any time through an 800 number, using the automated Touchline service. I tend to access my account online, which was a must when I lived overseas and did not have 800 toll-free calling. My credit card shows up online along with my other accounts with USAA so I can track purchases as they come in. I also have various recurring payments, like my Internet service, automatically charged to the credit card each month.
I had the option of having my credit card payments automatically deducted from my other USAA accounts every month. I could either select paying the minimum balance each month, a specified amount, or paying off the card in full. Of course, I chose to have the amount I owed paid in full and deducted from my checking account every month. In doing so, my charges accrued in the month of December are not deducted from my checking account until near the end of January, giving me extra time to make up the amount from savings if I went over-budget, while the money in my checking account earmarked for the credit card accrues interest before it’s deducted.
Service
On occasion, I’ve had cause to refute a charge to my credit card. When this is the case, I’ve simply called USAA and they put a hold on the transaction in question. I then submitted my refutation in writing with the reasons I believed the charge was made. Once USAA had my written statement, they immediately credited my card for the refuted charge. They went after the merchant who charged me unfairly; I didn’t have to do anything else or even follow-up.
Anytime I’ve called the credit card offices, the service has been efficient and helpful. I had no trouble changing my name on my credit card when I married because the credit card services had access to my bank file where I had already sent a copy of my marriage license (I had a more difficult time changing my name with American Advantage for a piddly frequent flyer miles account than with USAA as a whole).
Normally, I turn down attempts by credit card companies to raise my limit automatically. After the first time I did this with USAA, they stopped sending me automatic raises and have respected my wishes to let me call them. Last year, my husband and I decided to raise our credit limit from $5000 to $15000 since we planned to pay for our wedding reception and related expenses with the credit card. I raised our credit limit with one phone call. I also lowered the limit back down to our usual limit a few months after our wedding when all the charges had come through and were paid off.
USAA has collect world-wide calling for people traveling or living outside the United States and USAA does not add a 1% surcharge to transactions made in foreign currencies, unlike most Visa and Mastercard banks.
While this did not happen to me personally, I give it as an example of USAA’s wonderful service. One of my friends, when she was stationed in Saudi Arabia, bought a Persian rug from a dealer there and charged it on her USAA card. She had to leave a few days later for Washington, DC, for a couple of weeks duration. While she was in DC, USAA tracked her down and explained that they’d had a problem with the transaction for the rug. They gave her a special number for their translator and had my friend relay that to the rug merchant. The rug merchant was able to call the special number and clear up the transaction questions in Arabic so the merchant got his money, my friend got her rug, and everybody was happy. Even I was surprised at the lengths to which USAA credit card services went for this transaction.
Overall
We use our USAA credit card for almost every purchase--groceries, gas, travel, entertainment, etc., to build up our points and just out of convenience of the entire amount coming out of our checking account at the end of the following month. We do have a Visa for emergencies when our Mastercard might not be accepted, and a Discover card for the same reason, but got rid of all our other credit cards. If I could have only one credit card, my USAA Eagle Points Platinum Mastercard would be the one.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
murasaki
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