MBNA Platinum Plus - more pluses than I expected
Written: Mar 08 '04
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Pros: No surprises in fine print, free bill pay from credit card account
Cons: Bill pay from credit card not as full-featured as those from checking accts/third parties
The Bottom Line: For the conservative credit card user who considers credit card a nifty tool, but pays off balances every month, a cash-back card like this one is a must.
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| suren's Full Review: MBNA Platinum Plus (Mastercard and Visa) |
If you religiously pay off your credit cards every month and dont carry debt on your credit cards, read this review. If you do carry balances on your credit cards, visit http://www.fool.com for a motherly dressing down.
I had been looking for a credit card with a flat cash rebate program unlike the stepped rewards offered by Bank of America and other banks. Some Chase offerings looked promising, but then my favourite financial advice website (for the uninitated, if you'd rather be a Fool than a fool, visit fool.com) came up with a Motley Fool Visa card with a 1% flat cash back rebate in partnership with MBNA bank. The interest rate doesn't really matter to me, but it does come with a (so-called) fixed interest rate at 9.x%. Since it is a Platinum Plus visa card, it comes with some added perks like rental car collision waiver and travel accident insurance.
But only after I received the card and started accessing the account online (BTW, according to the Forbes magazine, if you don't do your banking online, you are wasting a major part of your life or some such) did I find out that MBNA offers a free web bill pay service that makes payments to most common merchants from your credit card account. A payment is considered a cash equivalent purchase, which means these payments do not earn cash rewards, but you still get the grace period (a pretty good 25-55 days). I was surprised that it lets me make mortgage payments and car payments from my credit card account. This is offered by MBNA in partnership with a company called CheckFree, and though the interface is not as smooth and easy to navigate as Bank of America's online bill pay, it is still pretty convenient to consolidate bills and utilize the grace period.
The 1% cash back rebate is applied in every statement, which is pretty neat compared to Discover and American Express, which apply the rebate at the end of the year. I've had occasion to call customer service only once to get more details about the CheckFree bill pay service. Surprisingly the first agent I spoke to didn't know what I was talking about, but after being put on hold for 5 minutes, I reached someone who was better informed. She said that CheckFree intends to become a full-fledged bill pay service in future, where you can add your own payees and not have to only select from the list of supported payees. My only grouse is that most of the businesses and merchants I pay to are not considered "in-network", in which case my payment will be considered a purchase and I can earn cash back on it. Anyway, I hope they make this more feature rich and easy to use in future.
If you don't intend to carry forward balances and don't have a cash-rebate card yet, take a good look at the Motley Fool Visa Platinum plus credit card from MBNA and also the (upto 5%) cash rebate credit card from American Express. You could be getting cold hard cash back instead of lofty-sounding but restricted rewards and/or points.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
suren
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Reviews written: 6
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