Shoppers, Don’t Be Allured By Reward Points This Holiday Season
Money | October 13, 2009 at 1:26 amIt’s holiday season after a few days and you must be getting geared up to shop. You must be coming across a lot of attractive offers in your favorite mall for buying food stuff, clothing, cosmetics etc. Rewarding points on purchase for a cash discount or for purchasing an expensive item is a bait used by sales people and credit card companies to make you purchase more. You’ll see that ultimately you make purchases to earn your points but ultimately the cost of your purchases reaches up to almost the price of that expensive item. Instead of trying to accumulate reward points, you could have bought the item straight away. At least that could have saved you the trouble of piling up articles that you don’t need. Here’s an infographic from Mintblog that shows how you should use the reward point system to your maximum advantage.
Not Every Purchase Will Earn You Reward Points
When you go to a mall that suggests you accrue reward points for your purchase benefits, you have to ask the sales staff on what exact purchases you’ll get reward points. For example, you purchase gift cards or make advanced payments you’re not going to get reward points. Similarly paying taxes may be painful, but you won’t get a soothing reward point for doing that. You don’t get reward points for purchasing a pack of cigarettes or your favorite hard drink (more precisely tobacco or alcohol). Buy something from discount shops like Walmart or Costco and you’ll not get reward points for that from your credit card company. Also PIN usage is considered a point for not rewarding.
Annual Fees In Subsequent Years May Not Get You Reward Points
Your credit card company might tell you that you’ll get a lot of signup points when you pay annual fees. That’s correct. But payment of annual fees for the subsequent year will not get you any points. This will not ultimately add up to your reward points.
A Point Being Reset to 0 Is Quite Common
Many companies reset your points to 0 annually or even quarterly. Even a defaulting action like a missed payment can cause your reward points to slump to a 0. So climbing up the reward point ladder is not all that easy. Remember the snakes and ladder game, where you climb up the ladder by earning points till a snake finds you and you come down to the starting point ? So, my message to you is find out about the different snakes that can prevent you from earning reward points.
Be Alert For Reward Expiries
Very often we forget about the validity of the reward points. Many times, I‘d find one fine morning that, my reward points have expired. Let that not happen to you. Most rewards have a validity period of 60-90 days. Otherwise get this clarified from your credit card company.
The Points May Be Devalued
Always keep yourself updated about the value of the reward points. Many times the value of the points is diminished to create higher numbers of points to which you’ll get attracted easily. Always check for points that are below 1 cent in worth.
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