Question
My primary card is a Hilton American Express. I have a back-up Hilton Visa card from Citibank. My most recent bill arrived with payment due five days later. Since I like to use BillPay, that meant taking care of it the next morning. What if I weren't home, put aside the mail, ... ?
That time window seems so outrageous to me that I would like to change cards. The card would be used for where AmEx isn't accepted, the average monthly charges are around $300, I pay in full every month. Given that level of charges, I don't think it's worth paying for a card, at least not paying much, but I would like to earn points/miles if I can. (I mostly fly AA, have a few hotel points earned at Starwood, Marriott, Hyatt, have been focusing on collecting Hilton for a while).
Alternately, I can pay cash or use my Visa debit card, and just cancel the Citibank one.
Suggestions for cards that earn hotel points from another bank?
Sylvia
Answer
Anything from MBNA would be my suggestion. I have two cards from them, and the bills always come promptly with plenty of time before the due date. I got the Quantum on a whim. I don't use it for anything as it doesn't earn any points. The one I have from them that earns stuff is the LL Bean card. (The best thing it earns is the free shipping on LL Bean orders.)
You could consider something like the Amtrak Guest Rewards card. No annual fee, 1 point per dollar spent, and you can convert the Amtrak points to HHonors. There's a limit on how much of that point converting you can do per year, but at 300 bucks/month, I don't think you'd be reaching it. Limit of 25k points a year converted to other types of points. You need to earn 5000 Amtrak points, then you can trade those for 10,000 HHonors points. I don't know if there are any Amtrak travel requirements to keep your account active.
Here is MBNA's list of travel rewards cards:
http://www.mbna.com/creditcards/travel_rewards.html
They also have GoldPoints and two different cards that earn "independent" points towards rewards.
Answer
Here are some thoughts before you ditch your HHonors Visa:
- Sometimes the mail runs slow. Citibank may have mailed the bill the day it printed and it got stuck in some drunken postal carrier's bin. (I exaggerate a bit, but I think you get the point.) After a year of getting my CapOne bill on a timely basis, I just got my March bill in the mail 2 days before the due date. I'm not about to cancel my CapOne Visa for that.
- Citibank has some flexibility Both my CapOne & Citibank cards have had situations where I had to pay late once. With both banks, I called & explained the situation (i.e. bill arriving late) and they waived my late fee on a one-time basis because I was a good customer.
- Billpay through Citibank's website is fast. If you set up Citibank's Billpay through Citibank.com, you can make payments online that post in 2 days with no fee.
- BillPay can be set on autopilot. Last I checked, Citibank has a feature where you can request that your credit card bill be paid in full from your bank account every month on the due date. You can use this feature and still protect your billing rights.
- Request longer payment period This is one thing about Citibank that bothers me. They usually have a 20-day grace period (the time between the bill cutting and due date). If you want a 25-day grace period, you have to call and ask. On the other hand, MBNA usually has only 20-day grace periods with no exceptions on most of it's products.
Answer
With the Citi HHonors Visa you can do a same day payment, and they are quite good about it. Even if you do end up being late, call them and they will probably waive the fees.
Answer
I decided to call Citibank and spoke to someone with good customer service skills, but ...
We have a 25 day cycle she said. Your bill is mailed on the 11th and due on the 29th. No, there aren't typos there. We did some arithmetic, she referred me to their web page (I use BillPay on my brokerage account for all bills, don't really want to set up a lot of links to that account, say for Citi.). She offered to waive any fees for this month (there aren't any) and suggested calling if there were more problems (of course calling means quite a dance with the phone tree, live person is option five on I think the third layer of the menu) and I asked her to make a note in the file.
The Amtrak card looks OK, thank you, though I think I'd prefer a Visa for my backup card.
Sylvia
Answer
My primary card is a Hilton American Express. I have a back-up Hilton Visa card from Citibank. My most recent bill arrived with payment due five days later. Since I like to use BillPay, that meant taking care of it the next morning. What if I weren't home, put aside the mail, ... ?
That time window seems so outrageous to me that I would like to change cards. The card would be used for where AmEx isn't accepted, the average monthly charges are around $300, I pay in full every month. Given that level of charges, I don't think it's worth paying for a card, at least not paying much, but I would like to earn points/miles if I can. (I mostly fly AA, have a few hotel points earned at Starwood, Marriott, Hyatt, have been focusing on collecting Hilton for a while).
Alternately, I can pay cash or use my Visa debit card, and just cancel the Citibank one.
Suggestions for cards that earn hotel points from another bank?
Sylvia
Priority Club (Holiday Inn, Express, Crowne Plaza, Candlewood Suites, InterContinental, etc) -- www.priorityclub.com -- has a Visa that's from First USA that gets you 10000 points from your first purchase. That's enough for a free night at a number of Holiday Inn Express (lower midscale) hotels.
And you can convert Priority Club points to AA miles too. In small amounts, it's 10000 points to 2500 AA miles (ie, a 4:1 ratio). If you get a lot of points (not likely through credit card only) you can convert at a 2.7:1 ratio starting at 67000ish points to 25000 AA miles. (The 4:1 ratio can actually be done to lots of airlines, but the 2.7:1 ratio is only with AA!)
But regarding due dates, I suggest if you're going to be paying online anyway, that you just make note of the schedule (the due date is within a few days of being the same month to month, as it the closing date) and just check online at the right time of month (or just every couple weeks) and use the paper statement only as a backup for posterity.