I signed up for the Commerce Bank Rewards Visa Card just one year ago this week so now that I have paid off my balance I am looking over the reward program. This card started out as a 0% Balance transfer card for 12 months with no fee if done by February 24th of last year. I took advantage of that offer as I do many 0% offers with no transfer fees. These are hard to come by so you have to move fast. There are only a few of them out right now and those are from Chase Slate and possibly this card. It is rare when they come along but they do from time to time.
The 0% APR was fine I just paid it month to month the minimum payment so I would get no interest or fees then paid off the final amount owed before the last bill was due. The exciting part about this card is when I signed up I thought it might offer some rewards program worth using but you have to accrue interest to the 3x rewards points. You do get 1 point per dollar spent on purchases then 3 points per dollar on interest accrued on monthly balances. Basically this card pays you to spend money at 1 point per dollar then wants you to earn money off of the interest you owe. This can be tricky and something I really do not want to mess with since I pay off my credit cards before they accrue interest each month.
I did however get a special bonus of 1,500 points in the mail which advertised their new enhanced rewards program. It enabled me to look inside the program and see what reward I could get for 1,500 points. Keep in mind that most rewards programs 1,500 points means you get $15 worth of rewards because it means 1% of %1,500 in purchases.
However, with this rewards program at Commerce Bank you only get a $5 gift certificate for spending $1,500 which is really not 1% per dollar spent and not worth your time at all. We were also disappointed with the cash back redemption which really takes no effort for the credit card company to do a statement credit. This was 5,000 points redemption at only $25. So you are getting half a percent per dollar spent with this?
The worst thing about this credit card is that if you do not sign into your account for more than three months they will delete your account online and you have to go through the entire sign-up process to log-in to view your transactions. This is a major hassle if you wish to redeem rewards online and it takes you three months or more to get the points to add up. It is also a hassle if you do not log-in to your account each month and have a 0% transfer. Most people who have 0% balance transfers do not sign into their accounts until the last month just to pay it off completely. They also ask you four security questions and that seems to be a hassle as well. I prefer a bank with less hassles and more rewards.
We recommend this card for the 0% OFfer if it still exists but get out fast after that goes away and find another card to get rewards from!
