Archives for November 2010

The American Express Small Business Saturday promotion that was initially for Saturday, 11/27 has been extended all the way to the end of the year, 12/31/2010. Sign up at their special Facebook page if you haven’t already. Basically, enroll on their site, and spend $25 or more at any local small business that accept American Express and you’ll get a $25 credit back on your statement. Registration is now open to the first 300,000.

To be eligible for this offer, you must register your eligible American Express Card between November 8, 2010 and December 31, 2010. You may only register one Card for this offer. Using your registered American Express Card, you must spend $25 or more at one or more participating small business merchants between 11/27/2010 and 12/31/2010 to receive the $25 statement credit.

Eligible merchants include any independently owned small businesses that accept the American Express Card. Purchases made online, at large, national chains, at franchised business locations and at government agencies are not eligible.

I know a lot of folks have some version of the Chase Freedom Visa or Mastercard, whether from farther back or recently for their $100 cash promo offer or their rotating 5% rewards.

Just got a note that they are offering 8% cashback on select stores from 11/26 to 11/30. The Apple store usually only discounts prices on Black Friday, so in combination this could be a good deal if you were planning a Mac purchase anyway. Some other big names on their list as well. (Insert warning about not spending too much during holidays here.)

We are excited to announce a special, limited-time promotion for existing Chase Freedom cardholders!

For 5 days only, Chase Freedom cardholders can earn 8% bonus cash back for every dollar spent when shopping at the following select merchants: Apple Online Store, Gap, Toys “R” Us, Barnes & Noble, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Sears and Macy’s. This promotion is valid from November 26th through November 30th.

There are plenty of “FAKE-O” credit scores out there, but the only place to get your real FICO score is myFICO.com. Problem is, usually these cost money and even if they are free due to some promotion, it’s during some random time of the year. If you want a free FICO Score on demand, you’ll have to agree to a free 10-day trial at MyFICO.com:

IMPORTANT INFORMATION: When you order your free FICO Score here, you will begin your 10-day trial membership in Score Watch®. If you don’t cancel your membership within the 10-day trial period, you will be billed $12.95 for each month that you continue your membership. You may cancel your trial membership anytime within the trial period without charge.

Pain in the rear, right? Well, not really. Two things make this a 5-minute operation:

1. If you do not want the monitoring that ScoreWatch provides, then you can cancel immediately after you get your free credit score. Don’t wait a day. Don’t even wait an hour. This way you won’t give yourself a chance to forget.
2. You can cancel with just a few clicks. 100% online, no phone calls, with no hassle. You don’t have be subject to a hard sell or argue with anyone.

Here’s how I did last week. First, when you go through the process to buy your free score with trial, you will have to provide your credit card information but nothing should be charged.

After that, you should receive your credit score and the related Equifax credit report. Print it out. You’re going to cancel right afterward so you won’t have access to the information anymore. Print – or at least print/save to PDF – anything you want to keep. This was the first time I’ve ever seen a score above 800!

Now, don’t go anywhere. To cancel, click on Support on the top right of the page, then Contact Us by email. Choose “I would like to cancel my product subscription” and for the product mark “Score Watch® – Free Trial”. Here is a screenshot of what it should look like. Finally, type in your personal information and submit. There is a blank for the order number, but it is not required. I didn’t bother to fill in anything optional, and my cancellation still worked fine.

myFICO should e-mail you back in about 24 hours. It took 25 hours for me. Here is the response you should get. The title of the e-mail was “Score Watch(R) Cancellation”:

Your order for Score Watch® (monthly payment option) has been cancelled. You will not be charged in the future for this product.

If you have any questions, please call myFICO Customer Support at 1-800-319-4433, Monday – Friday 6:00 AM – 6:00PM (Pacific Time) or Saturday 7:00AM – 4:00PM (Pacific Time).

Thank you,

myFICO Customer Support

That’s it, a free credit report and score with minimal hassle direct from MyFICO.com. Remember, when you request your own report, it doesn’t affect your credit score at all.