Chase Freedom Promo: $100 Sign-Up Bonus + 5% Cash Back
The Chase Freedom Visa – $100 Bonus Cash Back card has a new promotion offering a $100 check if you sign up and make $500 in purchases in your first three months. In addition, as a rewards credit card it is better than the plain vanilla 1% cashback cards, with its 5% cashback on rotating categories like gas, home improvement and department stores. The categories usually include at least one big-spending area, and seem to go with the seasons (home improvement for spring, gas and travel for the summer). Details below…
Current 5% Cash Back Categories
From January 1st through March 31st, 2012 you get 5% back on qualifying purchases up to $1,500 in the following categories:
- Gas Stations
- Amazon.com
You must enroll each quarter at ChaseBonus.com. All other purchases do earn a standard 1%, with no tiers or expiration of rewards. No annual fee. If you’re interested in a bigger $250 sign-up bonus and human-with-no-hold-times on customer service (but no 5% cash back), check out the new Chase Sapphire Preferred Card.
Find more in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 6/25/10, 11:38pm | Trackback
June 26th, 2010 at 6:29 am
Alas, I already have 2 Chase Freedom cards. Going to stick with my PenFed Visa that gives me 5% back on gas, 2% on groceries and 1% back on everything else ALL the time. However, I do plan to try and reap some 5% rewards on vacation with one of my Freedom cards this summer. One good thing about Chase is that they let you cash out at the $20 level unlike some of the Citi cards that are going to be only in $50 increments.
June 26th, 2010 at 6:31 am
comment withdrawn
June 26th, 2010 at 6:38 am
It looks like Chase caught on that a lot of us had Discover cards and were using them for the quarterly 5% categories. The Chase categories are exactly the same typically (although with a higher maximum spend).
June 26th, 2010 at 7:21 am
Not quite the same.
Chase had dining from Jan-Feb and Discover has it from Oct-Dec.
June 26th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
does anyone know of a card that still does the straight 5% back on grocery/gas/drugstores (non-rotating)? I can’t stand rotating categories as my purchases are only in the main 3 everyday categories.
After my Associated Bank rewards card went belly-up, I had to go back to Citi Driver’s Edge which offers a straight 3% on grocery/gas/drug. I don’t think it’s open to new applicants though.
June 26th, 2010 at 8:22 pm
If you have a Sapphire card watch your mailbox. Today I received a targeted promotional offer for 5% cash back from July 1-Sep 30 on the following catagories: dining establishments, drug stores, gas stations, beauty & barber shops, convenience stores, discount stores and warehouse clubs, dry cleaning & laundry establishments, grocery & specality food stores, gym & rec club memberships, utilities, cable & satellite radio/TV, wireless/telecommunications services & equipment, internet services, local commuter transporation. Maximum bonus award during the accumulated period is 10,000 points ($100 cash back). Enrollment required via web or phone. Mailing included promotion code that is unique to credit card account so it can’t be shared.
June 27th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
if you took this $100 bonus sign up offer, you should expect to receive form 1099-MISC to be added to your tax return.
June 27th, 2010 at 4:10 pm
@LeAnn – What information do you base your statement on? I have never heard of a credit card issuer sending out a 1099-MISC for a sign-up, and I’ve gotten easily over 30 of them. See here for more info:
http://www.mymoneyblog.com/arc.....nuses.html
June 27th, 2010 at 8:39 pm
@DOLLARBILL
I remember getting such offer too but cannot confirm at their site.
I have been getting 5% in June for dinning out with DISCOVER and now I will use CHASE from next month.
June 28th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Just activated my Chase Sapphire card for the $250 bonus. I should be able to spend $3000 within in 90 days
Oh, and when I activated the card, I was directly connected to a CSR that helped me activate the card instead of the usual automatic system. I personally don’t care about this, but good for those who do.
June 28th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Too bad you have to deal with abysmal Chase customer service with these cards. I dropped two Chase cards several years ago because of how they treated me when some stranger accidentally entered my card number on a website. It took 3 months, several calls, and a sworn written statement to fix a problem I did not cause. Their attitude was completely opposite of Discover, Amex, Citi, etc. People with perfect credit have no reason to lie about an $80 charge for an error that was caught before the item even shipped…but Chase doesn’t seem to believe that…let Chase rot…
For some reason 4 of my credit cards changed their reward structures in the last month (not always worse, just different). My Citi Dividend card (closed to new users) just went to 5% rotating categories too–I guess it drives more business than stable reward categories. Also, people probably forget and keep charging after the 5% reward changes.
June 28th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
Jonathan-
Seems like you trashed the font for your site with a stray <code> tag in this post. (Looks terrible in Chrome, anyhow.)
Cheers!
June 29th, 2010 at 12:25 am
Doh! Fixed…
July 2nd, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Bank of China credit card scams
Just returned from a trip from Hong Kong and China
In HK, all the charges are in HK $, thus avoiding the 3% Dynamic exchange fee. The only one that charge Dynamic exchange fee is Bank of China subsidiary that process Visa CC transactions.
In China, things gets really bad. Each time I ask to be charged in RMB, it came out to be in US$. After protest, it still come up with a statement saying that I was offer to reject the US$ option (which I did not). The bank say all I have to do is to cross out the option line and write RMB on the charge line, I will be fine. When I came home and check my statements, it all had the 3% Dynamic Exchange rated added onto my Schwab Credit card.
It is a big scam by Bank of China.. Be careful when you use credit card in China