Couple of things. First off, make sure you set up the autopay well in advance of your bill date, and watch the first one. I set my autopay up about three days before my bill was due and directv applied the payment the day after it was due and then tried to charge me a late payment fee. Because they autopaid themselves a day late.
Spent a lot of time with Bob in India trying to explain that they couldnt charge me late and then charge me a late payment fee
I guess they hadnt gotten around to putting the autopay into the system or some other glitch came up where they didnt do the payment application and charge my card.
Whats in it for directv to give you a credit or up front bonus? Maybe you'll use their card for other stuff instead of one of the ones you currently use. They get the float on your money. Maybe you're late paying the bill one month or cant pay the whole thing and they get to put 20%-25% interest on you.
I think the directv card does have some 'rewards' set up if you use it a lot, like free equipment or programming. Havent really looked at it that hard, but I think I remember seeing something like that.
You can get these sorts of deals all over the place. Sony will give you $100 off anything you buy in the Sonystyle store for getting the sony credit card, and they regularly offer deals where if you spend a few thousand through the card within six months, they give you $300 back.
Only downside to taking the $100 is opening another credit card account usually involves a hard hit on your credit report, and an additional potential debt load. This may temporarily lower your credit rating by a bit, and may alter the rating a small amount longer term.
Instead of applying for lots of credit cards, I have ALL of my bills charged for autopay to one credit card that pays me a 1.25% cash rebate, then that card is set up to be autopaid through withdrawal from my brokerage money market account. I get about $250-350 a year in free money from this arrangement. No chance of missing a payment or forgetting to pay the credit card bill.
The pentagon federal credit union card pays 1.25%. I think Schwab has one that pays 2% a month into your brokerage account. Nice part about these two is that they automatically deduct the cash rebate from your monthly bill instead of making you ask them for a check.
Whats nice is that credit card statement has all my monthly bills listed in one place, so I can see where my money is going, and I can look at any statement online for details.
You make it sound like autopay is them giving you another credit card. Is that the case? I thought it was just you register your Credit card or debit or whatever and they get their bill straight from that.
I don't want another credit card. I've got one and, that's all I need. I'll forgo the $100 visa prepaid gift if I have to. I'll certainly survive without it.