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Saturday, September 03, 2011

Freedom to Be Swindled

I was fed up with my Citibank card for forcing me to change my credit card number after one of their security breaches. So I looked around for the best offer on switching to a different card.

I signed up for the Chase Freedom credit card. It offered 1% cash back on all purchases, plus 5% cash back on gas, travel, and a few other categories. I had a 2,000+ mile driving trip coming up, so with the high cost of gas the 5% back really sounded like a great offer.

About 2 months after using the new card for all of my purchases, I get the following e-mail from them:


So you have to "activate" the 5% cash back option. What the hell? Why would they not just automatically activate everyone? This is just a scam to take back the 5% bonus from anyone who doesn't figure out that you need to click to activate. I'm glad I somehow didn't delete this spam-looking message, or who knows how long it would have taken me to figure out I was being swindled.

When I went to fill out the form to "activate" my 5% cash back, I clicked on the "why is this necessary" link next to the Email address box:

It says "We need to know who you are in order to make sure you receive your bonus". What a loap of crap.

1 comment:

BrianM said...

Yeah, that is a bunch of crap. Discover does it too, but you have to sign in every three months to activate the latest rebates. Annoying.