Is it worth it?

CopperPlate_2

Seeing the slow decrease of CC's that now offer decent rates of cashback or rewards, I have to ask whether it's worth the hassle of moving around so often to get the 'latest' best offer. Egg Money is open-ended at the moment, and on past performance Egg may be likely to review the cashback rates in the future (again, nothing can be predicted as to when that might happen!); Conran has binned the 'profit share' scheme, AMEX isn't as widely accepted as MC/Visa, which leaves the others such as Morgan Stanley, and a host of others paying virtually 0.5% after promotional intros are finished.

If you spend £20,000 a year on the card and get 0.5% back, then you get £100, or broken down to around £8 a month on average. Is it actually worth it when you also see that Morgan Stanley and Lloyds TSB are looking to bring in fees for certain card holders which further erodes the benefits?

Paul_Herring

I'd use 0.5% cashback for periods when I can't get anything better. Currently I'm on a 12 month 0% on purchases on which I hope to net around £150 on a £4800 limit. (Halifax One, vs Icesave - I'll see what other 12 month 0% are around in about month 6/7.)

If they started introducing fees, I suspect the gains wouldn't offset the fees, so would cancel out of principle any cards doing this, and go back to a debit card if they all started doing this. (In fact thinking about it - I'd probably keep a 'cheap' credit card for the protection it gives.)

DawnW

I tend to agree with the OP. When my current 0% deal ends (at the end of this month), I will pay it off and close all card accounts except for the one linked to my own bank (for convenience) which pays a modest amount of cashback, and pay any balance off in full each month. The gains are getting smaller for the amount of hassle involved.

CopperPlate_2

I suppose there is always the advantage of large scale stoozing on 0% cards, but the rewards now on the rest are getting poorer by the month. Any 1% deals are so short-lived.