Yesterday's/Today's Mail

One credit card offer, plus one credit card offer that fell out of my newspaper yesterday. Let's explore:

I got an offer for the Discover Platinum Card this week. Interestingly enough, they're only offering me 6 months of 0% on purchases, even though I can snag 12 months online. However, they'll give me a full year on balance transfers. Plus, I get $20 just for signing up, something I don't get online. The regular rewards are the 5% on Get More purchases, which I just discovered (pardon the pun) yesterday means gas and auto-related stuff in the spring and early summer, apparel and school stuff in the late summer/fall and music, books, etc. around the holidays.

It says the APR is 10.99%, but based on their calculation of Prime Rate + 3.49%, it would actually be 11.24%. That's the best rate they're showing in the online offer.

Not really looking for a credit card right now, but I'd probably pick the Discover Gas card over the standard card if I was looking right now. I'm a little miffed, though, that they're only offering me 6 months at 0% on purchases. I'm not going to get the card, but I like to think I'm royalty to the credit card companies, and I'm clearly not to Discover.

Out of my newspaper yesterday came an offer for the Citi Diamond Preferred Rewards American Express Card (a finalist in my longest credit card name ever competition). This card offers a pretty generous rewards program of 5 points per dollar on gas, supermarket and drug store purchases, 1 point everywhere else. There's also a $100 gift card in it for me after I use the card for the first time. Interestingly, the newspaper offer has an APR of 13.99%, although their calculation suggests it would now be 14.24%--online you can get this same deal with an interest rate a point lower.

Citi also has this same card as a MasterCard, offering a 12.74% interest rate, but just a $50 gift card after first use. I'm not getting any of these, but it's interesting to see how they market what is essentially the same card differently in three different places.