PenFed Eliminating Bonus Cash Back on Groceries
Hmmm… I just ran across some bad news related to the PenFed Platinum Cash Rewards Visa Card. Here’s the scoop:
Effective March 1, 2011, PenFed will no long offer 2% cash back for supermarket purchases. You will continue to earn 5% cash back on gas purchases made at the pump and 0.25% on all other purchases, including your supermarket purchases. If you have any questions, please contact us at 800-247-5626 seven days a week or PenFed.org.
Bummer. The 5% cash back on gas is still a good deal but this will otherwise end up being a very pedestrian reward card. Be sure to review the issuers page for additional information and terms and restrictions that apply.
If you have this card, will you be changing your reward card strategy?
Disclaimer: Discover is a paid advertiser of this site.
Reasonable efforts are made to maintain accurate information. See the Discover online credit card application for full terms and conditions on offers and rewards.
Modified on April 2nd, 2013 - 13 Comments
Filed under: Credit Cards
About the author: Nickel is the founder and editor-in-chief of this site. He's a thirty-something family man who has been writing about personal finance since 2005, and guess what? He's on Twitter!
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13 Responses to “PenFed Eliminating Bonus Cash Back on Groceries”
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January 22nd, 2011 at 2:45 am
My primary cc. I remember not long ago when it was 1.5% cashback on everything else. With the cost of groceries going up they must have been taking a beating.
January 22nd, 2011 at 10:24 am
This was one of my two primary credit cards. Then I found out about the PenFed Promise Visa that has no foreign transaction fees — and as I’m currently residing longterm outside the US, I switched to the Promise Visa earlier this month.
Stateside I use Discover for the Cash Back Bonus.
January 22nd, 2011 at 11:29 am
Still a great card—not many cards offer a 5% rebate on a commonly used product/service. If you have 2 cars and fill each up once a month (assume a 15 gallon tank), and spend $3.00 per gallon on gas, you end up getting back 15*2*12*3*.05 = $54.00 back per year for doing nothing. Pretty easy decision to keep the card.
January 22nd, 2011 at 11:25 pm
Hmm, I wonder how long until they get rid of the 5% cash back on gas. With gas prices rising, I bet it won’t be too long.
January 23rd, 2011 at 7:33 pm
I don’t get gas back credit cards. The stations here in NJ charge an extra 10 cents per gallon for using a credit card.
The cash back savings for roughly $50 fill-it-up with using this card would be 2.50. Why not just give 50 bucks cash and save 10 cents per gallon anyway?
The savings would still be greater with the card probably, but I guess my point is, 5% cash back using a CC isn’t really 5% because you can use cash.
January 23rd, 2011 at 10:12 pm
Sanjay: We don’t all live in NJ.
We don’t get cash discounts around here, so it really is 5% off the price at the pump. Not a huge amounts, but most people would welcome the chance to pay $0.10-$0.15 less per gallon.
January 24th, 2011 at 8:28 am
Bummer… I have been using this card exclusively for about the last year. I like to find a single card that is good enough all around. May have to go looking for another card, but I have been overall happy with this card and dealing with changing cards is a pain.
January 24th, 2011 at 11:08 am
I just started using the card a few months ago. While I thought the 2% grocery thing would be nice, I noticed a bulk of my grocery bills didn’t qualify, as they weren’t from big chain grocery stores. Most of my groceries come from Asian supermarkets, which didn’t seem to qualify.
As a result, I’ve been using this card for gas only, so hopefully that 5% benefit doesn’t go away! Flipped the groceries back to my Fidelity VISA, which if redeemed into a retirement account returns 1.5%.
Somewhat unrelated: Anyone else get a notice about PenFed account security breach? I haven’t had a chance to read through the details, but they issued me a new card number, and some info about signing up for an identity theft monitoring thing…
January 24th, 2011 at 12:41 pm
The discount grocery store in my town doesn’t accept credit cards (one way they can offer cheaper prices), so we buy our groceries in cash anyway.
Some gas stations in our area charge 10 cents a gallon extra for credit card purchases, but gas is over $3 a gallon here, so it is still worth it to take the 5% – and will only be more so as gas prices rise. Also, I find it helpful to have one card just for gas and get a bill at the end of the month. It helps me track our fuel expense.
January 27th, 2011 at 1:13 am
I was gonna sign up for this after the 5% gas reward on my Amex expires in March but now I’m wondering if they’ll cut any more rewards soon….sigh.
January 27th, 2011 at 3:46 pm
I have had the PenFed card for over 2 years. I charge absolutely everything I can (utilities, doctor, groceries, gas, etc. I get cash back each month of $50 – $75. We have a Wal-Mart Supercenter here and I usually get groceries there. One thing I found is that absolutely everything that I get at Wal-Mart has been eligible for the 2%. PenFed does not differentiate between groceries and other items.
I am now looking for a replacement card. I’m looking at one that offers 2% on groceries and 1% on everything else. I saw a blog on the internet that said this card counts Wal-Mart supercenters as groceries – same as PenFed. I don’t know if that is true yet. I’m thinking of applying for this card and use it on everything but gas.
I’m still looking though.
February 5th, 2011 at 2:49 pm
Just got approved for the card Thursday. Came across this blog because I was trying to get an understanding of the Feburary 28, 2011 discontinuance of the 2% grocery rewards. The 5% on gas was the reason that I wanted it so badly. Tired of points that I have to spend so much before I benefit. $.03-.05 per gallon is fine when that is the only choice but the percentage of purchase is so much better especially when they give it back to you monthly. Been using AMEX Simply Cash because that is what they do but the pumps are slowly blocking them out. Heard a partial statement on CNBC Fast Money when they were talking about AMEX and merchant fees but didn’t put the work in to get it clarified. That same week I had to use a different card twice at the pumps that took the AMEX before. That was all the clarification I needed. I’m just happy PenFed gave it to me no matter how long the rewards last.
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