Rewards Cards: Cracker Jacks - Free Prize Inside!

    

The lowest common denominator?

😎 No one has ever bought a box of Cracker Jacks as a health food, few care that much for the taste, but over decades millions of us have bought a box for that "free prize" inside! We don't like to admit it, but we're all suckers for a bargain - for a "free prize".

With credit cards these days, "rewards" (whether points, miles, or cash back) are the "free prize". We all (yep, me too!) have at least one rewards credit card, the national average is 2.3! If rewards are the "industry standard" and a rewards card is "the most requested member service", why the objection?

Three reasons: 1) SECU isn't offering a better "rewards" product, 2) the SECU rewards card will financially harm the majority of members who use it, and 3) with "rewards" SECU appears to have chosen being "an industry standard marketeer" over the best interests of the SECU membership.

Lets look at that last one first, because it sounds a little strange. Until the "new/new" arrived SECU rarely advertised - no newspaper ads, no radio spots, no TV commercials. Growth was not the goal; the CU was "promoted" by its members, through "word of mouth" recommendation.

What's wrong with commercial "marketeering"? The economist Thorstein Veblen, author of "The Theory of the Leisure Class", pointed out the problem in 1899! He foresaw that with marketing the logical "endgame" is a race to the bottom in a marketplace increasingly unrestrained by local accountability, uncertain ethical values, and flexible moral scruples.

Veblen predicted that marketing would eventually be "dumb-downed" to the following: an attention to overstatement; a low traffic in salesmanship; promising much, delivering the minimum; promising a margin of something for nothing; even going so far as to suppress the truth while implying the false.

Pretty harsh criticism... and that was in 1899! And what about in 2025 with fake news, internet fraud, phishing, pharming, smishing, spoofing and catfishing scams? Let alone robocalls, botnets... and did anyone mention AI?

✅ In such a world who do you trust?

😎 Is SECU choosing to be "an industry standard marketeer" over the best interests of the SECU membership? 

 

  ... Are we there yet?

The "Rewards Game": CIVIC Style - A little Nothing For Something!

Wasn't really intending to wade back into the SECU rewards card debate. Was looking at the most recent "Independence Day" email from CIVIC FCU (yes, I am a member - see anyone can join!), when that new "6% cash back" card offer popped up from Bank of America [link]. 

CIVIC's "upgrade" pitch seemed to confirm the suspicion that the 60/70% of LGFCU members carrying a balance will be "steered" out of the low-rate Classic credit card into the new rewards offering. The "rewards card" interest rate at both CIVIC and SECU will be 3% higher (that's a +25% rate increase ).

   

            ... "upgrading" to 18%?

❋ Quote: "Consider upgrading from a Classic Credit Card to the Rewards
Credit Card, with no cash advance, annual, or balance transfer fees."

So lets set the benchmark also for CIVIC FCU to measure future success. At 3/31/2025 CIVIC had 43,230 credit card holders with balances of $145.5 million.

😎 By the way, remember the post about CIVIC now offering better across the board savings rates than SECU [link]?  While looking at the email, noticed that CIVIC has now also posted lower rates than SECU on most loans - autos, credit card, personal.

🎆🎆🎆 Prepare for the fireworks come "Independence Day"! 

 

  "Virtue has its own rewards, but doesn't sell at the box office!" - Mae West