Originally Posted by
HikerT
While the shopdiscover portal tends to have very competitive payouts, you'd need to be doing a lot of online shopping to justify the credit inquiry. An inqjuiry is worth $500 minimum in opportunity cost. Let's be generous and say the shopdiscover portal would get you 2% more cash back than other portals. You would need to do $25K of online shopping to justify the inquiry. Better to wait for a good sign up bonus. Of course, TPG is pandering to clueless noobs who can probably afford the inquiry, but clearly his choices are tainted by the affiliate commission.
Bah I think the "must be worth $500 in opportunity cost" is mumbo jumbo. I've thrown in a Discover card into prior app-o-ramas without any "lost opportunity" or any significant impact on credit.
And the differential is often significantly more than 2%. It is frequently as much as 10% or even more, especially when they run their specials. It also stacks up with their quarterly 5x promos.