Originally Posted by
phltraveler
1) If you're looking for specific category cashback (gas or restaurants), there are cards that do better on both with no AF (PenFed Cash Rewards for gas is 5% no AF, US Bank Altitude Go is 4% restaurants [versus 4% gas and 3% restaurants on the Costco card respectively).
PenFed is a CU. Not everyone is qualified to get a card. I can't comment on US Bank because I don't know the exact conversion rate for cashback.
Originally Posted by
phltraveler
2) Costco membership is $60 minimum which kills the value of the card unless you're already shopping at Costco. Costco.com allows non-members to shop at Costco.com with a 5% surcharge, so unless you're ordering more than $1,200 a year to break even against the $60 annual fee it's just cheaper to shop on Costco.com without a membership.
Your premise fails because you focus entirely on Costco purchases only. If you spend wisely, for example, if your family has multiple cars and you use Costco Visa for fuel only, it has a 4% cashback that can easily to make even with the $60 membership fee (Note - the card does not have an annual fee. It is Costco charging the membership fee.)
Originally Posted by
phltraveler
3) The Costco reward certificate is generally offered as a phone/printed/mailed certificate once a year at the start of the year to be redeemed in warehouse (this year with COVID-19 they made an exception and offered to mail people checks instead.) So if you can't get to a Costco warehouse reasonably (times of pandemic like right now are an exception which likely won't last) you can't redeem the certificate for any of your cashback.
I was told there is a way to cash out the cashback without going Costco.