Originally Posted by
notquiteaff
I don’t know - we have an EV and an ICE vehicle, and I know a number of people in the same situation. And when we rent, it’s often still an ICE vehicle. While we drive a lot more EV miles than ICE miles, we still pay more for gas than electricity because most of our EV charging is at home or sometimes at free EV chargers. Still, I wish my credit cards that offer category bonuses for gasoline would also cover EV charging in that category. I think it would make sense to lump these two categories into one (vehicle fuel purchases).
Yeah, that might have been a generalization, but I sort of assumed that most EVs are charged at home on a regular basis, while ICE
needs regular visits to a gas station, so even then it might be small "top ups" as opposed to all the charging one would do in a quarter (if that makes sense?) I think the fact that EV charging is a different merchant code and/or not lumped in with gas stations by most cards is really counterintuitive.
(Slight rant - I get my use case isn't nearly the same as everyone else's so take this with a grain of salt.)
Does anyone feel like Chase's categories have gotten narrower and worse since the CFF/CFU refresh a few years ago? When it was just a 5%/1% card (like Discover), they often had multiple broad categories and a single merchant.
Here are the last handful of years for the Freedom/Freedom Flex:
- 2014: Gas Stations, Movie Theaters, Starbucks // Restaurants, Lowe's // Gas Stations, Kohl's // Amazon, Zappos, Department Stores
- 2015: Grocery, Movie Theaters, Starbucks // Restaurants, Bed Bath & Beyond (RIP), H&M, Overstock.com // Gas, Kohl's // Amazon, Zappos, Department Stores
- 2016: Gas, Local Commuter Transportation // Grocery, Wholesale Clubs // Restaurants, Wholesale Clubs // Department Stores, Wholesale Clubs, Drugstores
- 2017: Gas, Local Commuter Transportation // Grocery, Drugstores // Restaurants, Movie Theaters // Walmart, Department Stores
- 2018: Gas, Internet/Cable/Phone, Apple/Google/Samsung/Chase Pay // Grocery, PayPal, Chase Pay // Gas, Lyft, Walgreens // Department Stores, Wholesale Clubs, Chase Pay
- 2019: Gas, Tolls, Drugstores // Grocery, Home Improvement // Gas, Streaming // Department Stores, PayPal, Chase Pay
- 2020: Gas, Internet/Cable/Phone, Streaming // Grocery, Gyms, Streaming // Amazon, Whole Foods // Walmart, PayPal (CFF launched & CFU refreshed in Q3 2020)
- 2021: Wholesale Clubs, Internet/Cable/Phone, Streaming // Gas, Home Improvement // Grocery, Streaming // Walmart, PayPal
- 2022: Grocery, eBay // Amazon, Streaming // Gas, Car Rentals, Movie Theaters, Live Entertainment // Walmart, PayPal
- 2023: Grocery, Target, Gym // Amazon, Lowe's // Gas, EV charging, Live Entertainment // Probably Walmart, PayPal?
Between the narrow categories and things that I can't organically spend the full amount on (I really don't want to get into hundreds of dollars of closed-loop gift cards or MS), the Freedom is starting to turn into "how is Chase going to be disappointing this quarter?" I get some categories have become obsolete (such as department stores) or baked in at a lesser rate to the card (drugstores and restaurants), but as someone who swore off PayPal, doesn't shop at Walmart, and spends little on gas, the last couple of years have been rough. I was really hoping the Freedom Rise rumors was that Chase was working on a Custom Cash competitor because I'd have product changed in an instant.
I have a CSP and it gets a lot of my dining spend (a lot of URs eventually go to Hyatt), but the Freedom Flex isn't exactly the 5x powerhouse for me that some make it out to be. Meanwhile, I'm often maxing out Discover's 5% quarters.