Ran into a friend who manages a local Sam's Club and he raved about their Sam's Club Discover 2% cash-back card. WHen all said and done, I was convinced this might be a very unique "hidden gem" of a cashback card.

Truly, Sam's does a poor job of making this card known as it has been out for about a year according to my friend. They have this link buried in business services on their web site. Go figure.

The first typical gotcha of "cash-backs" is caps. Cap ? yep, at $1,000,000 per year ($20K cashback refund if you can max it out). He confirmed several of their large volume customers were getting their near-$20K refund checks this month (apparently Feb is when Sam's cuts the refund check).

Technically, there is a TIER through the first $5000, but after $5K, cashback rebate goes to the full 2% and ends at $1MM annual charges.

Folks - this is a powerful cashback program for high-volume chargers and is arguably the "holy grail" since the cap is so high. Also, unlike the AMEX cash-back program, this one will CUT A CHECK and mail it to you. AMEX only applies the rebate against your bill or puts it on your account as a credit.

Yes, Discover can be a bit funky (difficult) to use in large volume relative to V/MC and AMEX, but its out there if you dig around.

Other "gotchas" about this program that I believe apply:
A) in my experience, Discover is a pain to get a decent credit line issued.
B) One has to become a SAMs CLUB "PLUS-level" member to get the full 2% (they have a lesser membership level which provides for a 1% cashback bonus), and I believe the "PLUS" level is a $99 annual fee. So while the card itself is advertised to be fee-free, indirectly the annual fee at Sams has some impact. However, at the PLUS level, you are at the highest level of Sams Club membership and there are some perks that are so-called "value-add" which mitigate the annual fee.

Comments ? My sense is as traditional affinity programs get diluted (capital One's), devalued (AA and milesaver) and neutered (AMEX Centurion and Membership Rewards in general), its time to abandon ship on pure point and mile collecting and seriously consider CASH BACK strategies. Then take the cash and using priceline.com, kayak.com, and orbitze.com- style site maximize your leverage on the SPEND side. These affinity programs are really in "take back" mode as their respective economies (hotels, airlines) strengthen, so the value proposition or points and miles is diminishing.

Read more here:
https://www.onlinecreditcenter6.com/...tType=dualcard