Does gas pump purchase counted as the 5% category as well? If so, it's even better than the Citi card (4%)..

Very nice. Saw it when I activated my Q3 bonus today. I typically don't get anywhere near the cap for the restaurants quarter so this is a nice change. Will wind up having maxed out 3 of the 4 quarters this year thanks to this change.

Big fan of this - otherwise the Freedom would've largely gone back into the wallet for Q3 (except for restaurants but I don't get close to the $1500 cap with restaurants but it's pretty easy with grocery / Wholesale Clubs especially if they sell Amazon gift cards, etc.)

CITI's acquisition of Costco has now turned into a complete blunder. They should have had the foresight to realize their major competitor, CHASE, also issues VISA cards and would come up with a way to siphon off CITI's business. The move to offer COSTCO as a 5% Freedom bonus category was brilliant. And it lasts awhile, so even better: consumers develop the habit of using Freedom at Costco. A good counter-strategy would have been for CITI to offer a generous tiered welcome bonus to new as well as existing AMEX Costco cardholders. For example, spend $1000 on your new CITI Costco VISA and get a $50 bonus. But if you spend $2000, it will be $125. And if you spend $4000, it will be $300. Give me that promo, CITI, and you get 100% of my Costco spend. The way it is now, any CITI Costco cardholder with the original CHASE Freedom card puts the CITI card in the sock drawer either until 2017 or when their Freedom bonus is maxed out, whichever comes first.

Really? Spend $1K and get a $50 bonus instead of 5K points? Which when transferred becomes 5K miles. Or to put it in perspective, $1500 each a quarter (and we easily spend that much at Costco) becomes 30K miles by the end of the year. Instead of $100...

NO, Citi's mistake was thinking that Chase would just sit by and let Citi grab all of those Costco purchases. :rolleyes:

I am, as a previous OP said, "mad at Chase" for the nonsense they are using against 'very good customers', but I'm not cutting off my nose to spite my face. If Chase is going to give us 30K points for shopping at Costco on our 2 Freedom cards for July thru Dec (2nd quarter spend already finished), we are certainly going to take the up on it. :D

Updated mine and happy it's there see below.

YOUR 5% CASH BACK
IS ACTIVATED

Earn 5% cash back from Chase on up to $1,500 in combined
purchases from July 1 – September 30, 2016
to footnote1
at:
Restaurants. Wholesale Clubs footnote 2 such as Costco (Registered Trademark), BJ's (Registered Trademark) and Sam's Club (Registered Trademark)

Be careful- grocery is not included next quarter.

Costco is in the next few quarters till the end of 2016.

He said grocery is not include which is true. Some people may think all the Q2's categories are carried over, but it is only the wholesale clubs. Just a warning to the people who may have gone out to the local supermarket buying gift cards in July and found out they only get 1% back. :p

"Does not include gas, fuel, wholesale club specialty service purchases such as travel, insurance, cell phone and home improvement. Check with your local wholesale clubs to see if your Chase Freedom® card is accepted."

so can you buy $500 VGC at wholesale clubs that will code under the 5%? if you don't have a membership but go with a friend that does, will they let you use your credit card if friend is beside you?

YMMV. Some cashiers don't care, others care a lot. I know I've gone with my dad to Costco before when he had a membership and I didn't and the cashier wouldn't let me use my card.

I think he meant that grocery and wholesale clubs make it easy to hit the spend, not that they were both in the Q3 categories.

On normal food stuff Costco doesn't care who pays, but on Gift Card or Movie Tickets, they asked to see the credit card if you are not using the Costco Amex. I have been asked to show my SPG Amex a few times.

I've never been asked to show any Amex card.

citi has a huge advantage: the citi VISA card is the membership card for costco. everyone has the citi card will take it to the cashier, and pretty much 90% or more will just use the card for the charge.

for those use the freedom card at costco, they likely are people who always max out the return, and they are not likely to use the freedom on 1% purchases... from those people, chase will not make any profit, not only chase will get a mere 1% or less from the transactions, but also those people tend to not carry a balance and pay interest.