RCC

I was speaking with someone yesterday that bought a new car & he said that he had a Visa that was issued by GM. He said he spent so much that he got a rebate of like $3,500 to spend towards any new GM veichle. Said he never told the dealer about this rebate check till it was time to seal the deal & it worked well in his advantage.

I never heard of this & was wondering how it works & if anyone on the boards here has used this.

Ric

UpgradeMe

Amazingly:
http://www.gmcard.com

Luubert

For Canadians - http://www.tdcanadatrust.com/tdvisa/gm.jsp

Mary2e

I had the original version of this card about 10 years ago. We got about a $4000 rebate on our GM car. We paid for a lot of the extras for our new house with it and the rebate grew quite rapidly. At the time the program was more generous than it is now.

IIRC, GM pays the dealer the rebate directly, so it doesn't effect the price of the car. We negotiated the best price we could and told them about the rebate card when they filled out the invoice.

We got rid of the card when we decided we didn't want to get GM cars any longer and started using mileage cards exclusively.

If you want to buy a GM car in the future this card may be an option for you, but as I said, the rebate program was originally far more generous than it is now. I would do the math and see if you could get better value with some other type of card first.

Mary

gregorygrady

I have the GM Card. It's a pretty good deal, you get 5% GM Earnings (that can be used towards a new vehicle purchase or lease) on every purchase you make. But you DO have to spend a good amount on your CC in order to get a big rebate from GM (i.e., spend $40,000 to get a $2,000 rebate) so it takes awhile to build that much up. But if you are planning on buying a new GM car in the next few years, its unbeatable since its basically 5% money in your pocket, way better than the 1% cash back cards and way better than the ~2% that the miles are worth from a frequent flyer CC, plus its FREE. The great thing about it as others have said is that you negotiate the best deal and then tell the dealer about the GM Card Earnings you plan on using. So it's basically used as an extra $1000 - $3500 towards the down payment. I used my GM Earnings for $2000 off my Chevy Camaro in 2002 and just a few weeks ago I used my GM Earnings for $2750 off my wife's Chevy Trailblazer ($2250 + a $500 bonus offer I got in the mail from the GM Card). Also you can use this WITH the current dealer rebate offers. We got the 2004 Trailblazer ($29,340 MSRP) for $18,090 after $4500 in GM Rebates, $1500 Rebate for financing through GMAC, $2500 Dealer Savings, and $2750 GM Card Earnings. A pretty smoking deal I must say. So all in all, its been good to me so I've charged tons of money on it. I even used my Earnings to get a friend $2000 off a new Chevy Tahoe last year. I would DEFINITELY recommend getting this card if you plan on buying a new GM car in about 1-5 years from now (depending on how quickly you can rack up $40,000 - $80,000 in purchases).

BTW, if anybody here is looking to buy or lease a new GM car, let me know. I currently have ~$6000 in GM Earnings (and that amount gets higher the more I charge). If you don't even have a GM Card and will be buying a car, I can let you use the GM Earnings from my account during your purchase. I will split my Earnings half and half with you. For example, if you can use a maximum of $2000 towards a certain car, I will let you use $2000 from my account if you give me $1000 (thru Paypal or whatever). It's like an extra $1000 off your car that you were already going to buy. So I guess even if you don't have a GM Card, this card can still benefit you. PM me if you are interested. BTW, here is a link of the Maximum Redemption Allowances for all GM vehicles:
http://www.gmcard.com/GMCard/apply/r...allowances.jsp

RCC

be careful, I think FT frowns upon cash dealing selling here.

thanks for all the valid points you make, I do like the comparision towards 1 & 2% cash rebate cards.

I personally dont drive american cars, but for we need a pick up truck, so this may come in handy.

I will keep you all posted how I progress.

Ric

gregorygrady

Whoops, I was unaware of that. I am changing my offer to say:

PM me if you are interested. We may be able to TRADE something in case you need GM Earnings if you are planning on buying a GM car/truck.

TN_Again

I have never had a GM card.

But - I work for a retailer that does a lot of credit card processing and the customer service people for the GM Card are the WORST in the business.
MANY times we've had frustrated customers who could not get purchases authorized because their customer service department could not be contacted to lift security hold placed on their card after they attempted to make a large purchase.

Granted, having card security stop a "suspicious" $2K purchase is nice. It is not nice when it takes DAYS to resolve and your credit card is unusable in the meantime. "Please hold" means - "hope you have all damn day to wait, and then be serviced by someone clueless...."

I would never recommend getting a GM card.

Shouldn't you be considering a FF mile card? I just love my AAdvantage Citibank MasterCard.

maulah

A word of caution for all folks plannning to get GM card. Some where in the fine print of their contract they tell you to charge an annual fee if you dont use it for quite some time. I had a long forgotten GM card. They did not even bother to send me a bill or reminder as they are not obliged to do that according to the contract (otherwiese I would have taken care of it there and then). They sell my account to a collection agency after hitting me with 3 annul fees. The collection agency informs all the credit beareus and here I am with a messed up credit history. All happened behind my back without my knowledge. The moral of the story is that get this card if you are using it, otherwise make sure you close your account within a year.

Rawhide

Beware of this card. The issuer is Household who is a sub prime lender and does use predatory tactics from time to time. Both wife and I used to have the cards and they were hell to deal with at times.

outoftown

I used the GM Card from Household and the Ford Card from Citibank, both about 10 years ago. Back then a Gold GM card could accumulate $7000 total with additional bonuses not limited to the caps ($1000/yr for 7 years) while the regular card was $500/yr for 7 years. The card when used at Marriott properties, Hertz? and other partners would get a 10% rebate, so it was my travel and everything card of choice. Ford's card was limited to $3500 total ($700/yr for 5 years IIRC) but Ford discovered too many rebate users would have bought a Ford anyway, so they killed their program and rolled it into the Driver's Edge card. GM reduced their rebate program to cap at $3500. Per the link gregorygrady has, it appears the cap is $1000 on the more desirable GM products and up to $3500 on the slow sellers. I'm surprised gregorygrady has $6000 worth of rebates (maybe two cards?). Another problem I had was that it was a rolling rebate program...you could rebate only 7 years worth, which meant using the card for an 8th year would cause one to lose the 1st year of earned rebate. It forced me to buy both a new Ford and Chevy on the same day in November 1999. Since I didn't want or need new vehicles then, I traded the Ford in with 7 miles on it for the Chevy Silverado, which I sold 3 years later after having hardly driven it. I would only recommend the GM card if you were planning on buying a GM anyway. Although the 5% sounds like a good deal and yes, it is after all other incentives and rebates, you can get 5% from other bankcards for restaurant charges or gasoline, among other things which I regularly need. IMHO, I believe another credit-card reckoning day is here. It used to be that the 2% value of ff miles made airline affinity cards the next logical choice after the auto rebate cards but I'm finding the newer 2% to 5% cash rebate cards for selective purchases (with no annual fee) to be my preferred card of choice. Examples are the Costco Amex and Citi Platinum Select. I plan on dropping my Citi AA, USbank NW and United cards. I've already dropped my BoA US card. I'll hang onto DL Skymiles as long as the double miles are available and Diners will be my "topping off" card, as long as they offer annual fee incentives.

gregorygrady

Household Bank changed the GM Card program about 4-5 years ago. I originally got the card in the Fall of 2000 because I knew I wanted a Camaro before Chevy stopped production in 2002. So I got a card and charges everything to that card for a year and then bought a Camaro and saved $2000. To me it was worth all the charges because it basically WAS a 5% rebate because it really was cash back in my pocket. These cards are definitely NOT for you if you don't plan on buying a GM car in the next 7 years.

As for the change in terms: There used to be a $500 per year Earnings cap that could be rolled for up to 7 years (therefore you could get up to $3500 back on ANY GM car after 7 years). The program was changed around 1999-2000 and now there is NO EARNINGS CAP per year, however there is a cap on the amount that you can redeem PER CAR. The GM Earnings still expire on a rolling 7 year basis meaning you cannot keep any Earnings that are over 7 years old. The minimum you can redeem per car is $1000, the maximum is $3500 (obviously for the less desireable cars like Buicks). But I've saved $2000 on a Camaro, $2750 on a Chevy Trailblazer, and $2000 on a Chevy Tahoe for a friend. That definitely is basically cash-back. And the best thing like I mentioned previously is you can negotiate your best deal and not even tell them about your GM Earnings until you get to financing and then you say you want to apply the GM Earnings towards your down payment. So I think it's worth it and a better deal (especially since it has no fee) than most other credit cards. I charge a lot of my business expenses on the card, that is why I have almost $6000 in GM Earnings currently. However I did take advantage of the 5% cash back promo from my Citi card recently and I have just begun charging to a UAL FF card since I just got that and I pay an annual fee for it, so I figure I should be charging to it. But honestly, I think the GM Card is probably better than the UAL card, even if both were free.

Now if I can "barter" my GM Earnings for about half-price, then I would get 2.5% cash back on all my business charges and the buyer would get from $500-$1750 for free. That sure seems like a win-win situation to me.