What would you change about the consumer cards?
 

My thoughts as a Premier cardholder:

• Allow changing the PIN via phone or website without needing to go to an ATM and have it immediately take effect for the next purchase.
• Use a newer version of the contactless standard so that it can work at places like the London Underground/ask for PIN for higher valued purchases. (I was surprised when it printed a signature slip for a contactless purchase over $50 once.)
• Add support for Apple Pay ("would be nice", not really necessary because it already has contactless). Apple Pay now supported as of 4/7/2015

What do you all think? IMO this is a pretty good card for international travel other than those few nitpicks.

To me the greatest shortcoming with Diner's is their back office operations

1). Poor, non-existent, and inconsistent communications.

2). Poor underwriting--some folks got 2 x $50k credit lines, one Premier and one Elite, because it appears two different teams were running the two cards. Diner's didn't like this exposure (understandably) and started closing one of the cards in some instances. Even with one card they seemed pretty concerned if you used even 25% of your CL. Hint if you don't like lots of exposure don't set huge CLs. You might ask why folks got two cards but it was the MyFICO types who collect CLs the way we collect points.

3). Google should not be a primary tool in your fraud department's tool chest. They called me after my application data didn't match Whitepages.com (really?). I won't post more details on the 20 min chat I had with their fraud analyst (this was pre-lock after I had spent maybe $2500 on the card) but after the call my wife was like should you really be doing business with a bank like that?

No company is perfect but honestly their whole back office operation seemed pretty Mickey Mouse to me. Still I agree they do have a decent product if they can just get their act together.

Yeah I agree re: their CS. Their website could be better too. I shouldn't need to call them to set up a travel notification in 2015, for example. And stuff like bill pay should have been available right from the start (but is now fixed).

The only change I'd make is opening the card up for new applications again.

Is that possible while keeping it as an offline-verification PIN card? I thought the need to go to an ATM was because only an ATM can rewrite the PIN on an offline-verification PIN card?

What I'd like, as an existing Professional DC cardmember, is the ability to link a Professional and Consumer card to the same Club Rewards account (or to transfer between two Club Rewards accounts, one Professional and one Consumer, both in your name).

Right now it's very hard to shift to the Consumer card if you have a sizeable number of points in your Professional card account and don't want to park them anywhere outside of Club Rewards.

If it prefers online PIN over offline PIN then the website/phone PIN change can take effect immediately. Otherwise website/phone PIN change is still possible, but the PIN won't take effect until after the next EMV transaction. Supposedly online PIN results in slightly slower transaction times than offline PIN but I have no real way to test that.

Also, ATM PIN changes would actually be okay with me if we didn't have to call DC first. Though I guess it makes sense since you wouldn't necessarily need to know the old PIN.

I have been using DC Elite since October 2014. I have not used customer service so i cannot comment on their competence. I would like to have a guest priviledge for an additional person for Lounge access.
My daughter is 13 so i cannot add her as au. I would like to be able to bring her to airport lounge for free.
I believe that for $300 fee i should be able to bring my child to a Lounge.

I think they also need a mobile app to manage the account. Harris Bank has such an app, it ought to be straightforward to adapt it to include Diners Club cards.

I think this is an infrastructure problem. In the UK all bank owned ATM's have a Change PIN menu option, and you do not need to use your own bank's ATM to make the change. We don't have (m)any ATMs in the USA with that capability. I think BMO has devised a satisfactory workaround. How often do you change your PIN? We change ours once per card.

Agreed. The $300 Elite card should offer free cards for Authorized Users, and the lounge access should include immediate family or two guests.

I haven't changed mine yet from the one they auto-generated. However, I'm considering changing my Schwab debit card's PIN for the duration of my trip to Mexico starting tomorrow and I'm thinking it may be a good idea to do the same for the DC card.

I'd change the bonus categories for the elite card. The current categories have next to nothing to do with the card's target audience. These are categories for MS, but DC doesn't like MS. The categories should be for dining and travel. DC can just copy and paste the Citi Prestige's bonus categories, and the card will make more sense.

I absolutely agree with the above post. Also, with the generous CLs given, a signup bonus would have been great.

This may have been an intentional strategy to encourage us to carry and use the card everyday, rather than only for traditional Travel & Entertainment. I believe they simply did not realize that those categories presented a manufactured spending opportunity.

I suspect that the credit limits were a mistake, and that is one of the reasons they stopped taking applications for both cards. I would not be surprised to see the limits on existing accounts reduced, but I don't know how easily they can do this in the first 12 months.

My guess is that the long delay in closing Elite accounts, and reopening applications, is not customer service ineptitude, but rather a wait for their legal department to determine how they could act without violating Federal lending regulations.

It would have still been possible to have those categories but discourage MS by having maximum limits for 3x spending (Chase Freedom comes to mind as an example). Something like that would raise questions about the value for money that the $300 AF provides though.

I think it's a marketing mistake to use greater rewards to distinguish a higher annual fee, because it invites customers to make a simple arithmetic comparison. It seems better to offer superior benefits with the more expensive card, because they typically don't cost much to offer, but may have a high perceived value to consumers.

How about with this benefit: Make the $300 card, like the Corporate card, allow transfers to AA! :)