EasternTraveler

I keep watching this post because of the title. When will they accept applications again.

tmiw

I'm guessing never at this point. However, one also has to wonder why they're continuing to administer a slowly shrinking set of accounts when they could sell them off or even cancel the Consumer cards entirely.

mia

I imagine the Diners Canada and USA Corporate card portfolio is profitable, and that BMO's contract with Diners International would not allow them to sell the Professional and Consumer accounts while retaining the Corporate segment.

However, contracts can be renegotiated, and my concern is that in North America the logical buyer would be Diners International itself, the accounts might be migrated from MasterCard to Discover network, and Club Rewards could be replaced by Discover's cashback program.

tmiw

I feel like this is unlikely. Otherwise, the current DC cards would have been forced to change networks quite a while ago.

uppereastsider

In all honesty, what would be the appeal of getting this card? I had the card for two years, but it was a very easy call to not renew after the CSR appeared.

EasternTraveler

Probably only nostalgia at this point. Especially after reading all the negative posts.

tmiw

Club Rewards could be a decent points program for the right person, especially if the bonus categories can be made more sustainable. Not to mention PIN/contactless, though the former causes significant hassles at some US merchants (not to mention that most other countries are moving to contactless/mobile payment anyway) and Chase/AmEx are rolling out the latter on the cards themselves.

That said, I think $95/year for a no-FTF backup card for those cases where the CSR doesn't work isn't a bad tradeoff. $300, though, would be a lot harder to justify--especially if you happen to have one of the old Professional cards that charge FTF (and I'd learn towards cancelling in those cases).

mia

Examples:

1. Chip & PIN with no contingencies.
2. Contactless payment feature.
3. No foreign transaction fees on MasterCard network, which offers the best USD exchange rates for many currencies.
4. Airport lounge access included for $95 fee
5. Transfer partners not offered by American Express, Capital One, Chase or Citi: Alaska Airlines, Iceland Air, SAS, South African Airways.
6. Ability to earn Delta Skymiles at merchants who do not accept American Express.
7. Better transfer ratio to Choice Hotels than American Express Membership Rewards.
8. Better transfer ratio to IHG than Chase Ultimate Rewards.
9. Transfer bonuses.
10. Rewards points post with transactions, rather than once per month.

tmiw

UNFCU's Elite (if you can get past their strict underwriting) has a much lower AF and includes Priority Pass. Not to mention that CSR includes two guests for the effective $150 AF, unlike Diners Club.

EDIT: plus, the former is PIN preferring as well. Which itself is included on no-AF cards such as the ones from Andrews FCU and SDFCU.

uppereastsider

Thank you Mia! I guess for me, none of these are any compelling reason to keep it vs CSR + Amex Gold. I really wondered if I would regret getting rid of my DC card, especially because I was one of those people who signed up on the first day and realize I was "one of the lucky few" to get it, but I really don't miss it. I already have too many Skymiles just from flying and have never stayed at an IHG hotel. Chip and Pin was the one feature I was sad to lose, but never found myself needing it, even when abroad.

fliesdelta

Are the underwriting guidelines publicly available?

tmiw

There's this page that I found with a quick search. FWIW, they declined my application a few years ago and counteroffered with their no-AF Azure card despite having an income >$100K and a FICO score >800.

sdsearch

I depends where exactly abroad and dong what. I've had unattended parking lots in Austria that only took chip & PIN, unattended gas stations in rural Norway that only took chip & PIN, subway kiosks in Lisbon that only took chip & PIN, and that's not counting France where there's more chip & pin requirement than anywhere else (but again only in certain circumstances).

However, the Barclay AA Aviator cards have chip & pin, so you can get one of those (or perhaps another Barclay card that does), and solve the chip & PIN limitation that way. Diners Club has chip & PIN as the priority, while Barclay has it down the list, but either one will work the same in kiosks in Europe that require chip & PIN.

FWIW, it's my AA Aviator card I use in Europe nowadays when something requires chip & PIN, since the Professional version of the Diners Club USA card (which I got back when Citi was issuing them) still has 3% forex, only the Consumer cards which BMO issued for a short while a few years ago had 0% forex. So it's not even clear to me whether any new DC card that BMO might issue in the future, if they did, would have 0% forex. For all we know, they might only consider issuing Professional or Business versions of the DC card in the future, not Consumer versions.

tmiw

I think there is some value in having a PIN priority card so you can "blend in" more and not have to have the cashier find a pen/do ID verification (or worse, void the transaction in violation of card network rules and possibly local disability laws--though admittedly this is uncommon). That value has diminished, however, as the networks have pushed contactless/mobile payment more and more. In fact, the card networks have mandated merchant acceptance of contactless in Europe and elsewhere, including the ability for mobile devices to override local contactless limits.

That said, you are correct in that something like one of the cards issued by Barclay's is more than enough to work around issues with unattended terminals. There are also no-AF options from them and other issuers with this feature, which makes paying an AF at all just for this a hard sell. However, combined with the other features, I can see myself keeping DC* at the $95 level for international travel/rental cars (and canceling/downgrading all other travel cards) if I were to get out of the miles/points game.

* DC Premier since there's no FTF. If it had a FTF, it'd be a different story.

smith80678

I literally have to call in every transaction for this card, otherwise they all get declined. I only use it for the lounge access.