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5
Great card if you buy a lot on Amazon and don't carry a balance
Style: Prime Visa
**This is a review of the 2017 version**
THE BASICS: This is a credit card. It gives you 5% back at Amazon (only 3% if you don't have Prime) and 2% back at gas stations, restaurants, and drug stores. So far it seems to be a fantastic card if you do a lot of shopping at Amazon and don't carry a balance, and maybe a not-so-fantastic card if you do not do those things.
REWARDS: From what I've seen, cash back type cards seem to come in two flavors. One kind gives you 5%ish back on one category (often this rotates, but it will just be one at a time) and 1% back on everything else. The other kind gives you 1.5 or 2%ish back on everything. This card is technically of the former variety, but since you can buy almost anything on Amazon, if you're the sort of person who does buy almost everything on Amazon, it's kind of like 5% back on everything. And then it gives 2% back on gas and restaurants, which are two things you can't really use Amazon for. At the time I applied, it also offered a $70 Amazon gift card as a sign up bonus. I received this promptly, but I don't think on its own the gift card is a very good reason to get a new credit card. This card is also not a good reason to sign up for Prime if you don't already want it---you'd have to spend an awful lot to make back the Prime fee (and if you buy that much stuff on Amazon, why don't you have Prime already?).
CHASE: This card is offered through Chase, and a lot of people don't like Chase. But I suspect a lot of people don't like whatever bank they have to deal with, and I've never had any problems with Chase (before this card, I also had a checking account, savings account, car loan, and another credit card---the Freedom---with them). My suspicion is that Chase might be slightly less willing to engage with people it considers risks than some banks are, so if you tend to max out your cards, etc., it might not be the bank for you (but this opinion is just based on reading other people's stories on the internet). I haven't interacted with them over this card (which I have had for a couple of months---long enough to have paid my first bill and know that they accepted that and didn't charge me unfair interest, but not long enough to have had tons of things come up), but when I've had to interact with them over other things it has always gone well (for example, when the number for my Freedom was stolen a while back they dealt with all the fraudulent charges and overnighted me a new card). I've seen some reviewers complaining about their website, but I don't think it's terribly confusing, and I can definitely pay my bills and view my statements easily from it. I suppose one thing to keep in mind is that it is the Chase website you'll be dealing with and not an Amazon one, so if you're expecting to be able to pay your bills on the Amazon website this might be a shock.
APPLICATION PROCESS: I just filled out a form and received my approval message like 15 seconds later or something. I don't remember all the questions, so I guess there wasn't anything too surprising. The card immediately showed up in my Chase app and on Amazon, but the physical card took about a week to get here in the mail. One thing to note is that I filled out my application on the 18th of a month, and now all my statements end on the 17th or 18th and my bills are due on the 14th. I might be able to change this number (I haven't tried because I don't really care) but if you care about when in the month your bills are due and don't want to take any chances you should think about when you apply.
CREDIT LIMIT/APR: Some people have complained about tiny limits for this card, and I did not have that experience (or maybe I just have a different idea of tiny---but I would say anything over my monthly takehome pay is not 'tiny'). When I got my Freedom from Chase, however, I did not have much credit history and they gave me a very tiny limit (so tiny I was paying off the card several times a month). After a year or so of perfect payments I requested an increase and they gave me a much bigger one than I'd asked for and have since raised my limit twice of their own accord. So my guess is that if you would like to use the card at some point and just have an issue with the limit, it's worth keeping it open, because Chase is definitely willing to raise limits in response to good behavior. The APR that I got when I applied is 19.74% (but it varies---both with your credit score and with the market rate), and I think it would be foolish to carry a balance at that rate.
I tried to cover everything I could think of, but if you have questions feel free to leave them in the comments and I will do my best to answer. I will also try to update the review if I later have a bad experience with the card.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2017
