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15 March 2006

How do I shop for a credit card? [More:]My mom is looking for a new credit card company with which to do business. She currently uses Chase Financial Services, mainly because they offer a percentage rebate on gasoline purchases (she travels a lot by car ranging from Arizona to Texas) and because Chase, at the end of each year, would send her a summary of that year's charges, categorized by type, that was of HUGE aid to her during tax time.

Chase, apparently, discontinued this service sometime last year. They offered my mother no notice, she was only told today that in order to continue receiving the year end summary, she'd have to sign up for online cardmember services by ... February 28th of this year.

Understandably, she's a little pissed. And so am I, considering that with what little research I've done so far, this is a pretty standard service for most credit card accounts of the type that meets my mom's needs.

Now, I'm a cash-only kind of guy and she's tasked me with trying to find a new credit card for her that will meet her needs and I'm lost, so I'm hoping you bunnies could share with me your experiences. Without revealing TOO much information about her finances, here's what's important to her:

--APR is NOT important. She pays down her entire balance every month (but doesn't use Amex because they don't seem to be well-liked anymore)
--Gasoline purchase rebate is a nice thing to have
--YEAR END SUMMARY OF CHARGES
--A fairly high credit limit (she has a beyond excellent credit rating and I'll just say her limit on most of her cards lies between 10 and 30 thousand dollars).

I've looked online with several companies: Capital One, Citicorp, and MBNA and my god the CHOICES and the terms and the ... everything ... is overwhelming to me. So I'm hoping you bunnies can help me with your good/bad credit card experiences to help me narrow down the field a little bit.

Thank you so much! I hate finance. :-)
BankRate.com used to be a good resource for comparing financial products. I haven't used it in a while so I don't know if it has changed any.
posted by matildaben 15 March | 17:31
I have one of these. I get a very nice year-end summary of charges and it has a high limit. It earns frequent flier miles on American. I don't see a gas card on their site, but they have some "dividend" cards that give you some cash back.
posted by mullacc 15 March | 18:44
You want the Citi Dividend Platinum Select MasterCard. It is basically a direct competitor for the card she has with Chase.
posted by kindall 16 March | 21:37
kindall, that's the very one we ended up with. I feel validated! Thanks! :-)
posted by WolfDaddy 19 March | 17:19
You're quite welcome. I helped my dad also pick that very card recently (he was bitching about the price of gas and I told him he could get 5% back, and he loves saving money more than anything else in the whole world, so he jumped at it).
posted by kindall 29 March | 02:28
What are you dreaming? || Welcome Back Kotter, The Movie.

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