The Bank of America Customized Cash Rewards card offers 3% cash back on your choice of one category, up to $2,500 in spending each quarter. (That’s worth up to 5.25% if you are a relationship customer.) They’ve now expanded two of the categories:
- Gas category now includes EV charging stations
- Online shopping category now includes cable, streaming, internet, and phone plan
- Dining
- Travel
- Drug store/pharmacy
- Home improvement/furnishings
Anybody try Plastiq recently?
I just tried it to hit the SUB. I’ll let you know whether it goes through at all, whether it codes as a purchase, and whether it counts as online. Wish me luck!!!!!
I just tried it.
My eBay purchase coded as “online shopping”.
This is the latest version of the Program Rules (corrects the errors of the Online Shopping exclusions in the 2023-08 version)
https://www.managerewardsonline.bankofamerica.com/cms/published/root/duo/sharedContent/pdf/cash/CW1_202401_D_ADA.pdf
For the signup bonus, has anyone tried using Plastiq to hit it?
I like the online shopping category. As a relationship customer, 5.25% CB beats some rotating category cashback cards (e.g. when Discover It has 5% for Amazon) and many premium travel cards (most big travel purchases are online nowadays). The main limitation is the $2500 quarter limit.
I get the 3% on my Xfinity bill now. I will be adding Netflix as well. However, does Spotify get a similar cash back too? Thanks!
I have a payment for ATT that did not qualify. I have the visa version. someone elses in my household made some bill payments for comcast and tmobile and got the bonus but it was using the mastercard. so it might be worth asking for a merchant change from visa to mastercard.
@Davis There are 2 ways to pay ATT, of course, with the B of A Customized Cash Back Visa: Either a manual payment initiated by the customer at any time, or with ATT doing the automated charge via Auto Pay sign up. If it’s via Auto Pay, I got the extra bonus percentage. If I manually initiated the payment, I didn’t get it. B of A reps blame ATT, saying it’s the way ATT is processing the payments if it’s not done via Auto Pay.
By the way, I have paid T-Mobile via manual payment, and it is successfully going through where it earns the bonus cash back percentage. So it should be the same with ATT, but it’s not.
Does anyone know if Doordash and Grubhub qualify under the Dining category or Online Shopping or both?
Both
We know that Bank of America offers the bigger bonus percentage on up to $2,500 spend per calendar quarter. But what I did not know is that if you were to get a refund on any of that $2,500 spend, BofA does not add back that amount to your quarterly spend total. And not only do they not deduct the transaction credits from your $2,500 quarterly spend total, they take back the bonus money they paid you on the charge.
One random example: Say on October 1, which is the start of the 4th quarter, you charge $2,500 for a fully-refundable trip scheduled for Thanksgiving. That $2,500 is applied to your quarterly spend limit, of course. But let’s say a few days before T-Day you are forced to cancel the trip and that all refunds are made. B of A ain’t gonna add that $2,500 back to your quarterly spend total so you can get your bonus cash back percentage on your new charges through the end of the quarter. And, B of A is gonna take back the bonus cash back you already earned on the $2,500 charges.
By the way, if you ever have a disputed charge that you win, B of A will apply the credit for this to your quarterly spend total. But with refunds, no. If you buy a new iPhone, and then send in your old iPhone to Apple for trade-in money, and then Apple credits your Visa the value of your old phone, this is considered a partial refund, so no deduction from your quarterly spend total.
My mortgage payment and HOA payment via Plastiq were not coded as Online Shopping in October. They were in September. Oh well, good things always end.