Capital One is no stranger to giving travel rewards for large loans, they offer 100,000 points for residential mortgages. At the moment they are having a series of month long special offers for small business called ‘Seize The May‘. None of the standard offers are particularly enticing:
$12,000 Travel Certificate
In addition to the above deals, they are also offering a promotion called “Take A Trip On Us”. To qualify you need to do the following:
- Must submit a new loan application for $1,000,000 and above during the calendar month of May 2015
- Are approved for the loan, complete the documentation to become a lending customer and have opened their loan before December 31st, 2015
- Sole Proprietorship businesses must have a U.S Citizen or Resident Alien as business owner
In exchange Capital One will take you on a vacation to the destination of your choice. If we look at the fine print we’ll see that what you actually get is a $12,000 certificate for Carlson Wagonlit Travel. You might be familiar with this name, that’s because they provide services for MasterCard World Elite cardholders (Luxury Hotel & Resorts Portfolio and discounts on car rentals). The travel certificate is good until December 31st, 2016 and the loan account must be open and in good standing at the time of the trip redemption.
Obviously you’d have to be crazy to get a $1,000,000+ loan based on a $12,000 travel reward. Although Capital One is also giving a 1% APR discounted on any approved loan (for the life of the loan). This reward would give you another ~1.2% discount for the first year.
Again, you’d have to be crazy to get this deal based on the travel reward. You should always do rate shopping when applying for a loan, especially for a loan of this size. I really don’t expect anybody to take Capital One up on this offer, but I did find it interesting none the less.
I’m also sure there are other gotcha’s that I’ve missed, so if you’re even remotely considering it make sure you do your own research.
