Discover To Remove Many Card Benefits After February 28th, 2018

This was originally posted on December 2nd, 2017. Discover is now communicating this directly to cardholders on login.

Discover has announced that they will to remove the following credit card benefits after February 28th, 2018:

• Extended Product Warranty
• Return Guarantee
• Purchase Protection
• Auto Rental Insurance
• Flight Accident Insurance

Official Statement

Discover has made the following official statement:

Regarding cardmember benefits changes:

We regularly evaluate our cardmember benefits to ensure that we are meeting or exceeding our cardmembers’ current needs and expectations. We recently notified Discover cardmembers that due to prolonged low usage, effective February 28, 2018, we will discontinue Extended Product Warranty, Return Guarantee, Purchase Protection, Auto Rental Insurance and Flight Accident Insurance.

We will continue to offer and invest in the many free benefits in which Discover cardmembers find the most use and value, including Price Protection, 24/7 account monitoring, our $0 Fraud Liability Guarantee on unauthorized purchases made with a Discover Card, FICO® Credit Scorecard, and our recently launched Social Security Number Alerts, where, for cardmembers who activate, we monitor thousands of risky websites and alert them if their Social Security Number is found.

 

For more information about these and our many other cardmember benefits, visit Discover.com/benefits.

Our Verdict

In the conversations I’ve had with Discover it seems like the reason they are removing these benefits is that they are under utilized and they want to introduce benefits more cardholders use. Reading between the lines I’d say that the benefits being removed are overused by a small minority of cardholders and they want to replace those with benefits used by a majority of cardholders. I think the biggest loss is probably purchase protection, but that will vary from cardholder to cardholder. Obviously losing benefits like this is never good, but it will be interesting to see what if any benefits Discover will add instead.