We applied for both a personal and business US Bank FlexPerks credit cards back in April/May as part of our app-o-rama. Overall, I have not totally been too impressed with the online interface used by US Bank.
After phone call after phone call, I was finally was able to talk with someone and tell me business lines and personal lines do indeed need separate online access, which means dual user names and passwords. In addition, a business card is allocated to a central account number that is different than that on your card. So if multiple “employees” want to have cards, they would all have different card numbers, but all the spend goes into a central, consolidated account number. Again getting an agent to explain that took phone call after phone call.
The problem with a central account number, although it makes sense, is that when I login to my personal account, I can see my personal and business credit card accounts, but because the business spend is on a central account, it always shows a zero balance. It just makes the whole process difficult. Finding a bank with a good online, user friendly interface is absolutely critical, in my opinion, and I have yet to find a really good one.
All that being said, US Bank has an interesting promotion for the FlexPerks credit card paired with the Olympics. New card holders will earn FlexPerks points based on each medal the US Olympic team wins.
The FlexPerks Olympic Bonus Offer states the offer is valid for applications through 8/31/2012. You must spend a minimum of $2,500 in the first five months to qualify. The annual fee is waived the first year, thereafter $49.
The United States has won 46 Gold, 29 Silver, and 29 Bronze medals as part of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. That works out to 33,150 FlexPerks. At $0.02 a piece, that works out to a value of $663 towards travel, and that does not even include the extra 2,500 points earned from spend.
Quite frankly, I am shocked I have not read more about this offer among the travel blogging community. I had this post in my queue for a while, waiting until the end of the Olympics, and now it appears this promotion has caught on as quite a few other bloggers picked up on it too.
While the program is still kind of low key in the community, I think the potential is highly under rated for the value proposition. I am willing to deal with some minor problems on their website practices for this kind of return on investment.
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A quick question, since you’ve done the research already. I actually got the Olympic version of this card in my own name. If I open a card in my company name can I “merge” the flexperks accounts (or transfer between them) to combine my 35600 points with the 15000 business bonus?
@Rob: I am assuming the card in your company name would be a Business version of the card. In that case, yes, you can use the same FlexPerks account number to combine the points. When we applied for the personal and business versions, we called them and made sure everything was set up under a common FlexPerks number. Thanks for your question!
Yes … I would be getting a business version of the card.
Thanks!