By Josh Katzowitz, WCI Content DirectorIf you read financial websites and blogs and listen to financial podcasts, it’s hard to escape the topic of credit cards and the rewards that can either make you a happy traveler or put more money in your wallet. WCI has written about them, more than ever in the past couple of years, and websites like The Points Guy and CreditCards.com and online courses like Point Me to First Class and Points and Miles Doc have built much of their brands around talking about the best credit cards you can procure. WCICON26 will even have a presentation by Dr. Kelly Wright, called Leveraging Your Expenses Through Credit Card Rewards.
The hunt for the perfect credit card can spark thousands of hours of research and millions of hours of debate. But even if the perfect credit card doesn't actually exist, plenty of credit cards need no debate at all. As in, do NOT get these pieces of plastic.
Buc-ee's Platinum Card
Gas station cards aren’t typically talked about as much, because they tend to give you “mediocre value” while tying you to a brand that might not be convenient when you need to fill up your car. Or as one redditor put it when answering a question about whether co-branded gas cards are worth it, “Short answer no. Long answer nooooooooooooo.”
Plus, what happens if you trade in your internal combustion engine vehicle for a Tesla?
But a large swath of people don’t see Buc-ee’s—the gargantuan convenience stores with the clever billboards that started in Texas and have since expanded into other parts of the country, much to the apparent delight of a large percentage of my Facebook friends—as simply a gas station.
Buc-ee’s, for many, is a destination, a shining beacon on the dark highway of life that offers dozens of gas pumps, barbecue sandwiches, an impressive beef jerky bar, and a large Instagrammable statue of its beaver mascot. Do you ever see people wearing a Citgo shirt? No. But I see plenty who unironically sport Buc-ee’s outerwear.
That, however, doesn’t mean you should get the Buc-ee’s credit card, which gives you a 5% off at all locations (whether you’re buying fuel or fudge) and doesn’t charge you an annual fee. As far as I can tell, the only benefit you get from a Buc-ee’s credit card is to save a little bit of money when you’re inside that one store—a store where half of the cars on the interstate are trying to shove their way into the parking lot, creating a TRAFFIC JAM OUTSIDE OF A GAS STATION. To me, none of this is worth the hassle.
As the Buc-ee’s credit card promo says, “There’s no better way to show your love than by carrying the power of the beaver right in your pocket.” Hey, I enjoy Beaver Nuggets as much as the next person. But I don’t need to carry around an extra credit card just to get a couple of cents off my purchase the two times per year I enter a Buc-ee’s. Especially when my jaw gets exhausted after 10 minutes from eating all that jerky.
More information here:
Are Credit Card Points Worth the Investment?
The Kardashian Kard
Thankfully, this card no longer exists, but check out the headlines when you google it.
Forbes: “Kardashian Kard Is a Rip-Off”
Business Insider: “Kim Kardashian's Credit Card May Be the Worst Credit Card Ever”
Los Angeles Times: “Kardashian Kard Pulled Amid Complaints of ‘Egregious Fees’”
Here’s the story from 2010. Utilizing their fame from their reality TV show and their “famous-because-they’re-famous” personas, Kim Kardashian and her sisters, Kourtney and Khloe, introduced a prepaid card with their faces splashed across it that cost between $60-$100 to activate and which had a monthly fee of $7.95. Oh, and the other fees were ludicrous, too.
- You need to replace a lost card? That’ll be $10 (or $25 if you need it by the next day).
- You need to withdraw from an ATM? That’ll be $1.50 in the US and $2.50 internationally.
- You get declined from an ATM? That’ll be $1 in the US and $2 internationally.
- Heaven forbid, you want to cancel the card? That’ll be $6.
The card was fees upon fees upon fees. As one analyst told American Banker: “I am baffled—this card doesn't seem to make sense at all. It appears to be targeted at teenagers, yet with ridiculous fees.”
The card was such a disaster that it lasted less than a month before it was pulled, and reportedly only 250 people signed up for it. According to one expert, “This was one of the worst financial products ever introduced.”
The lesson here: if a celebrity is hawking a credit card, you should probably cut it up and trash it before it even reaches your mailbox. Unless, of course, we're talking about Garfield the cat.
First Premier Bank Mastercard
This is a card for people who have bad credit. It has a $50 annual fee. It doesn’t offer any rewards. It has an interest rate of 36% (yes, 36%). It is not a good choice (unless, I suppose, you have no other choice).
More information here:
From Wedding Planning to Owning 16 Credit Cards
David’s Bridal Credit Card
I can kind of get the appeal with this one; if you’re buying a wedding dress or other matrimonial accoutrements, I understand how one could be cajoled into getting a card so you can save a little bit of money in the short term—perhaps in the same way a department store like Macy’s or Nordstrom could convince you.
But the interest rate of 28.49% was high, and the 0% financing only lasted six months for most people (and if you didn’t pay it off before that promotion ended, you were on the hook for retroactive interest fees). Plus, you didn’t get rewards for any purchase (unless, I suppose, you consider marriage a reward).
This card was not the way to get your financial marriage off to a good start, and it was discontinued in 2022. That won't deter me, though. I'm still trying to convince K&G Fashion Superstore that it should offer a credit card so I can get rewards on all the cummerbunds and cufflinks I buy.
Your First College Credit Card
I remember the kiosks on campus that hawked credit cards to the university students who walked by on their way to class. They were stationed near the student center, and after a round of foosball in the arcade or after inhaling a couple of hot dogs for lunch, those kiosks and the carnival barkers inside of them could become intoxicating.
Hey, look, you can get a free T-shirt if you sign up for this credit card. Hey, look, it has your school’s mascot on the card. Hey, look, you can use it to pay your bar tab so you don’t have to carry cash. Hey, don’t look at the terms and conditions, where you might end up paying 28% interest and exorbitant late fees.
Young adults should build up their credit score (and/or have their parents help them with that task), but signing up for a high-interest Bank of America or US Bank card, just because there's a cuddly bulldog or a mighty alligator on it, when you’re not financially literate is a terrible idea. It's even worse than taking an 8am calculus class. After all, more than 1/3 of college students have credit card debts in the four figures, and 15% say their credit scores have suffered due to late payments.
The CARD Act of 2009 makes it harder for young college students to potentially get swindled, but you should still proceed with caution.
I recall a college roommate who bought a guitar with his credit card and then made the minimum monthly payment for many months afterward. Lord only knows how long it took him to pay off that guitar. Heck, he STILL might be paying it off today, decades after first learning how to play Stairway to Heaven.
More information here:
Travel Hacking for Students, Residents, and Those Entering the World of Credit Card Rewards
Money Song of the Week
If you’re a lazy dude with no prospects for making money or you (in 1990s slang terms) are a “scrub,” don’t bother asking the women of TLC for a date. Because they are NOT interested. The group makes that quite clear in its 1999 smash hit, No Scrubs.
As they sing,
“If you don't have a car and you're walkin'/Oh, yes, son, I'm talkin' to you/If you live at home with your mama/Oh, yes, son, I'm talkin' to you/If you have a shorty that you don't show love/Oh, yes, son, I'm talkin' to you/Wanna get with me with no money, oh no/I don't want no/No scrubs.”
Perhaps the message is a little harsh, but the three women who made up TLC had reason to be skeptical. It’s because the math from all of their success didn’t necessarily work out in their favor. Let’s listen to Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, who died in 2002, explain it.
More information here:
Every Money Song of the Week Ever Published
Instagram of the Week
Turns out it was a pretty good idea not to use the term “debt shops” or “death pledges.”
What are the worst credit cards you’ve seen or have had? What’s the highest interest rate you’ve ever paid? Do you have any other credit card regrets?
[EDITOR'S NOTE: For comments, complaints, suggestions, or plaudits, email Josh Katzowitz at [email protected].]
Most content on WCi are thoughtful, educational, entertaining, informative or all, with the exception of this one columnist who appears to be trying too hard. The result is ridiculous post like these. No one’s heard of any of these cards and none of these are on the hotlist of any WCIs credit card strategy. Sometimes it’s better not to publish at all that put out cr*p. These type of posts dilutes the quality of the content on this website unfortunately
I disagree. I found this article both entertaining and informative.
I’m generally very appreciative of feedback, especially negative feedback, as it is gold in this business.
However, one of the first guidelines for giving feedback is to give positive feedback publicly and negative feedback privately. That doesn’t change when the ability to give it anonymously on the internet is available. Another guideline is to try not to be rude about it by calling someone’s work “cr*p”. The fact that you don’t know these principles makes it hard for me to want to do too much with this feedback. But thanks for providing it anyway.
Once more I wonder why I didn’t turn the comments on this blog off a decade ago when many of the other bloggers I respect did because they realized how toxic the internet can be. This Sunday column is just supposed to be a fun, lighthearted break from the rest of the week. We used to not publish anything on Sundays at all. So you’re not losing anything by this column being published. You get the same amount of “good stuff” the rest of the week. You might be happier to not read Sunday posts because they’re either written by Josh or they’re republished posts written years ago and updated for republication.
Longtime reader. Hear, hear!
Thanks, Jay!! I’m going to make sure I use the phrase “readers believe I’m ‘trying … hard'” the next time I have my annual review.
Lighten up, Francis
I also enjoy the lighthearted and more than occasional nuggets of good sense passed on in these articles. The mortgage video was a good laugh, thanks.
I’d add any citi credit card. They are bottom of the barrel in the industry for service. Too bad they have the Costco contract…
We do have the Costco card. It’s been fine, I suppose. But we only use it for Costco purchases and gas (and only one of us has a car that takes gas anyway).
Sadly, it looks like that Garfield credit card no longer is available.
Brutal news. Maybe there’s an Odie one available?
I would like to keep from getting my nose dirty, but I have always found Mr. Katzowitz’s blog posts entertaining and worth reading. They are a great change of pace from the meat of WCI. The musical references are usually light years beyond me, but there’s a reasonable theme, and I enjoy how you tie them together. While we have never heard of these cards, with good reason, they demonstrate certain concepts to avoid in other cards. Keep them coming, even the ones some folks might think are cr**py.
Here’s your next business idea… a White Coat Investor credit card. Haha
Ah, this brings back memories of freshman year in the late 90’s. I’m a sucker for free t-shirts and I signed up for them constantly using my phone number plus 12 for my SSN. I had over 100 t-shirts and gave them out to people when I went back home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Lots of Cartman from South Park wearing a “college” t-shirt. Still have a box in the basement somewhere. My credit must have been wrecked for a few years there but it never affected me! I called and cancelled the cards whenever they came in the mail–at least I knew not to spend money I didn’t have.
Amazing!