Discover Escape card review... is this credit card just a ripoff? We received a rather shocking email from a member of our forum about Escape by Discover, the latest travel and airline rewards card from this issuer. This person that contacted us was not a cardmember himself, but he had seen a magazine ad for it. His concern was if this card really did offer 2 miles for every dollar spent? He was sure there must be some fine print somewhere, because there is not a single airline credit card out there which offers 2 miles on all purchases.

I was happy to research this and look into it further to get to the bottom of it. But being that it just came out, there wasn’t a whole lot of info on the credit card forums about it. So I decided to go straight to the source – the fine print – that he was concerned about to find out the truth.

Is it really 2 points for every $1 spent?
Yes. This was hard for me to believe too. The folks over at Discover must be going a little whacky for giving away this many points. As you know, there are many other travel cards on the market but almost all of them only give 1 point per dollar. There are some that might give 1.5 or 2 points, but they only do this for very, very specific categories – i.e. on purchases for airfare from that particular airline.

Is there any fine print when you cash in your points?
Again, this may be hard to believe, but the answer is no. There are no blackout dates and unlike the other cards out there, they have no expiration. So whether you want to cash your points out 7 months from now or 7 years from now, it’s totally your choice. This is almost unheard of in the industry, so this was a pleasant surprise for me to find.

What airlines can I choose from?
Now this part is really amazing. You can redeem your points for any airline, any time, it doesn’t matter what flight it is or if your seating in coach or first class. Yep you read correctly – ANY airline and flight! But it gets even better. You don’t have to redeem your rewards for airfare if you don’t want to. You can also choose to cash them in for gift cards, cash, you can even donate them to charity!

What’s the annual fee?
I’m a real stickler when it comes to paying fees. I hate paying them unless the benefits are extraordinary. That’s one of the reasons I hate airline credit cards. They charge around $100 and up just to have the card. For example, the Delta Reserve card has an annual fee of $450! I mean, wow, you have to be spending A LOT of money every year to make that worth it. This is why I love the Escape by Discover card so much. The annual fee is only $60. That is the lowest fee I know of among all the major airline cards out there. And considering that this one gives you double the miles as the other guys, I would say that’s money well spent!

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