Thread: Best Buy Credit Card? Know This Before You Apply!

There are many stores that offer their own credit cards that are meant to benefit their regular customers. Best Buy is one of them. Their credit cards are an example of this. One is the Best Buy card and the other one is offered in coalition with HSBC- the Reward Zone Mastercard. But, no matter how good both these look on the surface, review them closely and you will see they are not as great as they are made out to be.

Let’s Look At The Best Buy Credit Cards

To begin with, it is not the customer who chooses which card they get. Whether you gets the Best Buy card or the Reward Zone Mastercard simply depends on your credit score.

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One offers slightly lower rates and fees, but is only available to customers with a great credit score. On the other hand, the second card is available to people with lower scores, but it attracts atrociously high interest rates and fees. While the Mastercard can be used anywhere, the Best Buy credit Card can only be used in their stores.

The Lowdown On Both Offers

The Mastercard offers rebates when you shop in the store or other places. There is also a rewards program attached to the card, but compared to what else is on the market today, this program does not even scratch the surface. For instance, the card offers a $5 gift certificate when you have accumulated 250 points. Considering you earn only 2 points for every dollar spent on Best Buy purchase and one point for every dollar on other purchases, it can take a long time to accumulate any sizable reward.

Worst of all, there are no points to be earned on the store-only version. And in today’s economy even people with good FICO scores are being turned down for your average run-of-the-mill charge cards, so it’s possible more applicants than ever are being given the store-version instead of the MasterCard.

Why They Can Reportedly Harm Your Credit

To begin with, many people with low or bad credit score get store credit cards in the hope of repairing their score. But doing so can actually defeat the purpose since it is very difficult to show proper credit utilization when the credit limit itself often very low. And, the credit limit on these cards is rumored to be on the low side. If experts recommend keeping you utilization below 20% to 30% of your limit, that means with a $1,000 limit, you can only spend a maximum of $200 in a single billing cycle. Now you may think because you have a high score you will be approved for a spending limit of several thousand or more dollars. Well, you may be surprised. There are reports on our credit card forums of people with stellar scores allegedly only getting a limit of a few hundred dollars. This is despite the fact that they claim to have other cards with CL’s of $10,000+ and a flawless payment history.

In addition, having store charge cards in general reportedly may not look good. Why? Two reasons: (1) Because they are more likely to be opened by people with poor credit (so many claim they look bad) and (2) They’re more likely to opened on “impulse” such as at the cash register during checkout. And of course, banks associate impulse spending with higher risk. Therefore, seeing store cards on your report are said to look bad by some experts. So as ironic as it sounds, one who opens one of these in an order to strengthen their history may actually be hurting it. It’s been estimated that simply applying for and opening a card can lower your FICO by as much as 15 to 20 points instantly in some cases.

Also, the extremely high interest rates can actually complicate your debt situation instead of improving it. Especially if you are trying to repair your credit, it is best that you opt for a secured card rather than use Best Buy credit cards. If you’re considering it for the rewards on electronics, there are others out there which can offer higher rewards on this category of spending and are not issued by a store, such as the no annual fee Discover More card (which we are affiliated with)

My wife use to have one and she had problems more than once about them not processing her payments on time and then slapping her with a late fee. Go figure.

whats your advise?? I got the Best Buy rewardzone mastercard about 7 months ago.. Came with a limit of 300, i used it to buy an ipod then paid it off in a month or 2. They then increased my limit to 400.. Should i just pay off what i owe and cancell the card? or just tear up the card and dont use it and have them cancel it

Originally Posted by pokerdude069

whats your advise?? I got the Best Buy rewardzone mastercard about 7 months ago.. Came with a limit of 300, i used it to buy an ipod then paid it off in a month or 2. They then increased my limit to 400.. Should i just pay off what i owe and cancell the card? or just tear up the card and dont use it and have them cancel it

bump.......

Originally Posted by Cucumber

Pay off the card but keep it open b/c canceling cards can backfire. It's better to have accounts that have been open for years.

ok ill just do that then