Updating Our Current Credit Cards

Welcome bonuses are a great way to accumulate points fast, which we never took advantage of when getting credit cards in the past. After reviewing our current credit cards, we realized that we could switch out credit cards we had for different ones, and obtain the welcome bonus that came with it.

One thing to note though, is sometimes when you switch a card, the bank doesn't see this as a new application, and the fine print when getting a new credit card might state that the welcome bonus will only be given when applying for a new credit card.

We ran into this problem on March 9, 2023, when I switched our CIBC Costco Mastercard to the CIBC Aeroplan® Visa Infinite* Card, but I'll get into that later.

Since my player 2, Ashley, also had the CIBC Costco Mastercard, we decided to switch hers as well to the Aeroplan VISA Infinite Card, since as mentioned in my previous article; What We did Next in our Credit Card Journey, Aeroplan points are one of the best points programs around for booking flights with.

Why we chose to switch to the CIBC Aeroplan VISA Infinite Card was mainly because their was a welcome bonus offer of 10,000 Aeroplan points and a low fee of only $139, which was much less then the $499 fee on the Privilege card, and it had very similar rewards to that one.

This card was also offering a bonus of 40,000 Aeroplan points which would be rewarded if we spent at least $1,000 in net purchases during the first 4 monthly statement periods.

And, the card came with a first year rebate on the annual fee of $139. So the value for having this credit card in our portfolio was great, vs the CIBC Mastercard that offered only 1% cash back on purchases, which is nowhere near the potential return you can get when redeeming Aeroplan points for flights, which as I mentioned could be upwards of 10% or even more.

Back to my previous statement earlier; you need to be careful when switching credit cards vs. applying for new ones, as you might not get the bonuses. This is exactly what happened to Ashley, she never received the welcome bonus, where as I did, not sure why.

And, we both never received the bonus points we were suppose to get if and when we hit the minimum spend, which was $1,000 over 4 months, which we had hit on both of our cards.

I called CIBC to look into this, as I didn't at the time understand why we didn't get the bonus points, and after a long and heated argument with Anita Nov 1, 2023, she informed me that the fine print for this credit card stated that you won't receive any bonus points when applying. You only receive if you are applying for that credit card. The reason we didn't just cancel our Costco Mastercard and apply for the VISA was because when you apply for any credit card, your credit history will be affected, and there is also the possibility you won't get approved either.

By switching my credit cards, it's not a new credit application, however, as I learned, switching cards might void the bonus points.

I only however had this happen with CIBC, as when I switched my RBC credit cards; my RBC Avion Visa Platinum card and the RBC Avion Visa Business card, to the RBC Avion Visa Infinite Privilege and RBC Avion Visa Infinite Business, respectively, I received the welcome bonus points and the bonus points when I hit the minimum spend (I'll talk more about these 2 cards in a separate article).

Suffice to say, I was not impressed with CIBC. This to me was very shady, and they even were going to go so far as to listen to the recordings of the calls we had made to confirm that the representative that we talked to when we switched the cards informed us of this, that we would not be entitled to the bonus points since it was not a new application.

Either way, they should have honored these bonus points, this is purely false advertising on their part, to promote an offer like this, but then hide in the fine print (which actually I didn't find in the fine print and they confirmed it's not there, but that their call reps are trained to let us know this when switching).

Anyways, long story short, if it wasn't for the annual fee being rebated, which we both had to call in to make sure it got rebated (more shadiness on CIBC's part), since CIBC never automatically rebated the fee as they stated on their website's fine print they would do within 2 statements, this card would not have been worth it.

Reason being is we would've essentially paid $139 for nothing, other then the reward points you get with your everyday spending, which isn't great, only 1.5 points for every $1 you spend on eligible gas, electric vehicle charging, groceries and with Air Canada directly, including through Air Canada Vacations, and 1 point on everything else.

To put those points into perspective, I get 5 points for every $1 I spend on groceries on my American Express Cobalt.

Now that its been a year, I will be switching this card to one that has no annual fee, offers 1 point per $1 spend unfortunately, but it doesn't matter as I won't use this card much as I'll use my RBC Ion VISA card, which offers 2 points per $1 spent on groceries. But I'll only use this card for groceries where they accept VISA , which is main reason I use VISA cards for groceries, or for pretty much any spending, as I always use Amex, their Membership Reward points are the best and the most transferable.