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TD Waterhouse Free Trades Platinum Visa® Card
Issued by First USA |
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| Total Posts: 3 |
Average Rating:
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Category: Reward - Other |
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Showing 1 - 3 of a total of 3 Commentaries |
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1-3 |
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| "Hurricane Interest Rate hikes" |
They increase your interest rate when you use
the card many times, even if you are not late or over limit. Increases even if you are declared a FEMA Federal Disaster Area. |
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| Most attractive feature: Stock Trade Credit |
| Least attractive feature: Interest Rate Hikes |
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| Posted by: Bill |
| Date: 9/9/2005 |
Recommend?  |
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This person does not recommend this card.
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| "Great for TD Waterhouse customers, but why be their customer?" |
First off, I&#'ll say that the basic service on this card has been excellent. Customer service has been friendly, payments have been applied quickly, and grace period has been honored. I have not had any extreme problems that would put customer service to the test, such as fraudulent charges, however. There has never been an annual fee. I have used this card since TD Waterhouse involuntarily switched everyone from their old credit card to this one in the spring of 2001.
As far as I can tell this card is only available to customers of TD Waterhouse Securities, a discount brokerage. There are two hooks to get you into this card. The first is a 5% rebate on purchases from some Web merchants, including Amazon.com. The full list is available on TDW&#'s Web site. I am not much of a Web shopper so I never looked at the list. I do know that Amazon.com is on the list, and a few purchases from them always led to a rebate appearing on the next statement. I don&#'t know how many other cards offer this benefit. For a heavy Web shopper, this could be a very valuable benefit.
The other benefit is that for each $2,000 charged, you get a voucher with your statement that you mail in with a copy of a transaction confirmation and the commission is rebated. I got several rebates and all were handled quickly and smoothly. A basic stock transaction on the Web is $12 at TDW, so that&#'s not a great percentage return. If you use a live broker or trade bonds or options, the commissions are a lot higher, so you can get a more valuable rebate if you trade those instruments. I&#'m sure there is a maximum rebate amount but I never hit it with my small option trades. If you were in the habit of making one or two option trades a month, and you charged $3,000 a month, you could get all your commissions rebated.
For most investors seeking a true deep discounter, however, I don&#'t think TDW and this card is a very compelling combination. I traded with TDW for about 8 years, and was generally happy with them, but they have changed and I am now abandoning them. TDW seems to have decided deep discounting isn&#'t where the profits are, and they are now trying to be a clone of Schwab. I think they beat Schwab hands down, offering all of Schwab&#'s bells and whistles at a much better price, but the remaining true deep discounters are now beating TDW badly on price. The last straw for me was when TDW slapped a .5% back-end fee on every mutual fund sold within less than 90 days of purchase. As a mutual fund trader, this could have cost me hundreds of dollars a year--much more than I could save with the card. I am transferring accounts to Brown & Co., where market orders are $5 and mutual fund trades are a flat $5 with no extra back-end fee. I have had one account with Brown for a few months now and have been very pleased with the service. Their Web site is simplistic and they don&#'t give free access to S&P magazine and such, but I figure I&#'m better off saving money on commissions and fees and paying for subscriptions to magazines if I want them.
In short, the only people I would recommend TDW (and this card) to would be people who trade bonds or options on a regular and compatible schedule or people who want a clone of Schwab with dramatically better commissions. |
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| Most attractive feature: Commission rebates can be a valuable benefit for TD Waterhouse customers |
| Least attractive feature: TD Waterhouse is no longer the best discount broker |
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| Posted by: William |
| Date: 4/2/2002 |
Recommend?  |
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This person does recommend this card.
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| "Great way to earn free trades" |
| This card is better than the standard e.card platinum because of the free trades rewards. For every $2000 spent on purchases you get a certificate that you can use for a trade up to $45. This is very useful for those who frequently trade over the phone ($30 for a market order, even more for limit orders and others.) I frequently shop at amazon.com and I also have a TD waterhouse brokerage account so this is a double bonus for me. The intro APR for this card used to be 0% for 6 months but they recently changed that to 2.9% for 6 months so I was a little disappointed. I usually pay off my monthly balances unless there is a 0% interest rate, then I just pay the minumum. The standard APR on this thing is between 14.99% and 19.99%. Of course this card has all the standard features of a platinum card. You can't apply for this card on the First USA website, you have to go to the banking section of the TD waterhouse website to find this card. |
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| Most attractive feature: Earn Free trades for TD Waterhouse brokerage accounts, 5% off at select online merchants |
| Least attractive feature: Reward points expire in a year and redeemed certificates expire in 6 months |
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| Posted by: David |
| Date: 9/21/2001 |
| Recommend? |
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This person does recommend this card.
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Showing 1 - 3 of a total of 3 Commentaries
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