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Capital One’s 10% Savings Bonus Catch

Capital One Bank has just begun a major national advertising campaign on TV with comic Jerry Stiller and in full page newspaper ads touting its high interest savings rate compared to “bupkus” [nothing] paid by competitors.

In addition to paying 1.35% interest, you also get a 10% quarterly bonus on the amount of interest earned in the previous quarter.

capone

If you click the above ad, you will see unreadable mouse print under the bank’s name. Even looking at the original ad, the text is almost unreadable because of its size, faint color and weight of the font, and the fact that it is printed on a striped background doesn’t help either.

What does the fine print say?

*MOUSE PRINT:

Besides requiring a $1000 minimum balance to get the advertised interest rate, it also imposes some unexpected conditions in order to receive the advertised bonus interest:

“To receive the bonus, your account must be open and you either must maintain an average balance of $10,000 each month in your account or own an active Capital One credit card in good standing with at least one transaction per calendar month.”

This is a pretty significant requirement to bury — that you need $10,000+ to earn the bonus interest. And it is not like they didn’t have enough space in this full page ad to disclose it upfront clearly.

So, how much will MrConsumer deposit at Capital One because of this deception? Bupkis.

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CVS: From Ad to Checkout, Promised Discounts Disappear

Last Friday, CVS sent out an email to customers offering “20% off your entire purchase in store or online*”.

*MOUSE PRINT:

“The 20% sale cannot be combined with another product sale running at the same time. You will receive the larger discount.” — disclaimer for online coupon use.

“*Excludes sale items.” — disclaimer for in-store coupon use.

Those exclusions are pretty limiting considering your “entire purchase” really is not covered.  What makes them worse was the fact that those disclosures were not made anywhere in the email itself. You had to visit CVS.com to find them out.

Still worse were the seeming 40% off discounts promised off the regular price of “Red Hot Deals” featured on the landing page of CVS.com:

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MrConsumer placed those three 40% items in his cart, but when checking the cart, the 40% discounts had completely disappeared. Well, maybe the right sale prices only show up when you are about to checkout?

*MOUSE PRINT:

Nope. Even on the very last page of the ordering process after providing a credit card number, all the 40% off items remained at full price. Had MrConsumer clicked the “submit order” button there, he would have been charged $42.47 for items that had been advertised for $25.47. That’s an overcharge of $17.  This is the online equivalent of a scanner error where the store sign promised 40% off, but the items scanned regular price at the cash register.

CVS subsequently corrected their error, but who knows how many people might have been overcharged in the interim.

The lesson here is that just because an item is advertised on a website for a particular price, you must double-check to see whether that is the price that is actually charged once the item is in your cart and you are at the checkout.

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Last Minute Car Renters Benefit from Hidden Price Drops

Unlike airlines that charge customers higher fares the closer to the departure date you make your reservation, some car rental firms actually lower the price as the rental date draws nearer.  They don’t advertise that fact, they just do it quietly.

Example: MrConsumer helped a friend book a 12-day rental starting on August 22 from Logan airport in Boston. At the end of July — approximately three weeks in advance — the total rate including taxes was in the high $400s for Alamo — and that was using a coupon and a group discount.

Exactly two weeks before the start date of the rental, just for the fun of it, MrConsumer checked prices again at Alamo on a new reservation, using a better coupon — $40 off a 10-day rental.  Between the coupon and a new price reduction, the exact same rental dropped to $420.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Not bad, a savings of about $60.

Checking prices again exactly one week before the rental was scheduled to begin revealed another price drop of close to $100. It was now down to $337.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Wow, that’s a total savings of almost $150 compared to the price that would have been charged on the earliest reservation. 

And, checking the rates one day later, the price dropped to $317.

Now, on August 17, just five days before the rental, the price dropped again:

*MOUSE PRINT:

We are now under $300 for the rental, an almost $200 savings compared to the price quoted at the end of July.

It can’t get any lower, can it?

*MOUSE PRINT:

Wow.. as of Wednesday, August 18 — just four days before the rental — the price dropped over $30 to $267. Will the discounts ever end?

Two days before the car rental was scheduled to begin, the price dropped one last time, albeit by only $7.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Just to finish the price history of the rental, the day before the actual rental, the price jumped up to $414.91.  And on the day of the rental itself, the price was $434.68.  Amazingly, the highest price Alamo offered was the first one — for the reservation made over three weeks before the actual rental date. The total savings for MrConsumer’s friend amounted to over $220 by making weekly, and then daily checks of prices as the rental date drew near.

Surprisingly, in this case, it was substantially cheaper renting at the airport than from an in-town location. (The opposite is usually true.) Compounding the problem of high rates is that string of junk fees and taxes that boosts the price substantially, no matter how low the published rate is per day.

Because no one knows if prices are going to go up or down in any particular case, or with any particular car rental firm,  it is still wise to book early (using all the discounts and coupons you can find), but check again repeatedly  as the rental date approaches.  If you find a lower price, book the new reservation, then cancel the old one.

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