Capital One Platinum Prestige Mastercard Review

Prelude To This Review - Capital One distinguishes itself from other issuers because they actually the whole spectrum of consumers from those with excellent credit to those with bad credit. In fact, they are known in the bankruptcy circles to be one of the easier cards to get post bankruptcy (though there is nothing official about this). But this strategy also results in Capital One issuing many card with essentially the same features but are just targeted towards those with different credit.

The Capital One Platinum Prestige card is an example of one of several vanilla cards. It has no reward program. This particular card (or version) is specifically targeted at those with "excellent credit". To be honest, it is a strategy that I do not really understand. If someone had excellent credit history, wouldn't he or she be better off with a rewards card?

Key Points About This Card - Believe it or not, Capital One actually charges annual fee for those with not so good credit. Since this card is specifically for those with great credit, there is no annual fee. It also comes with the usual 0% deals. But Capital never explicitly say for how many months are these deals. Instead, their website states the exact date which the deal expires. We then have to work backwards to see how many months are those 0% offers. Right now, it appears to be about 14 months.

Other Vanilla Cards - Capital One is not the only issuer to have "plain vanilla cards" (ie cards with no rewards at all, though American Express and Discover have done away with it). So how would a "Vanilla Card" differentiate itself from other similar cards? Let's take a look at some other cards as well.

Citi has several vanilla cards like the Citi Platinum Select Card, Citi Diamond Preferred Card and the Citi Simplicity Card. They distinguish themselves from the crowd by always having the longest introductory period for their 0% balance transfer offers. Citi Diamond also has a free concierge while Citi Simplicity charges no late penalty fees.

Chase has the Slate Card which has a BluePrint feature that helps you managing your balance and pay it down faster.

Capital One's key feature is that all their cards do not charge any foreign transaction fee.

Should You Even Get a Plain Vanilla Card If You Have Excellent Credit? - If you have excellent, I would always advice against getting a card with no reward program. At the very least, get a cash back credit card so that you will at least earn some cash rewards.

But there could be a very good reason why you might want to get a plain old vanilla card, and that is if you need to do a balance transfer. If that is your objective, then you should check the length of introductory period from various issuers because they tend to have different promotions at different times of the year. Always check cards from Citibank because they tend to have the longest introductory period. Occasionally, an issuer may have a promotion where they waive their balance transfer fee.

A real valid reason why you might want the Platinum Prestige card is because they have a 0% balance transfer deal that suits you and/or you want a card with no foreign transaction fees.