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Credit Card Tips and Strategies, Issue #011 -- 18th Freddie Awards
Credit Card Tips and Strategies Newsletter 011
Date : 29th June 2006
Table of Contents
1. 18th Freddie Awards
2. First Premier Bank Credit Cards
3. What's up next?
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18th Freddie Awards
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The Freddie Awards is held every year, whereby frequent travellers vote for their favourite airline frequent flyer programs, hotel frequent guest programs and
their favourite reward credit cards. We highlight the top three winners for the 18th Freddie Awards held earlier this year in the Americas category for both the Best Affinity Credit Card and Best Program category.
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Best Affinity Credit Card
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Here is a highlight of the top three winners in the "Best Affinity Card" category. The
competition was very fierce, with the top three apparantly seperated by just eleven
hundredths of a point (according to the Freddie formula).
Club Rewards from Diners Club won the best affinity credit card award for the ninth consecutive year.
The second place went to the Marriotts Reward Visa, which improved dramatically from seventh place last year.
Third place went to the Starwood Preferred Guest Card from American Express, dropping one notch from second last year.
You can read our review of the Marriott Rewards Visa and Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card here :
Marriott Rewards Visa Review
Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card Review
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Program of the Year
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Accoding to Freddie's website, "The winner of this all-important category must have
demonstrated fairness, attentiveness, and generosity across the board, from customer
service to communication to award redemption. Only a spectacular program run in a
spectacular way has a chance here."
In the airline program section, the winner this year went to SouthWest Airlines Rapid
Rewards. In second place was Midwest Miles. Alaska Mileage Plan came in at third this year, having won it for the last three years
In the Hotel category, IGH Priority Club Rewards broke Starwood Preferred Guest stranglehold. To compound that, Marriott Rewards edged up from third place last year to second place this year.
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First Premier Bank Credit Card
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We are now offering First Premier Bank's credit card on our site. First Premier Bank
issues four unsecured credit cards and two secured credit cards. The four unsecured
ones are the regular First Premier Bank Card, the First Premier Bank Gold card, the
Centennial Card and the Centennial Gold Card. The two secured credit cards are the
First Premier Bank and Centennial secured cards respectively.
First Premier Banks' cards are designed for those with not so stellar credit. Hence there are a
variety of fees like setup fees etc that normally come with any sub-prime credit card.
What is more interesting is that the apr of the unsecured card is only 9.90% (that is a
fixed rate). This is a very low rate in any case and more amazing considering these
are sub-prime cards.
The four unsecured credits have essentially identical features, fees and rates. The only
difference being their card designs.
We have written a review on these cards which you can read them here :
First Premier Bank Credit Card Review
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What's up next?
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I am presently writing a few reviews on new credit cards that we will be offering on our
site. Updates will be available in the next issue. Our website is also going through a
major site redesign to make it more user friendly. We will keep you up-to-date on these
developments in our next few issues.
Nick Lian
http://www.askmrcreditcard.com"
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