Is the GM Card Worth It?
www.GMInsidenews.com
Commentary by Ming
You'd think with sagging sales that GM might pull out the stops on incentives and ways to get people into their cars. Especially GM loyalists, suppliers and employees. If not with crazy Red Tag sales, then with "money" that GM Card owners have saved up over the years, waiting for a good opportunity to use their points on GM cars. Every year that passes, however, has the GM Card program seeming a little less attractive as a means of enticing people into buying GM cars.
What's wrong (or right) with the GM Card:
1.
Ridiculous Hoops to view earnings and allowances --- logging in to the GM Card site is a pain, you have separate log-ins for your account and earnings. You frequently have to "re-register" and remember pin numbers and such if you don't visit the site often. Used to be that anyone could see how many points were allowed for redemption on each vehicle - like regional cash back offers are viewable by anyone at GM's website. Now GM makes sure that people considering a GM card don't see how it really works before getting a card.
2.
Unimpressive Redemption Allowances. I once complained that SUVs and Trucks - GM's least fuel efficient vehicles - were given allowances up in the $2-3,500 range while fuel efficient 4-cylinder powered cars often got no better than $500-1000 in points allowed for redemption. GM used to regularly send me "Double Your Points!" offers in the mail that only really applied to Trucks and SUVs due to redemption allowances. I'm happy to say that changed, but not in a very good way. Instead of raising redemption allowances for smaller cars significantly to match SUVs and Trucks' impressive offers at the time (though the Aveo now does qualify for $1000 of points), GM has instead made sure that the misery is spread evenly across all vehicles, and that allowances are disappointing now even for big, profit-packed SUVs. The biggest allowances seem to have little to do with profit margins anymore, and more to do with GM wanting to move poor-selling metal. Take the 2,000 point allowance on the Uplander, compared to the 1500 point allowance on the Suburban.
3.
You Can't Combine GM Card Earnings with other offers, like the GMS discount. If you have a good discount, you may well find your card earnings piling up useless after going to the Chevy salesman and finding out that the car you want is selling for close to sticker (time to use your GMS). A car with heavy incentives on it or one that a dealer might want to get rid of (like the Uplander) however, benefits from both large incentives and good GM card redemption limits. So if you want the car no one else wants, leave your GMS at the door and use your points.
4.
Too Many Versions of the card, including legacy cards. You have the flexible earnings card, the business card, the GM extended family card, and Blue, Gold and World cards. Did I miss any? How about a single card that really encourages people to use it no matter how many points they've accumulated?
5.
Used to be 5% earnings, now it's 3%? If you look at the GM Card Site now, it says 3% on all purchases toward a GM car or truck. But now you can use the GM Card Bonus Shop! Well, I still get the 5%, so I'm good, but not that there is any car I want to and could use my full 3500-plus points on. I'd need to buy 3 and 1/2 HHR's to get close to using all of my GM card earnings.
$1000 off a car with few other incentives? How is that significantly better than, say, Suzuki's "Free Gas for the Summer", Customer Loyalty, Graduate Bonus, on top of regular Cash Back offers? Or some seasonal volume sales discount from a local Toyota dealer? At least give GM card owners the option of using all of their points every now and then - once a year or so. It will keep them saving, where they have me stopping. On top of that the points I am allowed to redeem are not high enough to convince me that buying used is not a far superior alternative, especially on a depreciation-mobile.
Credit Card Earnings Programs like Upromise, Discover, American Express offer impressive savings plans that can be used without "redemption limits". The Upromise card, for example, allows 10% savings that will go straight into a college savings fund, and depending on the place where you use the card, you can get another 1-5% (or more) on top of that.
The GM card today really only seems worth it if you have no access to other special GM discounts and buy GM cars very frequently. Or maybe if you just plan to own the card for a couple of years until the first time you redeem your points.
If you dream of saving up for years to help pay off a chunk of a fuel efficient, inexpensive car, reducing what you owe significantly on it, then you'd either better have a legacy "Blue" card where the redemption limit that was once unlimited is now $3500 (last I checked), but applies to any car, even an Aveo or Cobalt.
It's also worth it if you like buying GM cars that are out of favor with the public, and drive them long enough that the resale value of an Uplander, for example, doesn't matter to you.
In short, it's a headache you really don't need if you're not buying a new or unpopular GM car every couple of years, and there are better reward card plans out there. I haven't used my card earnings since 2003 for reasons related to the issues above.
And just recently I've decided to put my GM card usage on hold in favor of another card. So it sits unused, with points piled up and nothing I want to spend them on.
There are some GM loyalists who might say, "stop complaining and moaning, it's a good bonus, so use what they'll give you, shut up and be happy".
That might be fine for them (especially those lucky Blue card owners that don't understand what I'm complaining about), but I actually care about getting bang for my buck, and if other Credit Card deals out there are superior, why would I continue to use the GM card, pushing my unuseable points ever higher?
Request to GM: Raise redemption limits for all car types to levels that make me feel like going out and using them on a new GM car purchase.
