Scotiabank Gold American Express Card Review

(This feature is a duplicate from the main the Rewards Canada site)

Launched in September of 2012 the Scotiabank Gold American Express Card
is now veteran of our loyalty credit card market. It was the first
American Express card issued by a bank other than Amex Bank of Canada
since CIBC tried the partnership in 2002. Now that the card has been
around for over two years we figured it was time to give it a review
since this partnership between Scotiabank and American Express has
lasted longer than the CIBC effort and it appears that it isn’t going
away soon.

Overview

The Scotiabank Gold American Express Card
is the middle of a suite of three American Express cards issued by
Scotiabank and is by far the most popular version of the trio. When
launched they took hints of their Momentum Visa Infinite Cash Back card
which has some very high category spend bonuses and applied them these
suite of cards. Depending on how you use the card it can be give you a
return of 1% to as high as 4% on travel rewards. The card(s) fall into
our Travel Points With Annual Fee category, which means points are
earned into the credit card issuers proprietary reward program. It gets
further categorized as Travel Anywhere card which means you don’t have
to book via the credit card issuers proprietary reward, you can book any
travel how you want when you want and when the charge shows up on your
statement you can redeem points against the charge. The two other
versions of the Scotiabank American Express cards are a lower cost Standard version and a higher cost Platinum version.

Sign up Features

The Scotiabank Gold American Express Card
comes with a 20,000 Scotia Rewards Points sign up bonus that is awarded
when you reach $1,000 in spending in the first three months. They are
also offering the first year free (the $99 annual fee is waived) for
applications made by February 28, 2015.

Costs

The Scotiabank Gold American Express Card
comes with a $99 Annual fee which is lower than many of its comparable
competitors which charge around $120. Supplementary
cards run $29 which is also lower than most comparable cards
that charge $50. The interest rate
on the card is19.99% which is in line with most of the cards at
this
level. The Platinum Card carries an annual fee of $399 ($99
supplementary) and the standard card runs at $39 ($15 supplementary)

Earning

The Scotiabank Gold American Express Card
has one of the highest earn rates on specific category spending with 4
points per dollar awarded on gas stations, grocery stores, on dining and
entertainment. That equates to a amazing 4% return on that spending!
The 4 points per dollar is limited to $50,000 per year in those
categories which should be more than enough for the majority of
Canadians who use this card. On all other spending the card earns 1
Scotia Reward Point per dollar spent which equates to a 1% return.
If you choose to get the Platinum version that $50,000 cap on the
category bonuses is increased to $100,000 while the regular card has the
earn rate dropped to 2 points per dollar in those bonus categories.

Redeeming

Being the Rewards Canada “Travel Points” category in our annual
credit card rankings means the points earned are part of the credit
card’s proprietary reward program, in this case Scotia Rewards and not a
co-brand program like Aeroplan or Air Miles. For the vast majority of
Canadians this is a good thing since you are not bound by the
restrictions and limitations that frequent flyer programs and programs
like Air Miles put on flights and in fact you are not limited to only
flights but any travel. This card falls into the book any travel
anywhere category of Travel Points cards which means you don’t have to
redeem via Scotia Rewards. All you have to do is book your travel
whether it be aircanada.com, westjet.com, expedia.com or anywhere else
including your trusted travel agent and when that charge shows up on
your statement you simply call up Scotia Rewards or go online and redeem
points against the charge.

Points are redeemed at a rate of 100 points for $1 with a minimum
redemption of 5,000 points for $50 off your travel. That is the beauty
of this card and many like it, you don’t have to have the full amount of
points to begin to enjoy the rewards! If you buy an airline ticket for
$600 and have 30,000 points you can choose to redeem those points for a
$300 credit which means your flight only cost $300. You also get 12
months after the travel charge posts to your account to redeem points so
you can continue to pay off that vacation with points up to a year
after! Another benefit of this’ book travel on your own’ is you can be
on vacation and buy travel on the card (say a rail ticket) and then
redeem points when you get home. It can’t be done with cards that don’t
have this feature such as the BMO Rewards World Elite MasterCard or CIBC
Aventura Visa since you need to redeem the points ahead of time.
Essentially the Scotiabank Gold American Express Card falls into the category of most flexible travel rewards cards.

Features and Benefits

The Scotiabank Gold American Express Card comes
with the usual slate of insurance and benefits that are seen on Gold,
Platinum and Infinite cards. On the insurance side the card comes with
wide range of coverage as including travel accident insurance, flight
delay, trip interruption and cancellation insurance, travel medical
insurance, lost/damaged baggage insurance, car rental CDW coverage,
hotel burglary insurance, purchase protection and extended warranty. The
travel medical insurance does stand out as it covers you for up to 25
days per trip which is somewhat higher than the majority of cards that
offer the benefit.

The primary Non-insurance benefits include a discount on
annual Priority Pass Business Class lounge membership and price
protection. The latter is where if you buy something on the card and the
price drops within a certain period of time you can claim it to get the
difference refunded to your account.

What is good about this card

The 4 Points per dollar earned for gas, grocery and
dining and entertainment categories is what’s good about this card! That
earn rate is huge as it translates to a 4% return. At the time of
writing I know a lot people’s investment portfolios weren’t making this
much!

The insurance package that comes with the card is also very
strong and carries some better options than its competitors like 25 day
out of province medical insurance and price protection.

The 35% discount on the Priority Pass business class
lounge access is decent but isn’t as good as when the card first
launched when the full $99 fee was covered. If you travel lots and enjoy
business class lounge access other cards offer better options in this
case.

What is not so good about this
card

There are two things that are not so good about this card.
First we all know that American Express is
not widely accepted like its competitors and make it hard to use
this card everywhere you shop. Yes it earns 4 points per dollar on
Dining and Entertainment but outside of major chains and high end
restaurants, the American Express brand is tough to use. The good things
is that more and more merchants are accepting American
Express everyday but their coverage is still lower than Visa or
MasterCard. Also with the upcoming changes to the Visa/MasterCard
interchange rate we may see some retailers drop American Express
Acceptance.

The second issue we have with the card won’t be a huge issue for
most Canadians and that is the ability to convert points to other
programs. When you compare this card to cards like the American Express
Gold Rewards Card or the RBC Avion Visa Infinite card which are both
Hybrid Cards that allow you to redeem points via their proprietary
rewards programs and/or convert them to numerous other loyalty programs.
Scotiabank unfortunately doesn’t have relationships with loyalty
companies like Amex or RBC in Canada. They do have SCENE which isn’t
travel rewards related and in the Caribbean they are the primary issuer
of American Airlines AAdvantage cards but AA is tied in with RBC and
their Avion card right now.

Conclusion

If you are someone who goes out a lot to eat and drink, goes
to a lot of movies and/or theatre this card rewards you handsomely. If
you have little to no ties to major loyalty programs like Aeroplan and
Air Miles and know you can use this card a lot for the category bonuses
it should be in your wallet. What is also advantageous is that Scotiabank also offers the Scotiabank Rewards VISA card, which has no annual fee and will cover those merchants that don’t accept American Express. This allows you to earn Scotia Rewards points on both cards, rather than having to collect points in two different programs. Also, if you want to have no restrictions on how, when and where you can use your points towards travel, then this card is also for you.

However if you want flights in business or first class at the best
possible return on your credit card spending (business and first class
redemptions made via a frequent flyer program represent the best
possible value out of any loyalty program) and you
collect a lot of miles or points from sources other than credit card
spend getting this card may not be the best first choice but could make
sense as a secondary or tertiary card if you are willing to cover the
annual fee each year after your first year free. Granted if you only
used the card on category bonus spending so that your return was
strictly 4% this is actual a pretty decent value towards redeeming those
points for a business class ticket. If you spend the full $50,000 a
year on the card in category bonuses so that you have $2,000 in points
you could use this towards a hefty discount on a business class ticket.
For example Air France and KLM are well known for running great Business
Class sales to Europe from Canada. My parents flew Calgary to Prague
for $3,500 each in the new KLM Business Class so if you had these $2,000
worth of points that ticket would only cost you $1,500. If you did an
Aeroplan redemption for the same route it would be 90,000 Miles or a
minimum of $45,000 with the American Express Gold Rewards Cards but for
most people it would be much higher than that (probably around $60,000
with the TD or CIBC Aeroplan cards) and you would be looking close to
$1,000 in taxes and fees. So what would you rather spend $50,000 on your
card + $1,500 for the remainder of a ticket with little to no
restrictions like Aeroplan or spend $60,000 plus $1,000 in taxes and
fees and be at the whim of Aeroplan availability and routing problems. Remember however
this example is based on spending in category bonuses. Once you use
your Scotiabank Gold American Express card at other non-category bonus
locations you start eating away at that 4% return and lose value for
Business Class redemptions. Ultimately if you are tied into Aeroplan,
Air Miles or another loyalty program as you primary travel rewards
source then this card should not be the primary card in your credit card
portfolio.

Overall when Scotiabank launched this suite of Amex
branded cards they needed it. The Scotiabank Gold Passport Visa had
fallen way behind the competition and to this date has stayed behind its
competitors. The Scotiabank Amex branded cards had a difficult first
8-10 months with less people jumping on the card than Scotiabank had
hoped but it does seem to have turned the corner thanks to some very
heavy advertising at airports, city transit and more. For some Canadians
this should be the primary card in your wallet while for a good
majority of you it can make a really good back up card to your primary
card and only use it at places where you earn the category bonuses.

Care to comment? Do you agree or disagree with us? Tell us what think
about the Scotiabank Gold American Express Card by commenting below!

Scotiabank Gold American Express Card Review

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