A good cashback credit card - especially if you go on lots of holidays (Thomas Cook Visa Credit Card)

Member Name: stuff10

Product:	Thomas Cook Visa Credit Card
Date:	28/05/09 (70 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Earn a reasonable amount of cashback

Disadvantages: Not long to pay your bill, website not great, they don't email you your balance

I've had the Thomas Cook Credit card for around 6 months now, the thing that attracted me to it is the cashback that Thomas Cook offers called Travel Pounds. I pay the card off every month, so the APR, interest free period, etc isn't much of a concern to me.

Originally, you gained 2% back on purchases from Thomas Cook and 1% back on all other purchases. However this halved in April 2009, meaning that you're now only rewarded with 1% cashback from what you spend at Thomas Cook and 0.5% of what you spend elsewhere. So, if you spent £500 per month on your card, you'd get £2.50 cashback. It doesn't sound a lot, but it does add up over the course of a year (£30 in the example above).

These Travel Pounds can be redeemed against purchases at Thomas Cook - whether it be a holiday or foreign currency.

The Thomas Cook Credit Card also has the advantage that you pay no fee when using it at Thomas Cook - this can be a great saving as credit card charges are sometimes as high as 2.5% (£25 on a £1000 holiday)

Now, the downsides:

1. They don't seem to give you a lot of time to pay your bill - my month ends on the 18th and I receive my bill through the post around the 24th or 25th. Payment is then due around the 3rd of the next month, which doesn't leave as much time to pay as my old Barclaycard did.

2. Thomas Cook don't email you with your end of month balance like Barclaycard do.

3. The website is sometimes slow to respond or inaccessible.

Overall, I'm fairly impressed with the credit card - the cashback is reasonable for today's climate and that's my main concern.

Summary: If your looking for cashback, look no further