Woolworths Credit Card Review
By FutureNestEgg | September 9, 2008
In a recent post I had written about the launch of Woolworths Credit Card. This credit card is the first step towards many more financial product offers from Woolworths. All its financial products are being offered under the brand name ‘Every Day Money’. Sticking with the new brand name, the credit card is called ‘Every Day Money Credit Card’. The credit card is a Master Card. The cards come in 4 different colours – green, blue, black and pink.
For the past couple of weeks, Woolworths has been promoting its credit card heavily. So its about time I reviewed the product. Here we go:
Basic Features Of Woolworths Every Day Money Credit Card
Annual Fees: There is no Annual Fee in your first year. After your first year, you will be charged $49. The average market rates are between $25 and $50. So $49 is on the high end. But having said that the annual fees of cards that offer rewards program is usually towards the higher end. Woolworths offers a rewards program and hence $49 is justifiable.
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Apart from annual fees, the credit has the other usual fees like the late fees, overseas transaction fees etc… |
Interest Rates: I have no complaints about the interest rates. They are quite competitive and in line with the market rates – currently 18.99% p.a. on purchases and 21.99% p.a. for cash advances.
Zero Per Cent Interest Rate: Up to February 2009, you pay no interest on your purchases (does not apply to balance transfers and cash advances). You have to pay the minimum monthly repayments – otherwise there will be charges.
Interest Free Period: After February 2009, there will be a 55 day interest free period for all your purchases. This is in line with the industry standard.
Balance Transfers: You can transfer your balance from your old credit cards (except from HSBC Cards and Store Cards). You only pay 5.99% on this balance transfer for the first six months and thereafter the interest rate reverts to cash advance interest rate. Note that the cash advance rate is higher than the normal credit card interest rate. The current cash advance rate for the Easy Money Credit Card is 21.99%.
Every Day Money Credit Card Insurance: This insurance covers your credit cards payments, up to a maximum of $25,000. This insurance can be claimed if you are made redundant or if you are totally and permanently disabled or you can’t work due to sickness. This insurance costs 60 cents for every $100 monthly outstanding balance. So if your current monthly outstanding balance is $2000 then you pay $12 towards your insurance premium. The insurance might not cover you if you have assets to cover your payments (even if you satisfy one or more of the above criteria). So check the fine print for this.
ePump They offer an ‘epump’ service. At Woolworths co-branded fuel outlets, this card offers customers a new way to pay for fuel and redeem fuel saving offers at the pump. No more long queues. You can pay at the pump itself rather than going to the cash counter. Surely will impress many (especially on popular Tuesdays). This technology has not been implemented yet and will be in stores some time next year.
Rewards Program
Here is how you can earn points with this card:
- 3 points for every dollar spent at Woolworths or Safeway supermarkets. Online purchases does not however qualify for this. I am not very pleased that they excluded online shopping. A lot of people are opting for online grocery shopping these days – so I am not really sure what the logic behind this exclusion is.
- 2 points for every dollar spent at Big W, CALTEX WOOLWORTHS/SAFEWAY co-branded fuel outlets, epump, Woolworths/Safeway Liquor, Dick Smith PowerHouse and participating Dick Smith Electronics and Tandy stores.
- 1 point for every dollar spent on other purchases
Every four months, if you have at least $20 worth of points, you will be sent a shopping card. You can redeem the money on this shopping card at one of Woolworths family of shops. You will need 3448 points to get a $20 worth of card. So if you do your grocery shopping at Woolies, then you will need spend around $1150 to get a $20 card.
Apparently you can also be eligible to certain promotions at Woolworth’s family shops – example interest free purchases .
Application Of Payments
One of the big things to watch out with low interest rate balance transfer credit cards is how credit cards apply your payments. Any payment you make is usually applied towards the lower interest rate portion first. So I was naturally curious to check out how this card works. Current purchases have a zero interest rate till Feb 2009 and so to make financial sense for you, your payments should first go towards reducing your balance transfer and only after that is all zero, your payments should go towards reducing your current purchases. So I called the customer service department to verify how the easy money credit cards work. According to them, any payments you make (payments in addition to your minimum balance) will go towards reducing balances in the following order:
1. Interest And Fees
2. Balance Transfers
3. Cash Advances
4. Current Purchases
5. Promotional Purchases (like interest free purchases from Woolworth’s family shops)
So I am happy on this front.
Woolworths Umbrella
Here is a list of all the stores under Woolworths umbrella. Here is where you should be shopping to get maximum benefits out of this card:
- Woolworths Grocery Stores
- Dan Murphy
- Big W
- Dick Smith
- Woolworths Co branded fuel outlets (usually Caltex).
- Beer Wine Spirits
- Tandy
- Safeway Store
My Final Thoughts
1. Interest rates wise it is competitive with what the market offers. In fact it is about one per cent less than what most rewards credit cards offer.
2. Not very pleased with the rewards program. Other cards offer slightly more for every dollar spent. Plus online shpping at Woolies is not given any special treatment.
3. The low balance transfer rate is okay but there are lots of cards in the market which offer much lower rates. So if you want to choose this card, then don’t make the low balance transfer rate your reason.
4. The annual fee for this card is quite competitive and less than what a lot of other rewards credit cards charge.
5. If you have huge outstanding balances in your old cards then you might be tempted to consider this card because of low balance transfer rates plus zero interest on new purchases. Valid reasons to be tempted. If you have outstanding balances, I do recommend low interest balance transfer cards but the new card has to be used only for clearing off outstanding balances and not for any purchases in the future. I am afraid that the zero per cent interest rate can tempt financially indisciplined people to take on more debt.
All in all, the Woolworths Credit Card is good but could have done better on the rewards front.
Check out the card here.
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Topics: Product Reviews | 8 Comments »
8 Responses to “Woolworths Credit Card Review”
Comments
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September 9th, 2008 at 6:44 am
Hi Sandy,
A minor correction to a well balanced review – the reward program pays;
1 point for every dollar of purchases,
2 points for each dollar spent in a Woolworths store (Woolworths or Safeway Supermarkets, BIG W, CALTEX WOOLWORTHS/SAFEWAY co-branded fuel outlets, epump, Woolworths/Safeway Liquor, Dick Smith PowerHouse and participating Dick Smith Electronics and Tandy stores)
3 points for each dollar spent on Woolworths Select products in supermarkets
Cheers
Interest declared – I help Woolworths with their Everyday Rewards blog
September 9th, 2008 at 8:53 am
Thank you Tim for the clarification. I am especially honored to receive your comment because you are from Everyday Rewards blog.
May 12th, 2009 at 2:18 am
I advise against this card.
Although there are interest free periods the optional cc insurance is active and high during the interest free period.
There is no complaint procedure for Woolworth’s HSBC credit card “Everyday Money”, other than those relating to transaction disputes.
Their own errors leave customers with no recourse.
The call centre staff either do not know what to do, or insist that they must speak to other departments.
They have made no contingency to admit error or apologise for non-financial errors.
My wish was simply to close my account and, later, to receive a letter of explanation as to why this hadn’t occurred.
They told me several times that my account had closed when it hadn’t.
They also told me that my associate should impersonate me in order to verify this (seriously).
Throughout the matter they insisted that fax and postal authorisation were the only valid methods, despite having verified my identity. Having said this they also refused to fax me anything, so I kept having to wait and wonder whether they’d sent it or my mail had been lost or stolen.
This was not a single instance, it was systemic.
I can only conclude that an organisation that professes to be “fresh food people” and yet is unable to provide fresh food of adequate standard, certainly cannot provide a credit card.
It is a venture they’ve presumably undertaken for profit not service, therefore they are not suitable for any ongoing business relationship.
Do not get a Woolworths Everyday Money credit card, there are other HSBC credit cards if that provider suits you.
For many people Woolworths is the main supermarket regardless of lack of quality or integrity – because they are accessible. However, there are cheaper and better alternatives for many of their products. Farmer’s Markets, Food Co-ops (often at universities), IGAs and other local stores sometimes are cheaper for some things or have better diversity or local products.
Credit Unions and Bendigo Bank have very low interest rates and annual fees for their credit cards, including Visa debit cards that incur no eftpos fees.
Those are organisations structured to serve not exploit. So over time you will experience goodwill and success.
Woolworths is evidently structured and motivated for exploitation as much as Telstra or any other monstrosity.
While I’m on the subject – almost everytime I go to Woolworths I later discover I’ve been overcharged — I don’t always get a chance to go back. Yet this has never happened to me at Aldi or IGA – ever!
September 8th, 2009 at 5:58 am
I applied for this credit card couple months ago with their special promotion of a $50 shopping card if you apply before June 30, 2009 and made a purchase by July 31,2009.After doing all of that and waited more than 8 weeks for the shopping card to arrive, it never did and when I called their lousy call centre, I was told that I do not qualify because I use a different application form but regardless if I use an application form or do it online which I did,you are qualified for the shopping card but they still deny it eventough their web advertisement can still be seen on http://www.everydaymoneycard.com.au/edr50. After numerous phone calls and faxing a letter of complaint which I have to do a couple of times before someone responded, they still said that
I am not eligible which is a clear misleading advertisement to incite people to open a credit card.A $50 shopping card might not be that huge amount but the fact that they lied and the fact that they have a very poor customer service, it makes you think why these big companies like Woolwoths can get away with this.
September 8th, 2009 at 6:07 am
Oh No…I am sorry to hear about your unhappy experience…I, on the other hand have had a good experience – happy with customer service and happy with the card
October 14th, 2009 at 7:48 am
I mistakenly transferred $17,774.73 instead $1,774.73 to pay my everyday money credit card, when I found my mistake it took them 8 days to retify the problem! Besides they refer me from one to another support people with all promises to return my call but they don’t keep to their word.I found them to be unprofessional and unreliable!I told them I want to close my card but till now nothing is done!CUSTOMER SERVICE IS TERRIBLE!Never want to deal with Everyday Money credit card again
November 2nd, 2009 at 12:24 am
They did the same thing to me after I closed the account,After they stuffed me up with the $50 shopping card that I did not received (see my blog above dated Sept. 8, 2009), I decided to closed the account, Anyway by doing all the procedures they asked me to closed the account and I even faxed it a couple of times for 4 consecutive days because I know how slack they are and checking it after 1 month to make sure it’s closed and guess what it’s still open! So I called them again and they said that I have to faxed the letter again to authorise to close the account,Unbelievable isn’t it!. They are very incompetent,I’m so relieved that it’s finally closed and lucky that I only had that Woolworths Everday Money credit card for 3 months.Their Customer Service people and their procedures are one of the worst I’ve ever seen.I hope their CEO is aware of this and change needs to happen very soon or they will loose more customers.
March 16th, 2011 at 5:43 am
I would recommend AGAINST this card if you have issues with your cards being demagnetised on the occasion. I just called to get a new card issued as mine is no longer working and in order to get a new one they canceled the existing one. So this means I have no current card. I use this card for all my purchases. I can’t even get my discount fuel as I have to go in store to pay as I can’t pay at the pump and my fuel discounts are linked to the card. – NOT HAPPY Jan. On the flip side I called Westpac as my Ignite card had also been playing up and they are sending me a new card without canceling my existing card – thanks WESTPAC!