How to Get Your Capital One Annual Fee Waived
Yet another bank is giving benefits to military cardholders under the auspices of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA). First I reported about how to get your American Express annual fees waived, and then I wrote about how to get your Chase annual fees waived, both under the benefits provided by the SCRA. Now I’ve found and gotten evidence for another bank that issues reward credit cards, that will waive your annual fee, this time Capital One.
Capital One offers several fixed value travel rewards cards, although not as many as the other banks, and none that I would recommend, although there is a recent interesting offer that piqued my interest. The Capital One Venture card normally offers a 20,000 point sign-up bonus, and gets 2 points/dollar spent on all purchases. All those points can be applied, at a rate of 1 point/cent, towards travel purchases, in the form of a statement credit. It can be used for any form of travel, be it flights, cruises, hotels, taxis, etc. In essence you’re getting 2% of your purchases towards travel purchases; as far as I know, the only better value from a fixed-value credit card is the Barclaycard Arrival, which offers 2.2% at a fixed value towards travel purchases. The $59 annual fee is waived the first year, or as long as we’re active duty for military members. There was just recently a Capital One Venture card out there with a 50,000 point sign-up bonus, (the link is right here), but that deal seems to be dead, I think it was out there only about a week. A year or two ago, there was a 100,000 sign-up bonus, so keep your eyes open for good deals.
Other than the Venture, I haven’t read about many enticing cards from Capital One. One of the nice things about them is that they all have waived foreign transaction fees, which is especially nice for military members. If any of you have better insight into Capital One cards, I’d love to hear them!
To get SCRA benefits, either send a secure message to them (like I did) asking for benefits under the SCRA, or call 1-855-227-1645 (1-855-CAP1-MIL). In a couple weeks you’ll receive a letter similar to the one below:
sorry for the poor rez on the screenshot, if you click on it it’s much clearer
Also, for more info about their SCRA benefits, you can check out:
http://www.capitalone.com/legal/servicemembers-civil-relief-act/
Does anyone know anything about citi? Jason Steele wrote an article last year saying they also waived fees but I can’t find anything confirming it
@ Jake – Andy is currently researching Citi and other CC issuers. Stand by!
@Jake – I can’t give away any secrets right now, but all I can say is keep reading for an upcoming post!
Do you know if this has changed since you applied? My husband just applied and we received a REJECTION letter, stating it’s because our credit card account was opened on 5/15/2017, which is after he started his active duty on 9/8/1999. WTF? So he’s being punished because he was active duty prior to opening the account? (Which, based on your letter, was the same situation as you.)
@Katie – That’s correct, the law applies only to debts you incurred PRIOR to serving on active duty. Meant to protect Service Members who got a mortgage or other debt and then called up to serve where presumably their pay would be lower. Credit card companies applying the rules to credit card fees is kind of a weird corollary that is not specified in the law (only an interest rate cap at 6%).