When making a trip to the local branch of Wells Fargo the other day a rather interesting thing happened. I went into the branch as I normally do, grabbed a mint from the candy dish, filled out my deposit slip, brought it up to the teller, the kind lady processed it and gave me my receipt.
She proceeded to ask me if I would be interested in participating in their credit card rewards program or debit card rewards program. I had five minutes to get to class, so I asked the teller if she had a brochure with some information I could take, she said they were out but would get some next week. I went to Wells Fargo’s rewards website to see what they had to offer, what I found, was not much.
Wells Fargo has two different rewards programs, one called “Enhanced Rewards” which is for check card and credit card customers, and another one called “Exclusive Rewards” for check card customers.
The first program, enhanced rewards, offers participants points for each of their purchases which they can redeem for rewards such as electronics, gift certificates, and airline tickets. But is the program worth it? The annual fee to be a participant in the rewards program is $19.00, and you receive one point for every dollar spent. When looking at the rewards available, we can pretty easily determine that each point is worthy about a penny. That means you have to spend $158.33 a month just to break even in the program, and after the first $1900, you are only making 1% back on purchases. This is really not very worthwhile compared to other credit card rewards programs, which have upwards of 5% back on rewards and much lower annual fees.
The second program, called “Exclusive Rewards” is a new program that Wells Fargo has created for customers with only a debit card. This program is substantially worse than their “Enhanced Rewards” program. In order to be a member of the program, you need to pay an annual fee of $12.00. For every four dollars you spend, you will earn one point, and each point is worth slightly less than a penny. This means you have to spend $5000 a year, or $420 a month just to break even! After that you only receive 0.25% back on every purchase after that. This is definitely not worth your time when it comes to a debit card rewards program.
If you’re looking for a debit card or credit card rewards program, Wells Fargo is certainly not the place to go. There are other options which will pay about 3% with no annual fee.
