Coming over from Reddit,@sana_neo reached out to me and is sending me some neo swag which is very cool. She mentioned I share my journey here so forwarding my post from reddit…
I plan to update this a couple times, 1 month, 3 month, 6 month, 1 year. I’m also tracking how long it takes me to match my yearly rewards I was receiving using the Costco Mastercard and comparing to the Rogers card.
So here’s my plan. I used codes for a $25 account credit and $100 reimbursement. I plan to keep this out of my calculations, I removed the $25 reward from my rewards balance already. I subscribed to “perks premium” for $9.99/month which boosts the cash back to
Gas 5%
Groceries 7%
Recurring payments 4.5%
Everything else 1.5%
It can be boosted further by having a balance in a checking account with them, right now I am not doing this.
Essentially the annual cost for the card plus perks will be $245. My previous year Costco rebate was just under $400. My plan is to see how long it takes to get to a rewards rebate of $645. See if this card really is worth it.
Additionally if I were to use the Rogers card at 3% rewards average monthly spending of $2000 I would receive $720 annually. To make us the $245 annual fee on Neo at $2k/month spending my average rewards need to stay above 4.02%
This is 100% for educational purposes to provide insight if this card is truly as advertised. If you do decide to use this card, you can message me for a code. However this really is not my intentions here.
1 Month Update: So here’s what I have found one month in
Grocery Category (7%):
Walmart Supercenters (Walmarts with grocery, includes cosmetics)
Real Canadian Superstore
Recurring Payments (4.5%):
Square One Home insurance
Shaw Internet Bill
Microsoft Gamepass
Bchydro (Through Paymentus, charges 1.75% fee so gain 2.75% here)
Gas (5%):
Petro Canada
Everything Else (1.5%)
Taxi, Ferries, Fastfood, Restaurants
Dentist Office
Costco
Bath and Body
Public Mobile Bills (counts as a top up, not a recurring bill, bonus 5% for $$$ spent at public mobile so works out to 6.5%)
Amazon
Dollar Tree
KMS Tools
Fortis BC recurring payments (through Kubra, counts as one time payment)
Shoppers Drug Mart
I also tried 3 of their “partner offers” this is where I was disappointed
They have requirements such as “instore” or “App” purchase, which I followed, of the 3 partner bonuses only one worked as it should. The other two I did the automated “missing rewards” feature which after 10 business days the review came back and my rewards were denied, I then called the premium support line, and had a great experience with customer service, from the time I dialed to finished the call it was 20 minutes, he took all the info required, and my bonus rewards were added next day. I just wish they would have remained automated.
So where am I at after one month. After removing the additional fees from Bchydro my average rewards are 4.62% for now I am very happy with that. I suspect the % may fall slightly as I did take advantage of some bonus promos. I plan my next update after roughly 3 months with the card, followed by 6 months, then one year.
I’ve passed your feedback along to my team so we can look into ways to improve the network partner cashback. Excited to follow your journey!