How does the World view America these days?

[usagi]

31 minutes ago, auxien said:

hurricane vaccine

you mean these?

[Rubin Farr]

Just draw around it 

[cichlisuite]

*insert your fav meme response*

 

[usagi]

War on Terror = won. bigly.

[ignatius]

9 minutes ago, usagi said:

War on Terror = won. bigly.

arms manufacturer's looking for a way to install 'self destruct' feature or remote software 'bricking'

[Nebraska]

how aussies see america fox these days

 

Edited August 29, 2021 by Nebraska

[marf]

An Aussie peddled Fox News. Now owned by Disney. Disney! 

[Squee]

Ok, I'm way out of my league now, but I just stumbled upon something I've never heard of before - or I might have heard about it but I've never considered what was being said...
Does Wells Fargo offer a credit card that they'll reward you for using? I can not see that leading to anything good and from the outside looking in that seems like an extremely unhealthy to put on your clients.

[usagi]

^ not sure what's new or different about that, a financial company offering a credit card with rewards? like points? credit cards, at least in Aus, are on a long term decline as people start to see their uselessness and buy-now-pay-later companies gain territory, so they pretty much have to be pushed onto people with heavy incentives or deals to see any use.

17 hours ago, Nebraska said:

how aussies see america fox these days

 

this has caused a flurry here with Murdoch outlets co-ordinating a smear campaign against the ABC, our taxpayer funded public broadcaster, for putting this together.

let's be clear though, this ex-Fox lackey is only taking this position now after things didn't work out for her in Murdochland. she's not a hero, whatever personal values she had which inspired her to join Fox in the first place have most likely not changed. Ailes deserved to eat shit but that further destabilised the Fox regime and helped it worsen into what it is now, turning all that into a basic-ass Hollywood drama starring Australia's most overrated actress is extremely dumb and achieves nothing.

[Squee]

20 minutes ago, usagi said:

^ not sure what's new or different about that, a financial company offering a credit card with rewards? like points? credit cards, at least in Aus, are on a long term decline as people start to see their uselessness and buy-now-pay-later companies gain territory, so they pretty much have to be pushed onto people with heavy incentives or deals to see any use.

Sounds weird to me.

[chenGOD]

45 minutes ago, Squee said:

Ok, I'm way out of my league now, but I just stumbled upon something I've never heard of before - or I might have heard about it but I've never considered what was being said...
Does Wells Fargo offer a credit card that they'll reward you for using? I can not see that leading to anything good and from the outside looking in that seems like an extremely unhealthy to put on your clients.

Do they not have credit cards that offer points and/or other forms of rewards in Denmark?

10 minutes ago, usagi said:

^ not sure what's new or different about that, a financial company offering a credit card with rewards? like points? credit cards, at least in Aus, are on a long term decline as people start to see their uselessness and buy-now-pay-later companies gain territory, so they pretty much have to be pushed onto people with heavy incentives or deals to see any use.

I was looking up those BNPL companies in Australia, I see that they have partnerships with companies such as Adidas...if someone really needs to finance sneakers they might need to reevaluate their purchasing. I get it for big ticket items (appliances etc.), but for clothing...

[usagi]

2 minutes ago, Squee said:

Sounds weird to me.

I've had credit card accounts pushed twice onto me in even weirder ways: once when I was getting a finance deal for a bike, and another time when I was borrowing to fund laser eye surgery. both times I paid off the debt quick as I could and closed the account immediately, and I never used the actual card for anything. it is predatory but I wouldn't say it's new.

3 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

I was looking up those BNPL companies in Australia, I see that they have partnerships with companies such as Adidas...if someone really needs to finance sneakers they might need to reevaluate their purchasing. I get it for big ticket items (appliances etc.), but for clothing...

lol I'm amazed by this as well. buy a pair of socks and pay later, even though you can pay now! I lol'd even more when I saw PayPal has gotten into the game and when I went through them to pay online for a pizza order they generously offered me a pay-in-4-instalments plan. for a pizza. yeah nah, thanks.

the sector is still growing though cos people are using these facilities, particularly during covid lockdown with online retail. BNPL companies' internal book balancing is another matter though, lots of speculation that it's a house of cards. some bets that they're going to end up being the WeWork of the finance world.

[chenGOD]

4 minutes ago, usagi said:

a pay-in-4-instalments plan. for a pizza.

There's a meme in there somewhere.

Personally, I like my credit cards, as long as you make minimum payments on big purchases or pay off the entire thing when you can, you're not going to get fucked by the high interest rates. The points and rewards are nice perks.

[usagi]

idk I found the points useless for me and sacrificed them for a lower rate deal. the only reasons I still have a credit card are: 1. some vendors/systems still preference them as the main mode of payment and have been slow to switch over to others, and 2. for that reason there may be some emergency situation in which I need to spend a large amount of money beyond the cap on a normal bank card and a credit card is therefore the only option. that scenario happened once last year and that just stopped me from axing my credit card for good. it's a dinosaur going the way of chequebooks, I think.

[Squee]

45 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

Do they not have credit cards that offer points and/or other forms of rewards in Denmark?

Not that I know of. I know that if you get a MasterCard you can insurances included with it. But I’ve never ever been rewarded anything for spending money.

[zero]

17 minutes ago, Squee said:

Not that I know of. I know that if you get a MasterCard you can insurances included with it. But I’ve never ever been rewarded anything for spending money.

can confirm those types of credit cards with cash back rewards, points, etc. are very common here in the U.S., and have been for a long time. we get bombarded all the time with TV commercials advertising them.

I have a credit card with points I can redeem for either cash back or gift cards & discounts toward certain items. I don't use the card enough to get too much back from it though. I usually take the digital cash and apply it toward the credit card balance.

[Squee]

That is so fucking foreign to me. To encourage people to spend money to get points they can use to buy more stuff seems extremely toxic. Especially if your financial situation is dire to begin with.
Do these points disappear if you don't use them within x amount of months?

[chenGOD]

36 minutes ago, Squee said:

Not that I know of. I know that if you get a MasterCard you can insurances included with it. But I’ve never ever been rewarded anything for spending money.

We pay our bills, buy groceries and gas, eat out (when that was a thing lol) etc. on credit cards. Generally spend enough to get $50 - $100 equivalent in points every month. These points can also be used to buy groceries or other things (I have a Canadian Tire card, cause buying shit to take care of the yard means going to Canadian Tire - it's a Canadian thing, sorry eh, but I get Canadian Tire money back).

Canada has a pretty high usage of credit cards and Electronic Funds Transfers. Some people are obviously not good with money and should never get credit cards, but then I'd say the same would apply to those Buy-now-pay-later schemes usagi mentioned in Australia.

[Squee]

Just now, chenGOD said:

We pay our bills, buy groceries and gas, eat out (when that was a thing lol) etc. on credit cards. Generally spend enough to get $50 - $100 equivalent in points every month. These points can also be used to buy groceries or other things (I have a Canadian Tire card, cause buying shit to take care of the yard means going to Canadian Tire - it's a Canadian thing, sorry eh, but I get Canadian Tire money back).

Canada has a pretty high usage of credit cards and Electronic Funds Transfers. Some people are obviously not good with money and should never get credit cards, but then I'd say the same would apply to those Buy-now-pay-later schemes usagi mentioned in Australia.

Ah ok! Ok, to put things into perspective, I was mixing an ad for Wells Fargo and the VO was mentioning specific things you could buy to get credit back, so I thought it was only these specific things that would give you credit.

It makes a bit more sense now.

[chenGOD]

19 minutes ago, Squee said:

Ah ok! Ok, to put things into perspective, I was mixing an ad for Wells Fargo and the VO was mentioning specific things you could buy to get credit back, so I thought it was only these specific things that would give you credit.

It makes a bit more sense now.

Oh there are definitely some predatory marketing campaigns about getting "30x points if you buy this shit that you clearly don't need", but the key there is to send those e-mails directly to spam lol. But in general you get points for daily purchases, the specific things such as in your VO is for bonus points/miles.

[zero]

34 minutes ago, Squee said:

Do these points disappear if you don't use them within x amount of months?

I just checked and no, they don't expire as long as your credit card account is open. if you close the account, you have to use them in a certain period of time or lose them.

 

26 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

These points can also be used to buy groceries or other things (I have a Canadian Tire card,

when I lived there I had an air miles card. only ever used it when going to the lcbo. collected points for over 10 years without ever using them. I totally forgot about it after moving back to the states. then one day I randomly remembered and wanted to look to see how many I had. turns out they had shut down the whole program and all points not used by a certain date were gone. so I pulled that stupid thing out for 10 years handing it to a cashier to scan, all for nothing. probably had enough to get a free microwave by that point lol.

[chenGOD]

5 minutes ago, zero said:

when I lived there I had an air miles card. only ever used it when going to the lcbo. collected points for over 10 years without ever using them. I totally forgot about it after moving back to the states. then one day I randomly remembered and wanted to look to see how many I had. turns out they had shut down the whole program and all points not used by a certain date were gone. so I pulled that stupid thing out for 10 years handing it to a cashier to scan, all for nothing. probably had enough to get a free microwave by that point lol.

air miles still exists though? lcbo no longer partners with them, but air miles definitely exists. I just bought a waffle maker with air miles points lol

[usagi]

59 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

Generally spend enough to get $50 - $100 equivalent in points every month.

that seems like a huge amount of points to me, I would be hard pressed to accumulate this amount in six months even when I was a more active credit card user. maybe it's a lot more generous in Canada vs Aus which is why cc usage is declining in Aus but not Canada.

55 minutes ago, Squee said:

Ok, to put things into perspective, I was mixing an ad for Wells Fargo and the VO was mentioning specific things you could buy to get credit back, so I thought it was only these specific things that would give you credit.

oh, so you thought that a person would only be able to buy stuff to accumulate points to get credit to spend more with. that would be a particularly toxic loop, I'm not aware of that being on offer anywhere. yet. if there is a way banks can convince people that such a thing would be a good product, and you have a govt that is unwilling to hold them to account via more responsible lending laws as we do in Aus, then the banks will find a way to sell the worst deals imaginable and pin it on "willing customers". a perennial problem in finance.

Edited August 30, 2021 by usagi

[zero]

47 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

air miles still exists though? lcbo no longer partners with them, but air miles definitely exists. I just bought a waffle maker with air miles points lol

ah shit, you're right, I misremembered. I must have tried logging into my online account, which had been removed at that point. looks like they wiped out any points not used by 2017.

[EdamAnchorman]

2 hours ago, Squee said:

Not that I know of. I know that if you get a MasterCard you can insurances included with it. But I’ve never ever been rewarded anything for spending money.

Costco card here in the states gives:

• 4% cash back on eligible gas for the first $7,000 per year and then 1% thereafter.
• 3% cash back on restaurants and eligible travel purchases.
• 2% cash back on all other purchases from Costco and Costco.com.
• 1% cash back on all other purchases.

The Mrs. and I use that for almost everything, and pay it off every month so I have no idea what the interest rates are.  Every year we get a check for between $400 - 800 just from these rewards.