Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Universal Savings Bank F.A. - Free Dell laptop with a Visa card and $5K balance

Note that I am NOT recommending this offer; I simply thought it was an interesting reality check instance -- a Dell laptop (they assert it's an $850 value elsewhere on the site, but Dell is offering the model -- Inspiron B130 -- for $485 and up at the moment) as an incentive to sign up for a Visa Platinum credit card.  Of course, maintaining a $5K balance ($5K upon opening the account, then $3,500 for the first 18 months, to avoid a $600 one-time fee) on a credit card represents a significant payment stream, but it's one example of how hardware pricing dynamics are opening up new opportunities.

I ran across an ad for this offer in PC World magazine (the dead-tree version), incidentally, not one of my many email spam/junk folders.  The web page asserts they've already "given away" more than 70,000 computers...

Link to Universal Savings Bank F.A. - Free Dell laptop with a Visa card and $5K balance

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I created an article on this card on wikipedia (Upfront Rewards) and on the bank (Universal Savings Bank) but they were removed, apparently due to fear of libel lawsuits.

cheap computers said...

Its quite interesting!