pay maintenance with credit card.. category??

[serendip7]

This will be my first year paying for maintanence on WKORVN. I noticed that there's the option of paying by credit card. Is there a fee for using that option?

Also, I have a Chase Freedom credit card which has a cash back of 5% on hotels through December. By any chance would the maintanence fees be categorized as Hotel? Anyone try this before? What category does the maintenace fee show up as? General? I got so many cards with bonuses on special categories that something has to stick. :annoyed:... $125 cash back is worth checking.

 

[Henry M.]

There's no charge to pay maintenance fees with a credit card. I've been doing it for years. I use the Starwood card to get Starpoints, but if I had a card with 5% cash back, I'd use it. I value my Starpoints at around 2%.

I don't know what category the charges are assigned. That might depend on the particular credit card.

 

[sb2313]

You can partial pay, so why not pay a few dollars with your freedom card and see how it posts. Then you can go from there knowing how it'll post.

 

[YYJMSP]

Different card, so not directly answering the OP, but a data point -- they're categorized as "travel" on my AMEX, but they don't look like hotel charges (which show check in/out dates below the line item)

 

[LisaRex]

FWIW, AMEX categorgized my maintenance fee payments as "Travel - Lodging."

 

[serendip7]

Doing it in increments and seeing how it posts is a good idea. Initially I was excited by the hotel/travel category that others got but I looked at the fine print on the Chase category and it say "on hotel rooms purchased directly from the hotel".

I'll test it out with a $100 on the Chase and if it doesn't work I'll dump the rest of it on the Costco Amex and get 2% back (about the same as Starwood card I guess). I'll post my findings.

 

[BradC]

Don't forget that you earn 2 Starpoints per dollar for SVO maintenance fees charged to a Starwood Amex.

 

[serendip7]

Saved a little...

Chase does categorize the maintenance fee as travel-hotel so the 5% category does work. However they have a $1500 limit on the amount that qualifies over the 3 month period so if you haven't done any other traveling and haven't bought anything from Kohl's or Bestbuy (the other categories for 5% off) from October-December then you would have gotten $75 cash back for charging $1500 of the maintenance to a Chase Freedom card. In my case I already did some shopping with Kohl's and maxed out the limit pretty quickly with my maintenance.

To maximize the cash back I could have put $1500 on the Chase for 5% cash back = $75 and the rest on the Amex Costco card for 2% cash back (I haven't tried the 2nd part but it should work) for $20. Total cash back would be about $95 if it was divided up right.

FYI..
Chase's categories in 2013 don't have a travel/hotel category so I guess the best way to go is the Starwoods or Costco card for 2%.