Thank you for all the great inputs. Folks on the GW are the best! DH reminded me the experience I had with the Discover card. Years ago I had one. The last transaction before I terminated the card was I made a $10K purchase, as always paid in full for that billing cycle. I received financial charge of $250 the following month recorded as I had only made payment for $1K. It turned out the mistake was caused by Discover Card's clerical error, but I was the one had to run between my bank and Discover Card to provide payment proof. It took a couple of months to clear the issue. Discover Card customer service was very rude during the entire incidence. Discover card may have changed their business practice after all these years. I will look into Costco Amex since I already have a VISA card. For the Costco Amex cardholders, do you eve have problems with their service? As a side note, my Visa card is issued by Nordstorm. Their customer service is impacable. They give rebate in Nordstom notes, I will definately keep the card. Considering a new card is that I am looking for cash rebate option other than store specific rebate.

REcently, i was traveling in Canada and I was told of a trick to get a native English-speaker using Dell's tech support (as w/ so many others, they've sent their tech support to India; and apparently not to the part of India where everyone speaks English. Guess it's gotten too expensive). Anyhoo, this fellow said that after a couple hours of trying to deal w/ people he couldn't understand, he requested to be transferred to the French support, which is in Quebec (in the officially *bilingual* country of Canada). Problem solved. Now, maybe this would also work for Amex and other companies sending their customer "service" jobs abroad. I'm planning to try it the next time I have to deal w/ one of these companies, but i'd be really interested to see if anyone else has success. To get off on the right foot w/ the nice French speakers, try this: (spelled phonetically) "Bonjour. Ess kuh vooz et Quebecois? [if yes ("wee"), great. If no, still try:] "Parley-vooz Anglais?" [If yes, then continue w/ your questions.] And, when you're done, a hearty "Merci bow-coo" is in order. Hope this helps!

I don't really have a suggestion for a cash rebate card, but I think my experience with Chase is important here. 4 years ago I lost my job. I had quite a balance on my Chase card. It had just been transferred using one of those promotional offers for 0% interest. I don't even think I had gotten the first statement when I lost my job. The day after I got canned I called all of my creditors and asked if they could help, lower the minimum payment, lower the interest rate, grant a diferral, something, anything! The person I talked to at Chase told me that as long as I was making the minimum monthly payment they would have to assume that I COULD make the monthly payment, and there wasn't anything they could do for me. However, if I missed a payment, I could call them when I got my next statement and at that point they could work out a payment plan that would be easier for me. So, I did exactly what he told me to do. Except that I made half of the payment, instead of not paying anything, when my statement came. I figured that would look better when I asked for help, I could say "Look, I can make half the payment, just not the whole thing." When my next statment came, showing that I hadn't payed my entire minimum payment, I called and told them what I had been told and asked for help. This is where it got really fun. They couldn't come up with a better payment plan for me because to do that they would have to base my payment on my income...and since I was unemployed I didn't have any income to base a payment plan on. They wouldn't use my unemployment check as a basis for a payment plan. So there was still nothing they could do for me. The kicker: Missing a minimum payment meant my 0% interest rate was gone. Now I was being charged something over 18%. Then there was more fun, about a year later. I had gotten a new job, moved back to the state I was from, and transferred my husband's car loan to a credit card because the interest rate was lower. Adding that to the amount that had been on the cards when I lost my job and the amount I had to charge while I was unemployed (including tuition for my husband to go to truck driving school) and my credit card debt was pretty damn substantial. Suddenly I noticed on my Chase bill that the interest being charged was only 36 cents less than my minimum payment, and I knew it hadn't been like that before. So I looked at the interest rate.....they were charging me 24%!!!! I called them, all kinds of pissed off, to find out why. Well, apparently they pull your credit report every once in a while. When they pulled mine they saw how much debt I had, and decided to change my status to a higher risk catergory. Because I was now a higher risk borrower, they raised my interest rate. Makes sense, right? Raise my interest rate so that this high risk borrower has an even harder time paying you back!!! As soon as I had an introductory rate offer from another credit card I transferred every penny off of that Chase card and I haven't used it since. We don't deal with Chase anymore. The only reason I currently have a Chase card is because Chase bought BankOne, and I had a really good interest rate with BankOne. So I'm keeping it until the introductory rate runs out and then I'm getting rid of it. As for rewards for cards, I've got a card that gives me points. It's from MyPoints. You sign up with them, they send you e-mails that you get 5 point for just clicking on the link. Some of them offer you hundreds of points for buying something at the link. For instance, they have a deal with (a webstore that the filter won't let me mention because they've been spammed about them before) where you get 10 points per dollar you spend there. Other's are like 50 points for filling out a survey, 20 points for signing up for a newsletter, 500 points for signing up for Columbia house, etc. I rarely take the offers, just click and get my 5 points. I can rack up like 30 points a day this way. And they have an associated Visa card through Providian where I get 1 point for every dollar I spend. Once you accumulate enough points you can trade them in for gift cards, either to stores or they have one called Webcertificates where you get basically a mastercard account number that you can use anywhere online. Or you can pay a small fee to Webcertificates and get a real card that you can use in stores. For instance, I just redeemed 3250 points for a $25 gift card to Linens N Things. That sounds like a lot of points, but if you are using the card and paying it off all the time you'll rack up points quick. Plus the e-mails take me all of 2 minutes a day to click and delete, giving me up to like 900 points a month. I don't use the card itself often, but if you were going to use it a lot it would definitely pay off. It doesn't come out to as good a rebate as like Discover (which I think is 2%) but if you also do the e-mails and use some of their deals (like the deal at that unmentionable web store, as well as other great deals just like it) you'll rack up points quick!

Thank you all for your suggestions. However, it unfortunately seems that here in Europe these cards are limited. I only found two cash back cards that pay money, one I'm not eligible for as you need a very large monthly spend for it to pay out (no point spending more to save), and the other is from a company I simply don't like. Other cards were linked to expensive or non-local shops I don't shop at. However, I discovered that the supermarket I almost always shop at offers a card that allows you to collect club card points anywhere you use it, which relate to 1% off everything, and double points in the store that issues it. I already spend around £1200 a year in this shop for many food and household items, so I will be able to indirectly turn all the points I collect in to real money savings. You can also turn the points in to vouchers of higher value, but they're for various products I wouldn't normally buy, so I'll just use them to save on things I do buy. If anyone is considering one of these cards, I'd suggest checking out your usual shops to see if any of them offer credit cards with rewards. Being able to use the rewards in shops you can easily get to and consider good value for money is worth far more than collecting seemingly huge rewards for shops you don't like, can't easily get to, and potentially are more expensive, thus reducing the value of the rewards.