The hottest new customer perks

Concierge services

Drop enough dough and you, too, may have some serious assistance. Evers says having "real people take care of your chores, reservations, repairs, bookings, shopping, deliveries and so on is very 2008 when it comes to luxury." Take a look at these:

• Personal shopper. For customers who spend $3,500 or more annually, women's high-fashion Web retailer Chickdowntown offers a preferred-customer line for orders and access to a "personal fashion specialist."

• Tech help from a real person. Best Buy's Premier Silver program offers enhanced services to customers who spend $2,500 or more at the store annually. Among the perks is a dedicated service line, available 24/7, where a person takes the call, says Emily Schroeder, a Best Buy spokeswoman.

Finding the best perks

So how do you find similar bennies elsewhere?

Ideally these perks should find you -- after all, they're essentially designed to keep you excited and loyal. But here are some tips:

• One place to look is online consumer credit card discussion forums. (You can find an example here.)

• Another place to look -- the site is just getting going -- is Perkler.com, which hopes to connect lovers of loyalty programs.

• As a general rule, the snazzier reward programs are offered by credit cards, as opposed to debit cards, says Art Clark, the managing director of Business Insights Consulting.

Some banks are starting to reward more if you have more than one product with them -- so check to see if that's a way to increase your perks, Clark says. "You could double down" by having, say, your mortgage, another loan and several credit cards all with the same bank, he says.

But, Clark cautions, so many cards now offer rewards programs that it pays to do your homework. The best thing may be to shop around for the best interest rate and then choose which card among those has the best perks. After all, he says, today "three-quarters of the offers (consumers receive) have rewards programs in them."

Cardholders may be sitting on more perks than they think. "There are hidden perks in every card," says Peter Flur, the founder of Credit Card Goodies, a Web site aimed at helping consumers find the best deals on rewards credit cards.

It's not unusual for cards to have perks such as travel accident insurance, lost-luggage coverage, roadside assistance, extended warranties on purchases -- even a concierge service. (The coverage usually only applies to purchases made with the card, naturally.) See "9 reasons to love credit cards" for more.

Where to find out what you've got? Peruse the card's annual mailing -- a thick little booklet -- sent by your credit card company. Or find the information online. Look for these benefits in the fine print "so small you need three magnifying glasses to read it," Flur says.

Judging perks: Worth it?

How do you decide if some perk such as "exclusive access to Hannah Montana tickets for your daughter if you've spent $5,000 at X store" is worth it? Figuring it out can be tricky.

Flur's advice is simple: "At the end of the day, the consumer should be doing the math and asking themselves, 'What's in my financial interest, especially given the current climate?'"

For Flur, it's not tricky at all. "This is not an emotional decision. This should be a financial decision -- a very easy, mathematical decision. If you let emotions get involved you can end up leaving a lot of money on the table."

Before anything else, make sure you're not carrying any credit card debt, Flur says. Why? Interest and finance charges will more than wipe out the value of perks you might gain.

Flur readily admits to a bias, however: When it comes to credit cards, he'd much rather have cash-back rewards than airline miles or luxury perks. "I like cold, hard cash, because the cash isn't going to go away, but the airline might." On his three main cash-back credit cards, Flur says, he gets a total of $1,500 to $2,500 back annually.

That way he gets todecide how that that money gets spent -- on Hannah Montana tickets or on just paying bills.

Not a perk, he concedes, but pretty valuable nonetheless.

Published Nov. 13, 2008

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