Anonymous wrote:We use the Costco Amex. There is a fee but it's also your Costco membership fee so if you are going to belong to Costco anyway it ends up being no fee. You get a Costco check once a year and can either cash it in at Costco, or spend it and get change for the balance. There are no limits, I'm not exactly sure what the cash back percentages are. We have gotten anywhere from $1,000-1,400/year back (we typically charge between $4,000-9,000/month on the card, but never carry a balance).
Costco is 3% on gas (up to a limit of something like $1500 per year), 2% on travel and restaurants, and 1% on everything else, including shopping at Costco. However re the gas, they did just institute a policy recently that it has to be a freestanding gas station or Costco for gas or else you don't get the 3%. So you can't get your gas at Safeway and get 3% on that. I almost always fill up at Costco and my DH uses a gas station on the way to his office so this hasn't been an issue for us but I thought I would flag it.
We use the Costco card for gas and Costco, and the Amazon Visa for everything else. The percentages are just average -- I think groceries are 1% and gas is 2% -- but we do a lot of shopping on Amazon so we build up our rewards during the year and use them for purchasing Christmas gifts.