5 Things to Know About the Bed Bath & Beyond Credit Card
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Following Bed Bath & Beyond's bankruptcy, the retailer's Welcome Rewards Store Credit Card and the Welcome Rewards Mastercard are no longer available, and existing accounts are being closed. Customers who want to earn rewards on Bed Bath & Beyond purchases can apply for the Overstock Mastercard, which earns 5% back at Bed Bath & Beyond.
If you need new bedsheets, a high-speed blender or even an inflatable snowman during the holiday season, there’s a good chance Bed Bath & Beyond has you covered. The store is a wonderland of all the things you need — and many things you never knew you needed — to make your house a home.
Unless you’re a very frequent shopper, though, the Bed Bath & Beyond credit card, issued by Comenity, is probably something you can live without. It technically has a $0 annual fee, and at first glance, the reward rates seem attractive. But the store's membership program can add additional expense, and the rewards you earn are inflexible and not worth as much as those you get with other cards.
Here are five things to know about the Bed Bath & Beyond credit card.
1. There are 2 versions of the card, and both earn rewards ...
Both options bear the name of Bed Bath & Beyond's customer loyalty program, Welcome Rewards — which is free to join, credit card or not — and both cards earn reward points within that program. But there are key differences between the two:
Welcome Rewards Store Credit Card: This is a “closed-loop” card, meaning it can be used only in-store and online at the family of Bed Bath & Beyond stores, including Buy Buy Baby and Harmon.
Welcome Rewards Mastercard: This card can be used anywhere Mastercard is accepted, and unlike the closed-loop version, it also earns reward points outside of the Bed Bath & Beyond brand.
Here's a look at both cards' baseline reward rates:
Welcome Rewards Store Credit Card | Welcome Rewards Mastercard |
|---|---|
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Even without a Bed Bath & Beyond credit card, members of the Welcome Rewards program earn 10 points per $1 spent with Bed Bed & Beyond brands. But if you do hold a Bed Bath & Beyond credit card, it's possible to boost your points-earning power with a Welcome Rewards+ membership. More on that below.
2. ... But rewards are complicated, and their shelf life is short
Yes, you can rack up a lot of points with the Bed Bath & Beyond credit cards — at least 60 points per $1 spent with the brand. But you have to hit a redemption threshold before those points are useful:
5,000 points = $5 in "My Rewards" to spend within the Bed Bath & Beyond brand.
10,000 points = $10 in rewards.
20,000 points = $20 in rewards.
That means points are worth just one-tenth of one cent — a dreadful point valuation, even if you're earning a pile of them. (The industry standard is a full penny per point.)
Points become available after 30 days and are valid for essentially a year from the date of purchase. That deadline is extended anytime you make a new purchase at the family of stores, but still, it's not ideal for reward points to expire at all; many other cards do not impose such expiration dates on their rewards.
And it's even worse once those points become My Rewards. At that point, the reward is valid for just 90 days from the award date.
This system makes it difficult to save up rewards for use toward a large purchase. And unless you’re a very frequent Bed Bath & Beyond shopper — and keeping a very close eye on your rewards program's account dashboard — chances are high that those rewards you earned will go unused.
As an example, imagine you're a Bed Bath & Beyond cardholder who makes an $85 purchase there. You'd earn the required 5,000 points for a reward, but those points wouldn't be available for 30 days — just long enough, maybe, for you to forget they exist. Then, sometime after 30 days, those points would be converted into $5 in rewards — which then expire 90 days from issuance. That's a lot to keep track of.
3. You'll get a free one-year membership to Welcome Rewards+
As a sort of sign-up bonus, both versions of the Bed Bath & Beyond credit card offer a complimentary one-year membership to Welcome Rewards+, a premium version of the free baseline Welcome Rewards program.
Welcome Rewards+ normally costs $29 a year. With it, you get access to extra perks like free standard shipping for online Bed Bath & Beyond orders, and an ongoing 20% discount on purchases within the brand (as of August 2022). And regardless of which Bed Bath & Beyond credit card you have, Welcome Rewards+ members earn 100 points per $1 spent with eligible Bed Bath & Beyond brands, instead of the normal 60 points.
However, note that new Bed Bath & Beyond cardholders are automatically enrolled in Welcome Rewards+, and at the end of your first year, your membership will automatically renew (at the $29 rate) unless you remember to cancel it.
4. You can choose special financing instead of rewards, but beware
Alternatively, instead of earning Bed Bath & Beyond rewards certificates, you can opt for deferred-interest financing on large purchases with Bed Bath & Beyond, meaning you won't owe any interest on the purchase if you pay in full within the required time frame:
On purchases between $250 and $499.99, you can get six-month financing.
On purchases between $500 and $1,499.99, you’re eligible for 12-month financing.
On purchases over $1,500, you can choose 24-month special financing, with the Welcome Rewards Credit Card. (Note: On the Mastercard version, purchases over $1,500 are eligible for 12-month financing.)
Unfortunately, you can’t have your new cake pan and eat from it, too. If you opt for these special financing deals, the purchases you make with them won't be eligible to earn rewards. You must choose one deal or the other.
Also keep in mind that interest is not "waived" with these offers, as it would be with true 0% intro APR credit cards. It's merely "deferred," meaning interest is still accruing in the background. If you don't pay off the purchase in full on time — even if you have only a few cents left on the balance — you'll be charged the card's normal ongoing interest rate on the entire amount, retroactive to the purchase date.
5. You won’t want to carry a balance
If you opt to earn rewards instead of taking advantage of special deferred-interest financing, you’ll want to make sure you pay off your card bill in full every month.
As of February 2023, the ongoing APR on the Bed Bath & Beyond’s Welcome Rewards Mastercard ranged as high as 28.24% depending on creditworthiness, and the Bed Bath & Beyond Credit Card carried a 29.99% ongoing APR.
From the poorly valued rewards and the auto-renewing membership fee to the tricky deferred-interest financing terms and high ongoing APR, we can safely bet that both occasional shoppers and even die-hard brand loyalists can do better than either of the two Bed Bath & Beyond credit cards. A general cash-back credit card, for example, will be much more valuable and flexible over time, even if it lacks brand-specific perks.
The Citi Double Cash® Card, for example, earns a combined 2% cash back on all purchases: 1% when you buy, and 1% when you pay it off.
That's a high (and easy-to-remember) rate on all purchases, not just with a specific brand, and rewards come as cold hard cash back, which you can use for anything — not just toward Bed Bath & Beyond merchandise.
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