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The Offer
- USC Credit Union is offering a bonus of $250 on the Platinum credit card when you use promo code ALUMNIREWARDS and make $500 in purchases within 90 days of account opening
Card Details
- No annual fee
- 0% APR on purchases and balance transfers within the first 6 months
- Double points on gas & groceries
- $250 bonus valid until December 31st, 2019
- Full list of who is eligible can be found here. Most common eligibility will be: Any and all persons, who live, regularly work, or currently attend school in the City of Los Angeles, California, as well as any and all businesses, corporations, and other legal entities in the City of Los Angeles, California. Any and all persons, who live, regularly work, or currently attend school in Orange County, California, as well as any and all businesses, corporations, and other legal entities in the Orange County, California USC Alumni and Alumni Association Members Current USC employees, faculty, staff or enrolled students
Our Verdict
Not the biggest bonus, but relatively low minimum spend requirement and it’s always nice to see bonuses from smaller issuers.
Hat tip to mattisafriend
Did anyone get this bonus?
I just applied and received a conditional approval email minutes later…. sent in all the requested documents. I hope to get the final approval soon.
Has anyone been actually paid a bonus? I still haven’t gotten mine
One Must Be an USC Alumni to take advantage the āALUMNIREWARDSā promo code. I learned it the hard way, after a hard-pull credit check done when submitting application, only to find it out (after the fact) from two incompetent workers (kid at receptionist desk and tall girl with glasses staff) at USC Credit Union branch located inside USC Village
It appears they changed the language after the fact.
“This one-time promotion is limited to new members opening an account in response to this offer.” was the language at the time of app.
They changed it after to “This one-time promotion is limited to new members who are USC Alumni opening an account in response to this offer. ”
Ripe for CFPB complaint. Screw these Trojans, I always hated them anyway.
Brit Churner – I reached out to them to ask for when the account bonus would post. This is what I got when I had mentioned that the offer language was changed after I had applied and completed the offer. Hi Mike
This offer was emailed to a select group of alumni members. If you received this email at your own email address directly, please send us a copy of the email and we will validate and consider extending the promotion to you.
This was not a public offer and if it was forwarded to you or the code was provided to you by another person, we will not extend the promotional reward to you. We do our best to make promotions
clear which is why the word “alumni” is in the promotional code.
Do you think this is worth bringing up to the CFPB?
William Charles 
Brit Churner
100% this is worth bringing up to the CFPB. The offer was available on a publicly accessible website. They can’t just renege on it. In fact, they are even implicitly admitting they didn’t use exclusionary language in the T&Cs, if the best excuse they can come up with is “alumni was in the promo code”. The T&C at the time of application mentioned nothing explicitly about having to be a member.
It’s false and misleading advertising. I would for sure CFPB.
The eligibility requirements listed on the 3rd party site were pulled from information regarding membership eligibility. This is for membership to the credit union only and not specific to this promotion. Again, this is a 3rd party site that has scraped together material from different places on our website and an offer emailed directly to USC Alumni. We understand that https://www.doctorofcredit.com posted this offer as if it were available to anyone who qualifies for our membership, but it was never the case. The ALUMNIREWARDS promo is for USC Alumni only. That was the starting offer and it has not changed.
Our system allows applicants to enter anything in the promo code field. While a validation upon submission would be a great enhancement to our application and is something we are working towards, it is not something we have in place today. You could type anything and it is simply attached to your application as text. Promo codes are validated in our core system after applications are finalized, and rewards are only applied on accounts that have met all promotional requirements, including the promotional eligibility.
I understand that you thought you could get the ALUMNIREWARDS promotion, but unless you are a USC Alumni, the offer cannot be applied to your account. We cannot control who posts pieces of our offers on third party sites and that the summaries provided were insufficient in providing the details. Again, we aim to be as clear as possible when we name our promo codes.
Keep in mind that all new cardholders receive our standard intro offer of 0% for 15 months regardless of their eligibility type.
I am interested in filing a complain to CFPB. Do they require any problem statement of some sort ? If yes, please post it here so people could copy and paste it in the complaint.
Did anyone saved the Terms and Conditions before they changed the language ? I intend to write them a letter to see how they respond. But I need a copy of T&C.
I hope somebody saved them
Did you have any luck? Can I copy your complain and submit it as well?
use the wayback machine
use the wayback machine
Brit, could you share the t&c with all of us?
was provisionally approved but they did want to see most recent paystubs to back up income.
for self-employment (P2) they want to see 2 years of tax returns.
you also have to apply for membership separately (in theory, you can be denied), which cost $9.
So this bonus is really $241.
do I pick mastercard rewards from the dropdown menu?? why is this considered a Loan for a credit card is that standard? havent applied for a cc from a credit union need some clarity š®
Thank you for your recent application for a MASTERCARD REWARD CREDIT CARD. Your request for a MASTERCARD REWARD CREDIT CARD was carefully considered, and we regret that we are unable to approve your application at this time for the following reason(s):
Excessive Number of Open Revolving Accounts
Length of Time Accounts have been Established
Type and Number of Inquiries
they want a personal reference’s name, number, address! it’s like a generic loan application you happen to select ‘credit card’ for.
I live in San Diego, but go to LA on occasion. is that enought to apply?
Just in case, photoshop your head onto a USC water polo team shot.
Aunt Becky?
They pull Experian unfortunately, at least they mention this up front on their website.
Got me all excited and see it’s credit card.. š