Earlier this week, I returned from almost six weeks abroad. My family started out in Europe, where we visited 7 different countries, before continuing on to Mauritius, Singapore, and Japan. I’ll soon publish more info about the trip itself, but one of the things I was most excited about was testing out my Capital One SavorOne card for both entertainment purchases and foreign grocery purchases to see what would succeed and what would fail for those bonus categories. As expected, I got 3% / 3x earnings on dining almost universally throughout the trip, but I also utilized the 3% / 3x on both “entertainment” and “grocery” in a number of countries during the trip, getting 3x / 3% back on a range of purchases. Of course, not every attempt succeeded, particularly on “entertainment” purchases. I’ll add that since the Wells Fargo Attune card also features an “entertainment” bonus category and like my SavorOne card it is also a Mastercard, I imagine purchases on that card would have similar successes and failures.
I hope that readers will share some of their own data points with the SavorOne in the comments. Note that I’m not listing “dining” successes and failures because the vast majority of dining purchases coded as expected, whereas “entertainment” and “grocery” are likely far more variable, particularly abroad.
Why “3% cash back” with my Capital One SavorOne card?
I’m a miles and points guy, so those unfamiliar with the intricacies / idiosyncrasies of the Capital One ecosystem may wonder why I’m jazzed up about earning 3% cash back in select categories with the SavorOne card. After all, the new Robinhood Gold card offers 3% cash back across the board, so if I mainly wanted cash back, it would make more sense to get that card and use it for everything than to try to hunt out bonus categories with other cards.
However, the reason I am enthusiastic about 3% back with Capital One is because of the flexibility to turn the cash into miles.
While the SavorOne card earns “cash back” rewards, it is possible to move those cash back rewards to a card that earns miles, like the Capital One Venture Rewards card or Capital One VentureOne Rewards card at a rate of $0.01 cash back = 1 mile. Once moved to a miles-earning card, the rewards can be transferred to Capital One’s airline and hotel partners. More information about how to do that can be found in this post: Huge: Convert Capital One cash back to miles by moving rewards.
In other words, when I spend a dollar in a qualifying bonus category and earn 3% cash back on my SavorOne card, I have the flexibility to keep that 3% as $0.03 in cash or to turn that $0.03 into 3 miles. The 3% categories are therefore effectively 3x miles since I also have a VentureOne card. Capital One also allows you to transfer rewards to another cardholder, so I could alternatively transfer to my wife’s Venture X card, though you need to call Capital One to move rewards to another cardholder.
Furthermore, I have a very old VentureOne card with a redemption option that is only available to some cardholders: I can redeem 64,250 Capital One miles (which would ordinarily be enough to offset a $642.50 travel purchase) for a $900 Marriott gift card. I wrote about this capability years ago (See: The best hotel credit card ever). This isn’t a common redemption option, since I have this ability to redeem Capital One miles at what is effectively a rate of 1.4c per mile toward a $900 Marriott gift card, I do that periodically to pay for stays when using points doesn’t make sense.
The big drawback: “Entertainment” is a gamble
Before I get to successes and failures, I have to recognize the biggest drawback: using the SavorOne for an “Entertainment” purchase is almost always a gamble (the same is true for other cards bonusing entertainment). That’s because you never know for sure what’s going to code as entertainment. Unlike “dining” or “grocery”, where you can usually be reasonably sure that you’re going to earn the category bonus, “entertainment” is a far more difficult category to identify in advance. Unfortunately, when you miss, you’re only earning 1% back with this card, which is pretty awful given the plethora of cards on the market that out-earn that rate on everyday spend.
At the same time, when read through information about the entertainment bonus category on the Wells Fargo Attune card when that card was launched, I was surprised at the wide range of example purchases they provided that would constitute “Entertainment”. Read more about it in this post: New Wells Fargo Attune card offers 4% back on Disney tickets, dance classes, golf courses and more.
In turn, that made me more curious about the SavorOne card that I’d recently acquired through a Capital One product change (which they refer to as an “upgrade”, even when you’re changing from a card with an annual fee to the SavorOne, which has no annual fee). I had mostly been interested in the SavorOne card for its grocery and dining bonus categories as an alternative to the Amex Gold card and its newly increased annual fee, but then I became interested in which purchases might code as entertainment.
However, I can’t overemphasize the cost of the gamble one makes with the SavorOne for an entertainment purchase. In my case, I also have the U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve card, which earns 3x on all mobile wallet purchases, including anything where you tap with your phone to use Apple Pay / Google Pay. In situations where I used my SavorOne card to make an in-person purchase that I hoped would code as entertainment, I could have tapped my phone to use my Altitude Reserve card, getting a certain 3x points (which can later be used at a value of 1.5c per point toward travel booked through US Bank or directly with providers via Real-time Mobile Rewards). When faced with the decision between a certain 3x US Bank Altitude Reserve points vs a gamble that may yield 3 Capital One rewards or may only yield 1 Capital One reward, I think most people should take the US Bank rewards if you have that option. Indeed, if I weren’t someone who writes about credit card rewards, that’s probably the choice I’d have made 9 times out of 10.
However, if you don’t have an Altitude Reserve but you do want a card with no annual fee to bring with you and use for enhanced rewards on your touristy-type purchases, the SavorOne card can be a great option. There are no foreign transaction fees and I earned 3x on a decent range of purchases. Furthermore, in some cases, tap to pay just isn’t an option. For instance, I was very surprised at how few times I could tap my phone to pay in Japan — I almost always needed to insert a card in the card terminal for in-person purchases outside of the airport. The SavorOne card became useful there.
Capital One SavorOne entertainment category successes
Here are some purchases from my recent trip where I successfully earned 3% back / 3x on “entertainment”:
- National Museum of Scotland gift shop
- Dubrovnik City Walls admission charge
- L’Aventure du Sucre (National sugar museum admission) in Mauritius. Note that in the gift shop we only got 1%
- teamLab Planets admission tickets in Tokyo, Japan (purchased online)
- teamLab Borderless admission tickets in Tokyo, Japan (purchased online)
- Osaka Aquarium (Kaiyukan) admission
- Osaka Aquarium (Kaiyukan) gift shop
- Tokyo Disney Resort tickets purchased online from Disney
- Tokyo Disney Resort gift shop and dining purchases everywhere in the park
- Dole Pineapple Plantation in Oahu (admission to the maze)
- Dole Pineapple Plantation in Oahu (food and gift shop)
Capital One SavorOne foreign grocery purchase successes
- 3% grocery at a grocery chain in Scotland (Sainsbury’s)
- 3% grocery at a small corner grocery store in Warsaw, Poland (zabka)
- 3% grocery at COOP in Murano (Venice), Italy
- 3% grocery at Voli in Kotor, Montenegro
- 3% grocery at a very small grocery shop near a beach in Corfu, Greece
- 3% grocery at Azabudai Hills Market in Tokyo, Japan. This was more like a mall fruit stand.
Capital One SavorOne entertainment category failures
- Stirling Castle (Scotland) admission
- Stirling Castle (Scotland) cafe (expected dining, but got 1%)
- Shuttlepass Paris (airport shuttle from CDG to Hyatt House CDG) (hoped for entertainment, but got 1%)
- L’Aventure du Sucre gift shop (National sugar museum gift shop) in Mauritius. Note that we got 3% for entertainment on admission tickets
- Osaka Castle admission in Osaka, Japan
- Osaka Castle gift shop in Osaka, Japan
- National Museum of Emerging Science and Technology (Miraikan) admission in Tokyo, Japan (the museum cafe did code as dining though)
- Airport Limousine Bus from Hilton Tokyo Bay to Narita (note that we purchased tickets and later cancelled and paid a cancellation fee. Both the original ticket purchase and the cancellation fee coded as “Other Travel” for 1%)
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