Capital One wins the coupon book wars by not playing | Coffee Break Ep71 | 9-23-25
Frequent Miler on the Air
Frequent Miler
4.9 • 640 Ratings
🗓️ 23 September 2025
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We find the coupon book trend fairly tedious and frustrating, but we've had to admit that American Express has sort of won this game by offering "coupons" and perks that are actually compelling. But since many of us don't really like the coupon book approach at all, does that make Capital One the winner since they haven't done much with the coupon book strategy at all?
Capital One wins the coupon book wars by not playing
(00:21) - Coupon Book Wars
(04:08) - But many consumers don't want to play the coupon book game
(04:28) - Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card (which you can learn about here) and Capital One Venture X Business Card (which you can learn about here)
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Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a Voyescape podcast. |
| 0:03.9 | You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. |
| 0:11.0 | Welcome to Freakimilers Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. |
| 0:16.3 | And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less for your money back. |
| 0:23.0 | On today's coffee break, Capital One wins the coupon book wars by not playing. |
| 0:28.8 | Let's talk about what the coupon book wars are and why we think that Capital One has won it. |
| 0:33.7 | The coupon book wars, they were invented by American Express. |
| 0:37.3 | The idea was, |
| 0:38.7 | Amix at some point decided, hey, look, we can raise annual fees and make up for it by adding |
| 0:45.8 | merchant-funded coupons. These are credits that you get, things like, you know, $50 each six months from Saks Fifth Avenue or on the business side, up to $200 at the time from Dell. |
| 1:00.0 | And things like that that were mostly merchant funded. |
| 1:05.9 | And the idea was like consumers could look at those raised annual fees and say, yeah, I'm paying |
| 1:11.9 | more, but I'm getting a lot back. |
| 1:13.7 | I'm maybe getting more back than the increase in the fee. |
| 1:17.2 | And so that seemed to work. |
| 1:20.7 | And despite the aggravation of having all these like coupons to deal with, some are monthly, some are quarterly, some are we six months, some are annual. |
| 1:31.3 | Consumers kept getting these cards. |
| 1:34.0 | And so Amex, you know, kept doing that with more and more of their different card lines. |
| 1:40.8 | And then Chase was like, hey, I've got to get in on this game. |
| 1:45.0 | And they started that first they kind of dip their toe in. |
| 1:48.6 | And then with the refreshed United card lineup, they went full bore. |
| 1:53.2 | They were like, we're all in on the coupon book war, raise annual fees to stratospheric amounts, |
... |
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