Only, when you go to buy something on Amazon and you're using its card, you will be offered a discount right away. At checkout time, you can choose to reduce the price by using this cashback figure. All credit card experts say no, though, don't do it. Pay the full price and let your cashback accrue through the month.
Why? Who are these "all credit card experts"? Please provide a link to an article from one of these experts because I couldn't find one after 30 minutes of web searching.
Does the Amazon card give you credit when you buy gas from a warehouse club ? Do you get 1% or 2%...all credit cards that I know of only give 1-to 1.5%...except buying at costco with their credit card.
The Costco card is one of the best deals these days. Assuming you are already paying for Costco membership (of course), you get:
4% back from gasoline purchases (any gas station, not just Costco) for the first $3,000 per year
3% back from travel and restaurants
2% back from purchases from Costco (on-line and in-store)
1% back from everything else
The only downside to the Costco card is that your rewards are not cash back, but an annually-issued voucher that can only be redeemed on purchases from Costco. But that's not a problem for me, because my family shops there a lot.
In my daily life, I use the Costco card for gas, travel, restaurants and Costco purchases. For everything else (the 1% tier), I use by bank's card, which is 1% back (in the form of points) on everything, because I can redeem those points for gift cards from lots of different stores (including Amazon and Apple).
I've caught two separate cases of fraud that way that I would not have caught otherwise. The first was a $25 charge for gas at a BP. Just reviewing a statement 30 days later I would not have questioned. But, from the text I knew something was up. And, when I called the card company they told it had been made 300 miles away. (It also helps with Apple's "Family Sharing" since I have the Apple Alert turned off.)
Another good thing is to log on to the card's web site on a regular basis. I do so every night as a part of managing my household finances (record the day's expenses, check web sites for all credit cards, check/schedule payments from the bank's web site, etc.) Fraudulent charges don't happen very often, but when they do, I see them that day and have plenty of time to dispute them before the statement arrives.
I also make a point of retaining all my receipts from credit purchases until the statement arrives. I reconcile each month's statement against those receipts and question anything I don't recognize. It take a bit of time, but it's important because mistakes may go ignored otherwise. Like one time where a restaurant accidentally (I assume accidentally) mis-typed a gratuity, making it $10 higher than it should have been - when I saw the statement didn't match my receipt, I was immediately able to call the restaurant and get them to fix it.
The only real pain in the neck here is (of course) Amazon, which will often (but not always) merge the charges for separate orders that ship together or create separate charges for a multi-item order where the items ship separately - making the invoices (printed at the time of purchase) not match the credit statement and forcing me to log-on to Amazon to review the final invoices.
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