Sears credit card - best for frequent shoppers

The brand Sears sells a lot of daily importance items such as clothes mattresses, tools, appliances and jewelry.
There are credit cards available for shopping with this brand. These credit cards are Sears Card and Sears Master Card.
Reasons for using these cards:
Sears Citi Card: It has no annual payment fee. It has an APR of 26.74% which implies pay this interest rate for shopping with it. Your credit card information is linked with this account. The advantage of the Sears Store card is that it does not charge any rate of interest on the purchases made through it within the first 6-18 months. So, there is a 0%APR during this time. However, after this period, the APR is 26.74%. To be approved for a Sears Store Card, a credit score of 640 is needed.
Sears Master Card: This card offers when you shop with it. You are offered the addition of points when you shop with this card at Sears Dental, Sears Auto Centers and Sears Optical. A Sears Card is upgraded to  a MasterCard when you do purchases worth 50 dollars in the initial 30 days of getting the Sears Store card and you become applicable for the Shop Your Way MasterCard
How to apply for Sears cards?
To apply for a Sears Store card, you have to apply physically for it at a Sears store. You can get a paper application for the Sears card so that it is processed on time. The online application is also possible but you to do it through Citibank, however, approval can be gained in one day. Every member is given a member number when he/she is enrolled with the Sears Card Linked program. He can use this number in case he forgets to carry his Sears card at any of the stores.
Benefits of Sears cards
Get cash advances
Cash advances are available at both the cards. The Sears Master Card has an APR of 27.15% for such cash advances. It means you can withdraw money when you have these cards. Cash advances are needed assuming when you are out of cash in a foreign land. There are also charges levied for the transactions conducted in foreign countries. These charges are 3% of the transaction for purchases done in foreign countries. The members have to pay back the cash advance in 24 hours so that no interest is incurred by them.
Redemption of points
You earn points on purchases made through the Sears cards.
You can redeem the points on the cards through the Sears Shop Your Way program. You need to sign in with your points on the Sears Shop Your Way website to know the eligible rewards. It's better to use all these reward points within 1 year because after that they expire. You can also log on to Sears Shop Your Way program to get to know how many points have been earned.
There is also an addition of points on purchases at a restaurant equivalent to 3% of the transaction. This is also applicable for initial 10,000 dollars spent. After that, you are eligible to earn 1% of points equivalent to the amount of transaction.
To get redemption of points, there is a requirement of 25,000 points on the card. With the help of a chart, you get to know how many dollars are gained for certain points. Points can also be used for redemption for air travel.
You get prior information about Sears Sales offers when you have these cards.
Discounts available on certain items
You can also get cash waived off from your purchases when you have any of these cards. There is a discount of 5% offered on the purchase of home appliances. But the amount has to be paid within a time frame of 12 months unless interest rates are charged.
This offer requires that the cost of the item is at least $499.
Discounts are also available when you buy automobile items. For example, no interest amount is to be paid if the payment for an automobile item worth $199+ - $398.9 is made within 6 months of purchase. For an item worth $399+ or more, no interest is charged for a payment made within 12 months. To avail of both these offers, purchases need to be made from participating stores. However, no interest is charged for online purchases of such items if the amount is paid within 12 months and the items cost $100 or more.
These cards also carry discount offers on other items. Examples of these items are Fitness items, Lawn and Garden items. For example, Fitness items carry a discount of 5% provided the purchase item is worth $299 or more in cost. The buyer has to pay back the remaining amount in 12 months not to incur any interest on the purchase.
So, such a 12-month duration is the grace period during which a buyer is relieved from any interest payment. Either the buyer can avail of the discount or make the interest free payment within the scheduled periods. For example, another discount of 5% is available on Outdoor living items if the worth of the purchase is within $299 or more.
With a Sears Mastercard, the warranty can be extended for a longer time. It can be extended by one more year.
The other implications of having these cards
No annual fees are payable on these cards: There are higher interest rates if the payment is not made within the scheduled period. There is an interest rate of 26.74% applicable on both these cards for any purchases.

There is a late fee of 40 dollars applicable for both these cards when the payment is delayed. A Sears Citi card does not allow you any kind of balance transfer, unlike a Sears MasterCard. This balance transfer implies that you can transfer the balance from the other card to this card. You have to pay a fee for this transfer. However, for a certain introductory period, the rate of interest is low on the other card. The balance transfer fee is quite high. It is 5% of the balance on the Sears Citi card. apart from that, the APR balance transfer is also high at 26.74%.
Both these cards consider your credit scores for you to avail of them. The Sears Master Card requires someone to have a good credit score to obtain it. In the case of  Sears Credit card, a limited credit score is sufficient.
There are other advantages of using these cards. Since the card allows you a discount, it can help in saving bucks.
Various kinds of points can be earned with a Sears Master Card. These points can be distinguished as follows:
Shop Your Way points: You get these points for every 1$ spent through the card. However, purchases have to made through this card at certain redemption partners only such as Kmart, SHO and Sears.
Bonus points: These points are earned when you shop for any product in the various offers of the redemption partners. You can only redeem at these points where you earned them. You can earn bonus points if a certain number of base points(3%) are earned on a certain purchase. You can get 2% base points and 1% bonus points. You can know about the expiry of the bonus points when you access your Account History page and check the pints earned for individual products.
FREECASH offers: these are special kinds of offers which are by the redemption partners. Such offers are for a restricted period only and include purchases of a specific amount. You can only redeem these points at the redemption partners where they were earned.
There are points earned for every dollar spent through this card. 1 point is earned for every 1 dollar spent through these cards. However, for every 1000 points, you get to spend 1 extra dollar through these cards. Although both these cards get you points, the Sears Master Card gets you points on special purchases. For purchases of gas at certain gas stations, you get 5% of points equivalent to the amount of transaction. This is however applicable to the initial 10,000 dollars spent.
How can someone get to know about the points balance?
When you log on to the site shopyourway.com, you can see your points. After you access your profile, these points are mentioned on the MyPoints page.
Benefits of Sears Partners
You can also get an addition of 1% in points on purchases made through non-Sears stores.

A credit card or a debit card is needed to enroll for the Shop Your Way point programs. However, only some cards are eligible for this purpose.
Shop Your Way program has a lot of partners where you can get these points. These partners are restaurants. You can get information about these partners through the shopyourway.com/partners.The members can also get information through the text messages and emails sent to them.
To earn points on the offers of the Sears Partners, you need to become a member of the Shop Your Way network. For this purpose, the following information needs to be provided:
Your complete name
A proper email required for communication
Zipcode so that information is sent timely
You also need to add details to the Card Linked Offers Enrollment Form. This form requires your mobile number and the Visa Card number which has 16 digits. However, not all the Visa Cards are valid for this purpose and the valid ones are Visa Buxx and Flexible Spending Account Visa cards.

There are two ways through which you can get these points with the partners. You can visit shopyourway.com/rewardspartners/web and then earn points by shopping with them by checking their offers. You can check out the offers and make payments accordingly in person.  Another way is to shopyourway.com/rewardspartners/cardlink by shopping through your Visa card connected with your account. Although you have earned these points at the stores, you can redeem them at Sears outlets only. Many restaurants are partners with Sears such as Burger King and Chicago Steak Company. So, you get points when you shop at them and then utilize those points at Sears stores. However, you can't shop online on these partners.
Sear's online partners are Uber, Ulta Beauty, etc where you can shop online. For shopping at all these partners, you need to use a Sears Card connected with your Visa card. There are 11,000 partners linked with Sears.
You can earn points at Sears partners with Sears cards where you could not get points for shopping before. You can also participate in offers of these partners
You get monthly messages about the offers valid with Sears Partners through which you can earn points.


What happens when items are returned?
However, whatever purchases you have made using these cards, and earned points on them will be no longer valid once the purchases are returned. The points are deducted from your current point balance. However some of the Sears Reward Partners don't allow returns of their purchases, so you need to be aware of that.
Once someone has paid for the points using the bonus or base points, then these points will be returned to your point balance. But, bonus points have a restricted time frame within which they can be redeemed. So, once their redemption period is over, they won't be added back to your account, even if the purchase made through them is returned. It can take 10 days if points are returned to your points balance once a purchase is returned. Once 10 days have elapsed and you have not received the addition of points on returned or purchased items, you can contact through a phone number.
How to manage these cards and their information?
You have to log onto the Sears-Citibank platform to keep track of your card's activities:

You can keep a track of the activity of the account and the points earned
Check all your billing statements
Get information about the offers
Make payments through the points earned.
So, getting a Sears card has benefits for you.