I never get a new credit card without having a solid rundown in my head of its useable benefits.

Two different cards I opened recently had benefits I had no clue about until after they were in my wallet.

1. CitiBusiness AAdvantage

Unadvertised benefit: Primary car rental coverage.

Almost every credit card on earth offers car rental coverage, but they’re almost all covering you on a secondary basis. This means you’ll have to use your personal car insurance first, then your credit card may cover what your personal insurance doesn’t.

There are a few popular cards (Sapphire Preferred/Reserve, United) that offer free primary coverage, but they’re Chase cards.

The Citi Prestige card offers primary coverage…in countries outside the U.S., but inside the U.S. it only offers secondary coverage.

Considering primary coverage is a huge benefit, it’s strange that Citi doesn’t even advertise it on the CitiBusiness card benefits page, and the only place I could find it stated was in the info booklet that came with my card.

2. American Express SPG

I signed up for this card because SPG points are extremely valuable and flexible, and this card has a sign-up bonus of 30k points after $3K in spend (note: the bonus was 35k earlier this year, but I didn’t sign up then because I was still within Chase’s 5/24 rule).

This card has two benefits that I didn’t know about when I signed up:

Unadvertised benefit #1: Free Boingo membership.

This benefit alone could theoretically make the $95 fee on the SPG card worth paying year after year.

Here is a summary of what Boingo memberships cost:

This benefit has already provided me free airport Wi-Fi access a few times.

Unadvertised benefit #2: Free ShopRunner membership.

ShopRunner membership offers free 2-day shipping when shopping online at “hundreds” of stores (I put that in quotes because there’s really only a couple of stores I would ever shop at that offer ShopRunner shipping).

While membership costs $79 per year, it’s free with any eligible American Express card.

I’m sure I could have learned about all these benefits if I’d been a little more hardcore in my research, but at least I have them now.

Any unadvertised or hidden card benefits that you know about? Comments/thoughts are appreciated!