The Founders Card is a pretentious club which purports to be, "A Membership community of over 100,000 entrepreneurs and business executives who receive unprecedented benefits and networking opportunities."
It is not a credit card, despite its name.
Despite all of its lofty promises and supposed exclusive status, the main perk people sign up for is automatic Caesars Diamond status.
This has been offered for many years as a perk of the card. The price of the card varies. Regular price is $595 per year, plus a $95 "initiation fee". However, there are various ways in for cheaper, especially for existing members who often get offered to renew for less. Some get it for as low as $195. There used to be a trick where you could do a "free preview" of the card (which did NOT come with Caesars Diamond), and then ghost them when the preview was up, and they came running to you with a lower price. However, as far as I know, that stopped working in 2022. I'll get to the reason shortly.
The problem is that there's an approval process.
Because it's supposedly a club for entrepreneurs, you have to meet their "standards" for membership. If you're just a regular working guy -- even if you have a very good job -- they will reject you.
I applied for it in 2022. I claimed I was both a pro poker player and owner of several gambling-related websites. I did not mention that the websites made no money.
This seemed good enough to meet their standards, as they claimed to be looking for "unique" individuals with unique professions. Unfortunately, I applied right as the easy Wyndham status match to Diamond was eliminated, so they got inundated with people who wanted to sign up.
I got jerked around for like 2 months. They weren't accepting me or rejecting me, and just kept telling me to wait, with no timetable as to when they'd get to my application. I was getting sick of it, and was just going to earn Diamond the old fashioned way (by playing video poker) if I couldn't get an answer. They kept promising "any day now" I should get an answer. But week after week, nobody responded.
Finally I escalated the matter, and still no response. I tried one final time to re-escalate. After still not hearing anything, I called back one final time to check, and found out I was...
I called and asked why. They wouldn't tell me, but only stated they decided to decline my membership. I think it was because I had a "friends" offer from another PFA member for $399 and the initiation fee waived, so they said fuck it, we don't need this guy for $399 if there's a bunch of chumps willing to pay $690. I have no idea why they limit the number of memberships. I think it's about pretension.
Anyway, I said fuck them and found another way into cheap Caesars Diamond.
Looks like I made a good decision, because starting this year, the Founders Card / Caesars match is going away.
Read on...