Tag Archives: Chase Bank

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My Best Practices for New Credit Cards and Sign Up Bonuses

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Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well.  I recently completed the minimum spending requirement for 4 different credit cards (My October 2020 Credit Card App-O-Rama Results) and wanted to share my best practices for new credit cards and sign up bonuses.  I currently have 32 credit and charge cards open and have had 90 other cards since I started travel hacking in 2011.  To the best of my knowledge, I have never missed a credit card sign up bonus by not completing the minimum spending requirement.  Feel free to use all, some, or none of my best practices with your next credit card.  For this post, I am going to use a fictitious credit card as an example to illustrate some of the pitfalls to avoid.

ABC Credit Card has a sign up bonus of 50,000 points after spending $3,000 in 3 months with a $95 annual fee.  You apply for the credit card on January 1 and your application is pending.  Your application gets approved on January 5 and your new credit card arrives on January 15.  You activate your new credit card on January 18.

Credit Card Tidying and Organization

When your new credit card arrives, I recommend activating it immediately.  Then set up online access to view and track your purchases.  If you get paid monthly, you may want to change the bill due date to a date that is more convenient for you (unfortunately, this may not be possible until after the first statement closes).  For simplicity, I like to have all my credit card statements close around the same date, so that I do not need to remember several different credit card due dates or statement closing dates.

If you are concerned about accidentally making a cash advance purchase, call the credit card company and ask to lower your cash advance limit to $0.  If you were approved with a small credit limit and have other credit cards from the same credit card company, ask if they can transfer some of your credit limit over to your new credit card.  If you want to receive your statements electronically, sign up for electronic statements (I will explain why below). Continue reading →

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My December Credit Card Retention Calls: 2 out of 4 Successes ($300 Statement Credits Total)

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Good afternoon everyone, I hope you had a great weekend.  I called about retention offers on a few different credit cards today and wanted to share my results.  Please make sure to scroll to the bottom of this post and read my tips on making retention calls.  I took a page out of Frequent Miler’s playbook (My $575 phone call (complete in 20 minutes)) and called about these 4 credit cards:

  • Chase Hyatt Credit Card ($75 annual fee posted December 1)
  • JPMorgan Chase Ritz Carlton Visa Infinite Credit Card ($450 annual fee posted July 1)
  • Chase Marriott Bonvoy Premier Plus Business Credit Card ($99 annual fee posted May 1)
  • American Express Business Platinum Charge Card ($595 annual fee posted December 2)

Since the old Chase Hyatt Credit Card is product changing to the new Chase World of Hyatt Credit Card on January 11, 2021, I decided to call Chase and ask about a retention offer.  This is a huge ask that I knew was never going to fly, but I tried anyways.  I told the Chase rep that I was planning on closing my old Hyatt credit card and was going to apply for the new World of Hyatt credit card in a few weeks since I could earn up to 50,000 World of Hyatt Points with the new sign up bonus.  Instead of going through the process of closing one card and applying for the other card, I asked if Chase could provide some bonus World of Hyatt Points to forgo the sign up bonus.  Nope, that was not possible.  At that point, I asked the rep to close that credit card and transfer the credit limit over to another Chase personal call.  I am 0 for 1 at this point, onto the next call.

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How to Redeem Marriott Bonvoy 50K Point Free Night Certificates (Some Issues, Then Success)

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Good afternoon everyone, I hope your weekend is going well.  At the end of October, my wife applied for the Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Credit Card.  At the time, the sign up bonus was for 5 Free Night Certificates good for up to 50,000 Marriott Bonvoy Points per night after spending $5,000 in 3 months.  Many bloggers (including my friends Nick and Greg at Frequent Miler) said that this sign up bonus was a great deal, but only for those who knew how to get great value out of the certificates and could use them all within 12 months.  Since Laura has never had any Marriott (or SPG) credit cards, she decided to apply for the credit card.  She was not instantly approved, but after calling the Chase reconsideration department, she was approved for the credit card.  In this post, I will show you how to redeem the Marriott 50K Free Night Certificates and show you some of the trouble Laura experienced in the booking process.

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Keep, Cancel or Convert? Old Chase Hyatt Credit Card ($75 Annual Fee)

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Good evening everyone, I hope your week is going well.  I was just checking my Chase credit card accounts and saw that the $75 annual fee posted on my old Chase Hyatt Credit Card.  Effective January 11, 2021, Chase will convert all cardmembers who have the old Chase Hyatt Credit Card to the new $95 annual fee Chase World of Hyatt Credit Card.  Since I have never had the new card, I am planning on closing the old card and then applying for the new card to get the sign up bonus.  I decided to call Chase to see if they could waive the $75 annual fee anyway, but the rep said no.  I told the rep that I would think about it and call back later if I decide to close the card.  I plan on calling back in a few days to close the card and transfer my credit limit over to one of my other Chase cards.

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Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Credit Card Application Process & Reconsideration Phone Call

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Good morning everyone, I hope your weekend is going well.  A few days ago, I wrote My October 2020 Credit Card App-O-Rama Results.  In that post, I wrote about my experience applying and getting approved for 2 business credit cards: Bank of America Alaska Airlines Business Credit Card and American Express Delta SkyMiles Gold Business Credit Card.  In today’s post, I will talk about my wife’s application and approval process for the Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Credit Card.  When Laura applied 2 weeks ago, the sign up bonus was for 5 free night certificates (up to 50,000 Marriott Bonvoy Points per night) after spending $5,000 in 3 months.  Unfortunately, that offer ended on October 28.

According to my calculations, Laura had a Chase score of 3/24, so I assumed she would be instantly approved for this credit card.  Unfortunately, that was not the case.  Here is what I learned about the approval process and how she was able to get approved for the new credit card.

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