If you were living under a pretty large boulder for the last 5 months you might have missed that from April until last weekend Chase was selling gift cards with no fee, up to $2600 worth per card, per 30 days.
One thing I like to do is after offers have ended look back on how well they went, and ways to avoid issues, or learn from mistakes.
Never Cancel a Card When the Annual Fee Comes Due
Part of why closing cards is not a good idea is perfectly exemplified in the CGC opportunity. Had I closed all my and my wife’s Chase cards outright when the annual fee came due I would have missed out on thousands of miles that I was able to order from Chase. I already go to Wal-Mart many times a month for other MMRs, so adding in BB reloads and MOs off of the Chase GCs was an easy fit into my usual trips, with very little additional costs in either fees or my time.
To be clear; I got lucky. I didn’t know this type of opportunity would come up; but keeping cards open has other benefits such as reduced CC utilization %, and easy opening of new cards by shifting credit around.
If you were looking to hit a goal, say 20k UR/UA off of CGC, then with just 2 Chase cards you’d have to have done the max 2500 for 4 months straight on each of those two cards. With 4 cards you could do just $1250 on each card for 4 months straight.
By downgrading my Wife’s Chase Sapphire to a Freedom I ended up actually earning more Chase UR points than I would have with the CSP, 2,750 per $2500 order. All of our open Chase cards got a healthy workout over the summer. And now they’re sleeping soundly in their dresser drawers; awaiting the next big thing.
Did you get in on Chase GCs? Will you rethink how you close your credit cards? Any other thoughts you might like to share?
Update: Reader Chris brought up a question: Was it worth the possible Chase blacklisting for the UR/UA/SW points you were able to earn through this promo? If Citi, tomorrow offered the same deal, $2600 per card per month would the experience with CGC cause you to be more/less cautious?
Update 2: Multiple readers commented on using the promotion to hit minimum spending requirements. Doing so was a smart use of this deal, even if you only bought enough GCs to hit that minimum.
Update 3: As MLH mentioned, The lack of any type of bonus and no way to load from home did hurt the usefulness of the program. Driving out of your way, and your time (At your T-Rate) could have easily made the deal no good for many. [rule]
It’s really easy to say that when you fell through the cracks. What if you would have been shutdown?
I don’t think it’s worth getting blacklisted from Chase for a few years for 20-30k or so UR pts…
Chris: Good point, and a comment like yours is why I’m looking to do these debriefs. In looking back I only ordered $5k per Chase card spread out over 3-4 months, which was pretty conservative. The only way I was able to do that was because I have so many Chase cards from so many past applications. The post was an example of why keeping cards open might in the future help you in ways you don’t know right now. I’ve been shut down from my fair share of deals and opportunities, and if I had gotten shut down the debrief would still have happened. I like to analyze so I’m hopeful there will be more good comments like yours.
I didn’t mean to sound snarky in my comment. I think it was a good way to rack a few thousand points for free easily. When I first read the post (which I must have misread), it sounded like bragging without explaining that this came with a risk of being shutdown.
I bought a few of them myself to meet spending requirements. Anyways, keep up the good work. I have been reading your blog for a week or two and it’s been very informative and I’m not a newbie.
Never took it that way–thanks for the comments
I did 2500 per month for the wife and I every month for the last 6 months with no problem but kept it between the sapphire and Hyatt cards. Used Hyatt to meet a spend promotion that they gave each of us an extra 10k points for spending 10k over the last 3 months. No problems and gonna miss them.
I was never enamored with this deal. The only thing going for it was the lack of fees – it wasn’t part of any category bonuses and it was capped. I chose to pay the fees and get GCs from places I could get bonuses from (groc or gas).
Purchased the gift cards for promotion spending on Hyatt and UA cards. Took a bit to figure out the amounts to load, but got into good system using the atm at WM. However, no matter what I did I could not load my last two gc’s on bb. Ended up getting mo’s at front desk.
It wouldn’t have been worth the blacklisting. I started in July, and did about 30k Between 6 chase cards. It was a cheap 30K UR points, so it was worth it in my case since no shutdown. I still used my cards for regular spending, and have had my main checking acct with them for years.