In case you have been living under a rock in the Maldives this past week you have probably heard of the biggest thing in the points world – a 70,000 point Chase Ink offer! Comes with a $95 annual fee. Reader,and credit card aficionado Mike knew of this first, and gave us a hint on The Forum it was coming soon. I need to apologize to Mike, because it was good info, but I just didn’t really give a crap.
Maybe I am a little jaded now, but I don’t get excited by points offers. I finally, begrudgingly, signed up for two cards this year, the Citi Executive for 100,000 AA miles and the Chase Ink 60,000 point offer (no annual fee) and frankly I need neither card. It’s not that I have a slew of points either, its just I know for sure that I am going to be caught holding these as we walk into a new devaluation.
So, I got the 60K Ink because it was better than the 50K, but it was still ‘Meh’. Its still just some points in a lump sum, and with travel already booked up throughout 2014, I have more than enough time to generate points without paying a whole bunch of money for them. Regardless of my lack of enthusiasm towards this new 70K offer, I secure messaged them asking for an offer match. I always recommend doing this, but do it sooner rather than later as Chase will be looking for a way out of matching if they can.
Here was my denial letter:
Thank you for contacting Chase about your credit card
account. We appreciate the opportunity to ensure you
receive any promotional offers available for your account.
The new offer provides 70,000 bonus points after spend of
$5,000 on purchases in the first three months from the
account open date however the offer does not provide an
annual fee waiver of $95.00 for the first year. The offer
you were booked into is a different offer of 60,000 bonus
point after spend of $5,000 on purchases in the first
three months and no annual fee in the first year.
If you have any further questions, please reply using the
Secure Message Center.
Thank you,
So, should I demand they match me and offer to pay the fee? Should I try to pay $95 for 10,000 ultimate rewards?
You might have already surmised that with my overall lack of desire to jump up and down over credit card points that the answer is no, and you are quite correct. Now, we could engage in a value conversation here, many people, myself included, might value an Ultimate Reward point at more than a penny each, maybe something like 1.5 cents if used well?
So, I could purchase these points at a discount by chasing the 10,000, pay $95 for $150 of points, a no-brainer perhaps…
However, the value of points is not only relative to the buyer, but I would also argue is variable. I have just earned 60K, and for the next 10K to be relevant to me I would need to have a travel plan. Without such an immediate plan I would be simply exchanging real money for a promissory note for future travel. The issue I have with doing this is that giving up such money equates to an interest free loan to Chase, and that I trust Chase as far as I could throw Jamie Dimon towards a dart board. I’m not giving up good money for points that I cannot immediately redeem, because every moment that they sit in the account they are at risk of devaluation, individual transfer partners might ‘enhance’ their programs, or Chase could lose some or all partners leaving me with just a 1:1 statement credit option.
Amazing Deal Alerts come daily now, before you get too excited think is the offer really worth it to you, often it is about timing. Another time, and another place I might apply for two of these 70K offers and pay $150 for each card, but not right now, so i’ll gladly pass and say ‘meh’ to your 70K offer Chase, thanks very much for the 60K.
Matt:
I got turned down, also. Here is my turn down letter:
Thank you for contacting Chase about the 70,000 bonus
points offer. The 70,000 bonus points offer is currently available only
on Ink Plus accounts. Your account is a Ink Bold card.
Hence, we are unable to match the offer on your account.
Although we appreciate your loyalty, we ask that you trust
that this decision is the same for all members who do not
have an Ink Plus account. We feel that adhering to the
same policy for all members is the best way to remain fair
and consistent.
Yeah, right!
Yeah- we know that’s untrue… When they make things like that up id be inclined to push back.
I sense confusion here on Ink Plus vs. Ink Bold.
The Plus is the card with the 70K offer with annual fee not waived.
The Bold remains at 50K with annual fee waived.
So the information you both got is accurate as far as I can tell.
But I think there was overly-generous confusion on Chase’s part when people SM’d immediately after the offer surfaced. People who have Bold cards were getting matched even though they shouldn’t have. And people who have Plus cards were getting matched without having to pony up an annual fee.
I got a Plus 2 months ago and did get a match to 70K without mention of an annual fee after sending a SM the first night this came out. Looks like they’ve gotten sharper on what should be matched and what shouldn’t after some time has passed.
I guess a question is whether you could effectively go back to them and say “okay fine – charge me $95 for another 10K URs”. But it’s not clear to me they’re offering that.
Last year there was a 50K Sapphire Preferred offer that had a $125 annual fee. I couldn’t get a match to that even if I offered to go along with the new terms.
So although they’re one of the better banks at matching in the grand scheme of things these quirky differentiated offers are confusion for everyone I think.
Good point, but yeah, details smeetails :). You could still get the match hypothetically (others have I heard) so yes, would you go back and say – well I’ll pay the fee, I want the points, or not?
You are correct–they did both get the same info. But Chase saying that they want to be consistent just means, IMO, that they are NOT consistent.
Anytime a bank says “X”, you can assume that the actual answer is “Y”. And for the credit card operations of a bank, that’s true in spades.
One easy way for me to quickly evaluate the value of any offer is to compare the cost of “buying” miles with the CC sign-up or promotional offer to what it would cost me to obtain those points through MS. As I can MS 10000 UR points for less than $95, the “70,000 mile sign-up, no fee waiver” offer would not represent a good deal over the 60,000 mile sign-up offer with the annual fee waived the 1st year. Simplistic to be sure, as it doesn’t take into account the time/energy input for the MS activity, but it does help me put things into perspective.
Indeed- that was my thinking too, though to be fair your have to factor in time spent too… But yes, I’ve enough time to generate for free or less than $95 to make the equation easy for me.
Matt, you make an excellent point! I would normally pay 1cent per UR, but definitely not without actual plans and hoping for scoring some for “free” or much cheaper….
Yep- free is an easier choice, but even then I thought hard about the 60k. Gotta have a spending plan in mind.
The key here is “I would be simply exchanging real money for a promissory note for future travel.” This is huge and something that applies to countless possible decisions of this type. It is also the thing that underscores why this type of thinking is usually not seen in blogs that have a driving motivation to sell you their affiliate products. It is so easy to get caught up in the hype and thinking about it this way makes it real.
Exactly.
I’ve seen this argument multiple times now and the “logic” doesn’t compute. If we forget the “ideal” value of the points and go with their bare bones value, they are PAYING YOU $5 to upgrade the offer. The 10,000 UR points is worth $100 in statement credits. So absent any caveats undisclosed, if you care about the money for the fee more than you do the points, just redeem for a statement credit and pocket $5. What am I missing?
This. Although there is always the chance of devaluation of the transfer rate or transfer partners, you can always get a minimum value for the statement credit. I can’t imagine a situation where Ultimate Rewards are devalued for less than 1 cent on a statement credit. Best case scenario you find a use for the extra points and get more value, worst case scenario you get a free $5. It’s not like there is any effort involved either, all you have to do is respond to a secure message; no future MS required.
Same answer as Boon, I don’t think anyone would bother for $5 (would you)? If they got the 10k they would sit on them.
The opportunity here isn’t to make $5, at least for me anyway.
Your missing that nobody would fight for the extra 10k and cash them out for the credit, they’d fight because they value them higher and hoard.
But yes, you have a point!
Again the voice of reason in a world of hype. Of course it is not worth paying $95 with this new offer on the Ink Plus card because you can buy 10 $200 visas at Staples on the Ink Plus card that you presumably just got and pay $69.50, a savings of about $25 for 10,000 points.
But I sent my secure message yesterday too and am waiting for the reply.
Exactly- though you do need to add on a bit of time cost because buying and liquidating would be longer.
I have similar sentiments. What I don’t understand is why people think the Amex platinum 100k MR points offer is an excellent deal @ $450 annual fee when there is a free version with all the same benefits but no points (tho as of recently there is a 25k offer w no fee). Since when is $225 considered a great deal for 50k Mr points? It seems ludicrous to me. Perhaps it is the result of affiliate links? Or am I missing something huge?
A fee free Amex Platinum? That’s strange… I guess it all comes down to need and time available though.
By no fee of course I mean first year (only year you keep it!) free.
Ah, I see, well it’s the same idea too- if you can score a free 50k offer. If all you can get is 25k then it might be worth buying the points for the annual fee.
$133 in car rental through Ultimate Rewards mall, which tends to be 20-30% discount over direct booking, so that yields ~$160 towards the car. Make sure you do points + cash, pay $1 worth in cash, your Ink has primary coverage as well if paid with it. So there you go, it may be worth $95 to get 10k in points if you ever pay for car rentals.
Sure, and if I didn’t just get 60K of them 🙂
I think it’s a moot point. From my understanding of the CARD act the annual fee cannot be changed within the first twelve months. It’s not possible for Chase to charge you the $95. I haven’t heard of anybody having to pay the annual fee from those who were successfully matched either.
That said points have a base of 1c in value each. It took me about 60 seconds to send Chase a request for matching (they didn’t approve it due to me having the Bold). That’s an hourly rate of $300 (assuming the annual fee has to be paid. If it doesn’t then it’s an hourly rate of $6,000), you also need to take into account the underpants factor as well.
Those comparing this to MS are equally foolish. There is a $50,000/yr limit on office supply stores, I’d rather not eat into that and instead send a short message.
Most of my content is moot points. My purpose here is to explore the mindset of people and how they react to changes in bonus – this ties into the AMAZING DEAL ALERT mindset and I think is an interesting discussion.
Stop being so clever 🙂
Just FYI, when they had a similar promotion where the SP bonus was bumped up but a $125 AF not waived year 1 they wouldn’t match me even after I offered to pay the AF!
Let’s change the equation a little: Let’s say you don’t have the card yet but you want to sign up. You have two options. Do it online, using or not using a blogger link 🙂 , and getting 50k UR points without 95 AF or going to your branch and getting 70k but paying the 95 AF. Which would you do. Now the question becomes would you pay 95 for 20,000 UR.
Using Claire’s example above, you’ll have to buy 20 $200 visas at Staples on the Ink Plus card and pay $139.00, an extra $39 for 20,000 points. BUT… it is actually possible to get back that $39 (plus a little more), making it even. As far as time goes, it would probably be quicker to do it online. You can also buy the 200 visas at staples.com. But as DOC pointed out you are eating away at your yearly limit of 50k UR.
For me, 20K difference is an easier decision to make, because you are able to double your investment, however the case we have here is the 60 (free) or 70 ($95) which makes less sense I think. Even though indeed there is profit in both, I think that fact that you have to pay up $95 to gain $5 makes it not worthwhile.
Now, of course you have that $50K cap to think about, but that’s also per card… so if you have several Inks you have several caps to reach. Personally I tend to not really MS at Staples so I don’t come close to the $50K.
I guess I am the bigger sucker in that I just accepted a 10K retention offer to offset my annual fee. Even worse, said retention requires me to spend $5k. I like the ink card though, so I deemed it better than nothing.
I wonder whether anyone else has noticed this. I missed it, even though I thought I had read everything carefully. A big reason I got the ‘100K miles point executive CITI card’ was to get the 10K extra elite miles to help me get to exec platinum faster. However, I always have many more points than miles because I fly first whenever possible (purchased), so I tend to get 1.5 points for each mile flown. Can you see where this is going? Based on this, I always get to platinum, and likely exec platinum, on elite points – and never never never get there on elite miles. So, the 10K award elite miles to me has value 0. For example, I was at 56K elite points and about 37K elite miles before the 10K elite miles was awarded – and am now at 56K elite points and about 47K elite miles after the 10K elite miles were awarded. So, the 10K elite miles they gave me are worthless to me. Those elite miles will never help me get to next level because I will always already be there on elite points. Let’s extrapolate. This is happening to all their very best customers who have this card – big spenders, frequent fliers. When they find out, if those 10K elite points were important to them (as they were to me), they will not be happy. More consequences: a) this reduces the incentive to meet that magic $40K dollars spent which buys you this offer (which is worthless in these scenarios); b) those 10K elite miles come each year, but now there is less incentive to keep the card after you get their 100K miles or to spend $40K on this card; c) it is not smart to mislead people who spend a lot of money on your card – they will start looking elsewhere. keep them happy, they stay loyal. pull something like this, and they start thinking twice about other cards. Enough said – I did not read the fine print. let the buyer beware. wonder how many other people noticed this? I asked CITI to also give me points – got back a ‘that is the way AA does it’. I asked AA, and they said I had to talk to CITI. This does not bring credit to AA or CITI.