So I was reading an article last night that I found on Yahoo! about how chase is cancelling cards due to people churning the cards. I don’t necessarily fit in that category, but the article seemed to indicate that there wasn’t a whole lot of consistency in how they cancel the cards. That means that all the points you have available are gone too. Well, it just so happens that I had just about enough points to get my family of 4 our tickets to the World. The one thing I am not sure about is my wife. She just took a new job a couple of months ago and doesn’t feel she can ask off over a year in advance. “They won’t understand why I’m asking that far in advance” is what she told me. I had to back up to my non Disney liner crowd thought and I said back to her “You’re right. She won’t. But we will need to know before we book the room for sure though, so we will need to know around December.” She said she would at least feel a little more comfortable then. I don’t want her to dread going to work because she thinks her boss might think something about her asking off so early.
So I pulled the trigger. Linked the cards to my account. If my wife CAN get off ( and I really don’t think it’ll be an issue as she won’t take off any time between now and then) we will drive down on November 22, 2019. My goal is to start off by getting MVMCP tickets and starting it off that night.
If for some reason she can’t go then, we will have to pay the fee to get them transferred in 2020. Not too big of a deal.
The article specifically mentioned any card from Chase. All of my card points are with Chase. That paid for my Disney tickets. Didnt want to lose that.
This doesn’t really surprise me. As we’ve seen even with Disney, when people start “gaming the system”, the company will respond accordingly and change the rules.
What DOES surprise me is the specific act of cancelling the account. But then, I think we tend to forget that we are beholden to them since we are, in fact, borrowing THEIR money.
My Citibank Driver’s Edge card (which we’ve had for 20+ years) I’ve used heavily for the points. We also never carry a balance, so we get rewards without Citibank getting any interest from me. So, ALL of their profit from me comes from the 1% of the purchase price (or whatever it is) they charge the retailer. This doesn’t amount to a lot of profit.
I’ve gotten several attempts by Citibank to “upgrade” me to a different perks card…except that when you read all the details, the bottom line is that I’d end up with LESS and they’d end up with MORE. Can’t blame them for trying, of course. They have to make their investors happy! But I’ll keep my card as is, thank you very much!
Since I just obtained the Disney Chase credit card (which isn’t points, but Disney gift cards, but same idea), I can see that this change might impact those that cancel the card after the obligatory 24 months pass and then immediately re-open the card to get the initial reward again. I won’t be surprised if, by the time my 24 months have passed, Chase will have some kind of “waiting period” after you cancel before they’d allow you to re-open an account with them and/or get the reward.
About gaming the system - yes. There are plenty of ways people have gamed the system with Disney such as getting a “throw away room” etc. I admit, I considered it, but now it doesn’t work, so I never did.
As it says in the article, the people that do this aren’t deadbeats. They pay their payment every month and they’ll never get one cent of interest from them. I fit in that category. But, I have stored all of my points and have a few cards from Chase. I actually just opened a card to get the 15 month 0% APR to make a fairly large purchase and I would rather do that than finance through the company. Plus, I got the sign on bonus! Because of that, I felt vulnerable. Don’t want to lose those points.
There is a certain irony in the business model of credit card providers.
On the one hand, they want people who are going to be responsible and be able of paying back all the borrowed money.
On the other hand, they want people who are NOT responsible ENOUGH to manage their finances in a way that requires them to NOT pay off their debt every month.
So, while you and I might be the type to always pay off their credit card balance every month, we’re actually not who they HOPE their customers will look like. They would much prefer it if I charged $1000, and paid $100/month rather than charge $1000 and then pay $1000. They will make far more profit from the former, despite the fact that the latter is far more responsible!
This is directly from the article. I have copied and pasted.
“Looks like Chase is seriously cracking down,” Reddit user Morphogencc also wrote in May. “I recently tried to use my Sapphire reserve card and it didn’t work. I was a bit surprised and checked my online account — and all my accounts were closed.”
According to Chase’s rewards program user agreement, cardholders can lose points or immediately have their points revoked if Chase closes the account because it suspects misuse of the rewards program “by repeatedly opening or otherwise maintaining credit-card accounts for the purpose of generating rewards.” It doesn’t lay out the criteria for determining such misuse.
Bottom line - I got scared my points would be taken away. I had them. They were going to be used for Disney. Does it matter if I use them now or in a few months if it doesn’t change when we would go? I don’t think it does, so I went ahead and pulled the trigger.
This sounds like, perhaps, they have cases of having a maximum reward. So rather than the user just being “happy” with their reward, they will open ANOTHER account and use that (rather than the first) to earn up to the maximum reward (plus any enrollment bonuses), etc.
It could be like, for example, if, once I spent the $500 in three months needed to earn the $200 gift card, we then opened another card to gain additional, etc. (Not that you can do that with the Disney Visa…but I can’t speak to all rewards programs.) In theory, if it were allowed (or at least, able to be done) I could in theory spend $1000 on the credit cards and earn $400 in Disney Gift cards. That’s a HUGE benefit to me, but Chase would actually LOSE money in the endeavor. They aren’t in business to lose money!
True. But it also says in the article that they aren’t consistent in who gets account closure. I thought maybe since I jsut opened the 0% APR card, that may put me liable.
Kind of reminds me of what Amazon is doing. Too many “free returns”? Bam. You’re banned from Amazon from that point forward. Trouble is, there seems to be no consistency into who they choose to ban versus not, which makes EVERYONE nervous about returning things. Probably kind of the goal. The fear of the possibility is enough to curb the behavior of people returning things even legitimately so!
We have had a Chase Freedom and Chase Disney VISA cards for years now and have had no issues. We also don’t open and close our credit card accounts to get extra rewards and we pay off our cards every month. It sounds like some of the people this happened to, it was a fluke and they were quickly reinstated. Others were taking advantage. I don’t have an issue with them closing down accounts of those who use the system to open and close accounts to get more rewards.
