Chase Ink
This card comes with an annual fee of $95 so when it posted this month I decided to call do see if they would offer to waive the fee or offer a retention bonus.
Here is a hint so you won’t waste your time, Chase is not willing to waive fees as they have done in the past so your best angle is to see what retention offer they can give you. It took me 3 tries to realize this and for someone to give me an offer.
The offer was 10k UR points if I spend $5k in 3 months. This will be no problem for me so I took the offer and thanked the representative.
Southwest Chase This card comes with a $59 annual fee and they do offer 3k points annually. When the fee posted I called and tried to approach the conversation by stating that SW points are going to be devalued soon and I believe the 3k points are not sufficient anymore. Ya..that didn’t work. I didn’t get offered anything. I’ll try again and try to use the same or another approach to see what I can get.
Here are some recent posts of retention offers from Just Another Points Traveler and The Points Ninja.
Got the same offer. Working on spending now. I thought if I am going to spend $5k to get 10,000 points why not get the Bold and spend $5k and get 50,000? Ultimately I kept the Plus since I don’t need so many points right now so I decided to throw the bone to Chase and save the credit hit for another day.
On the SW card (you meant $69 right?) what I did is that I waited for the 3000 points to post and then cancelled and kept the points and avoided the fee. I figure A) I could get the card again later and B) given that Ultimate Reward points are so easy to earn there is no reason for me to even take the SW card out of the drawer. After the initial points and the 3k it’s a dinosaur. I don’t even use it to pay for SW flights. I buy the SW GCs at Office Depot.
You are right…I can get more points buying SW GC with Ink. If they don’t budge, I may consider canceling.
Or just pay SW flights with Sapphire and your trip will be fully insured but given that SW flights are cancellable or funds reusable I usually stick with the GCs and get 5x per dollar.