A Twisty Chase Sapphire Preferred Application Journey

This DP comes from our friend Mengxiang Miao~

Background

After seeing the all-time-high 80,000-point welcome bonus on the Chase Sapphire Preferred, I decided to apply. I didn’t expect it to take more than two months to finally get approved!

A little background first: I had been holding the Chase Sapphire Reserve (CSR), which I applied for in 2016, and now I wanted to apply for the Sapphire Preferred (CSP). Chase has fairly strict rules for Sapphire cards.

• What You Need to Know About Chase Cards

In short, the main rules are:

• The 5/24 rule
• You cannot currently hold a Sapphire card
• You cannot have received a Sapphire-family welcome bonus within the past 48 months

My Application Timeline

According to Chase’s rules, if you currently hold a Sapphire card, you cannot be approved for another Sapphire card. So if you want to apply for the CSP, the first step is to either close your CSR or downgrade it to a no-annual-fee Freedom card.

• October 22: Downgraded my four-year-old CSR to the Chase Freedom Unlimited
• October 28: Applied for the CSP and was denied. A customer service representative said my CSR welcome bonus had posted on November 8.
• November 16: Reapplied for the CSP. The application went pending, and I was told to wait 1–2 weeks. At that time, the public welcome bonus had already dropped to 60,000, but referral links were still showing 80,000. The deadline listed on the application page had actually already passed, but the terms did not clearly state when the offer expired. In the end, I took a chance and applied through a referral link anyway (the offer has now expired).
• A few days later, I was told to call and go to a Chase branch to fax my SSN card.
• December 15: Called reconsideration, and finally got approved! By then, the 80,000-point referral link was already showing as expired and no longer allowed access to the application page.
• December 23: Received the card, logged into the app, and it showed the 80,000-point welcome bonus!

Details to Pay Attention To

• The Sapphire family is very strict about the rule that you can only receive a welcome bonus once every 48 months. You must wait the full 48 months, and the clock is based on when the welcome bonus posted, not when you applied for the card.
• When Chase cards have elevated referral offers, the referral links usually reflect those higher bonuses as well.
• If the offer deadline shown on the application page has already passed, but you can still enter the application page normally, there is a good chance you can still receive that offer’s welcome bonus. This CSP case, along with earlier IHG zombie links, seems to support that.
• Your Chase welcome bonus is tied to the link you used when you applied. Reconsideration does not change the original welcome bonus, so even if the offer expires before reconsideration, it should not affect the bonus. (There is also a claim that there may be a certain validity period, after which you would need to reapply.)

About the CSP