As you may have heard, you can no longer apply for both the Chase Sapphire Preferred and the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit cards from Chase. If you already have one of these cards, Chase will not approve you for the other. If you close your Chase Sapphire card, you won’t be eligible for any Chase Sapphire card if you earned the sign-up bonus on a Chase Sapphire card in the past 48 months.
These rules make total sense for Chase’s purposes. The benefits of the Chase Sapphire Preferred and Reserve are largely redundant; it’s a matter of wanting to pay more for a card that provides some additional benefits.
From a churning standpoint, I’m afraid this is a sign of the times. Chase almost implemented a similar rule for Southwest cards. We may see more changes like this in the future from Chase and other banks. It’s a huge bummer because my fiancé just got back into the churning game. Per my instruction, he applied for Chase Ink Preferred and then Chase Sapphire Preferred. Unfortunately, now he won’t be able to open Chase Sapphire Reserve for an additional 50,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points. Let’s just hope Chase doesn’t smarten up and start implementing even more restrictions (e.g., only one Chase Freedom product).
Final Thoughts
Every bank has some sort of restriction against churning but the game keeps getting tougher as more rules are put in place. Chase’s restriction on Chase Sapphire products makes sense from a business strategy perspective but is obviously a huge bummer for churners. On the bright side, you no longer have to debate between which Chase Sapphire card to keep since getting both isn’t even an option!
