Doctor of Credit has reported that there is a great in-branch Autograph Journey offer for Wells Fargo Premier clients (which requires $250K in qualifying balances): Earn 100,000 points after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months. That’s an excellent offer for those who can get it, but keep in mind that you do need to be a Premier client and you must go to a Wells Fargo branch to get the offer.
The Deal
- Wells Fargo has an in-branch offer for Wells Fargo Premier clients only to open a new Wells Fargo Autograph Journey credit card and earn 100,000 points after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months
- No link as this is an in-branch offer only (and only for Premier clients)
Key Card Details
Note that the box below outlines the key card details. For more information, you can click on the card name below to be taken to our card-specific page, but note that our card page lists the best public offer for this card. There is no link to this 100K offer as the 100K offer is only available in-branch and only for Premier clients.
| Card Name w Details & Review (no offer) |
|---|
$95 Annual Fee Earning rate: 5X hotels ✦ 4X airlines ✦ 3X restaurants & other travel ✦ 1X everywhere else Card Info: Visa Signature issued by Wells Fargo. This card has no foreign currency conversion fees. Noteworthy perks: $50 annual statement credit with $50 minimum airline purchase ✦ Trip cancellation / interruption protection ✦ Cell phone protection ($25 deductible, $1000 max per claim) ✦ Transfer points to select airline & hotel programs |
Quick Thoughts
The Wells Fargo Autograph Journey card has a lot of potential to be a great card. It offers 5x hotels, 4x airlines, and 3x restaurants and other travel. That’s a great earning structure for a card that earns transferable points.
The main reason this card doesn’t get more attention is because of its limited stable of transfer partners. Wells Fargo Autograph points transfer to the following programs:
- Air France/KLM Flying Blue
- British Airway Executive Club Avios
- Aer Lingus AerClub Avios
- Iberia Plus Avios
- Avianca LifeMiles
- Choice Privileges
Transfers to the airline programs are 1:1, while transfers to Choice Privileges are 1:2.
There’s no doubt that the partners above provide access to some great awards. There are many great uses of Avios (I recently covered a couple of lesser-known uses), we recently covered a great award sale from Iberia, Avianca Lifemiles are well-loved for the ability to book Star Alliance awards without surcharges, and Air France / KLM Flying Blue often offers a fair amount of award space at reasonable rates. The 1:2 ratio to Choice Privileges is favorable and identical to Citi’s transfer ratio to Choice. It’s certainly not a bad start, but I think we all expected Wells Fargo to build this program out a bit more aggressively than they have.
Even if they never do expand their transfer partner program, earning 100,000 airline miles (or 200,000 Choice Privileges points) after $4,000 in purchases would be a solid offer worth considering / pursuing.
It would be great to see this offer publicly available, but this one is only available in-branch and only to Premier clients. To become a Wells Fargo Premier client, you’ll need $250,000 in qualifying balances with Wells Fargo. I believe that investment accounts count in the total, so that may not be impossible for those with retirement savings that can be moved to Wells Fargo. That said, I am not sure if you’d be able to get this offer as a brand-new Premier client.
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Thanks for the heads up! Do you know how long the offer is going on? I just opened a Hilton card two weeks ago and wondering if opening another one this soon will hurt my chances of approval. We are premier clients.
All true (I was told about this in-branch last Friday) but I feel like there is something out there that is even more interesting. With Chase nuking Sapphire Reserve’s general travel categories, the Wells Autograph (not Autograph Journey) card covers cruises, subways, parking, tolls, travel agencies–all the good stuff that Chase is getting rid of–as 3x categories. Plus it also covers cell phone and landline bills at 3x, which can be rather substantial. Even more surprising, it is a no-fee card, it doesn’t need to be combined with another card to be able to transfer to travel partners, and it has no foreign currency fees. I received a bonus offer of 50,000 points on it in branch Friday, which I accepted, and the spend requirement is only $1000 over three months.
Burying the quarter million dollar lede in the title there my guy
Am I? It says “for Premier members” in the headline and mentions the $250K in the first sentence.
I know that’s a lot of money, but there are probably enough readers out there with that much in IRAs / investment accounts to have it. Chase Private Client and Citi Gold have the same requirement.
Just didn’t see all the details in the RSS feed, not angry at ya!
I can’t quite envision the scenario where I am depositing $250k with Wells Fargo, although I suspect it is the same one where I am driving a Hertz rental car.
The scenario is you get the regular Wells checking bonus (around $400), then you move over your IRA for a few months when Wells offers an additional $3500 for moving $500k.
I can see how that could be tempting, but it would take a whole lot more than that to get me to move my IRA to Wells Fargo. I might get the card at the lower SUB, but I don’t trust Wells Fargo enough to give them any of my money.
Sure, they’ve had a spotty track record, but they’ve been good at paying the bank bonuses. I did the above last year, and I’m working on doing it again this year. I don’t see much risk in moving an IRA over there. What can they possibly do to mess it up?
Well based on my past experience with them they can screw up a lot. You also have to watch them for account fees and trading fees, depending on how you are invested. But my bigger concern would be that if something goes wrong with moving funds I have zero trust in them to straighten it out. And moving that amount of money can be a lot of work and require finding similar investments that don’t carry fees, and they are not likely to be much help.
Thus said, you will probably be fine. But I want to have my investments with an institution that is competent and that I trust, and Wells Fargo fails both of those tests in my book.