The Chase Center is the home of the Golden State Warriors, so it surely comes as no surprise to you that the phone number on the back of your Chase credit or debit card acts as a promo code to get you up to 50% off on Golden State Warriors gear, right? Ok, so perhaps it is a surprise. It sure was to me. File this under “only useful in the most niche of circumstances, but strange and true”. That discovery led me to find that you can also score a discount on a family membership at the Philadelphia Zoo and some other “experience” discounts via Chase.
First of all, to those long-time readers who recognize the root of my headline and feel like I plagiarized the “Bet you didn’t know” line from the man formerly known as The Devil’s Advocate, you’re not totally wrong. “Bet you didn’t know” was Julian Kheel’s column here long before he became a hot shot over at CNN Underscored. Seeing as how he hasn’t written a “Bet you didn’t know” column in more than 4 years, I am under the impression that this title has since moved into the public domain.
Back to the deal at hand: I was reading one of those inane emails from Chase touting the “experiences” you can unlock with your Chase Sapphire Reserve card when I saw something about basketball being back. I used to be a huge basketball fan. Truth be told, I just don’t make time to watch anymore (and I’ve become less interested in TV sports during the pandemic for whatever reason). But yet I still clicked through (nice job, Chase marketing department!) to https://experience.chase.com/. After clicking around the Madison Square Garden and Atlanta Hawks pages, I clicked on the Chase Center listing. That’s where I saw the following deal advertised:
I think it’s a lot of fun to watch Golden State play, though I wouldn’t exactly consider myself a Golden State fan. However, I would consider myself a fan of 50% discounts. In fact, as I type this, I am wearing a sweatshirt for a Las Vegas video game team. I’ve never played or even seen the game and have no idea if the Las Vegas squad is any good, I just know that I got $20 off from T-Mobile Tuesdays so I was able to score a really comfortable hoodie (that I originally planned to donate but ended up keeping) for like five bucks. All that is to say that I absolutely clicked through.
From there, the shortened version of the story is that I found the discount to be “up to 50% off”. I started with a 24-month onsie for my younger son to grow into. It was on clearance for seven bucks. When I entered the phone number from the back of the Chase Sapphire Reserve card (note: no dashes and you have to omit the leading “1”), it said that I got 50% off….only the price didn’t change from the $6.99 shown on the item page.
However, I couldn’t give up on it altogether, so I tried a regular-priced hoodie and the code did in fact take 50% off.
After playing with different items, I found that the code takes 50% off of the regular full price regardless of whether or not the item is on sale. The hoodie above wasn’t on sale, so the code took off a full 50%. The hand-painted leather jacket below, admittedly not in my price range, was on sale for $1500. The Chase phone number promo code dropped it down to $1,000. That’s only 33% off of the sale price, but a full half off the “regular” retail value.
Pair the jacker above with 10% / 10x back via Rakuten to heat that deal up a bit further.
After spending more time than I care to admit on shopping for (but not buying) Golden State Warriors gear, I went back to the Chase Experiences page and clicked around other pages. I found that a couple of other Chase-affiliate teams offer merchandize discounts and/or coupons for use at their stadiums. Then I stumbled on this page of regional benefits. Most of the discounts on that page aren’t amazing deals, but they certainly may help you save a few bucks if you have plans to visit one of the regional museums / zoos / attractions listed. For example, you could save $40 on a Family Deluxe Membership at the Philadelphia Zoo. All you need is a Chase card and a time machine to be able to buy it between January and December 2020 (kidding, Chase apparently just hasn’t updated this because when I click through to the zoo’s site it still works).
None of the discounts appeared earth-shatteringly exciting, but they were at least marginally interesting and something I hadn’t noticed before. I’m sure that some of the discounts can be had with other memberships (like AAA or warehouse clubs). And in the case of the Golden State Warriors gear, there is a coupon code on the home page that’s good for 25% off, so the Chase discount is really good for an additional 25%. Still, that’s not bad and isn’t something I’d have ever expected.
Again, this will have pretty niche appeal, but I found it interesting nonetheless — and a good reminder to open and read those bank emails at least every now and then.