This past week, Nick published a post about how to look for a pre-approved 175K welcome offer on the Chase Sapphire Reserve® card.
If you’re not interested in the Sapphire Reserve card, you might’ve given that post a miss. If so, you would’ve missed out on what could be an incredibly useful nugget: a new way to find pre-approved offers for Chase credit cards.
In the past, existing Chase customers could log in to their account and sometimes find pre-approved card offers in the ‘Just For You’ section found in the menu sidebar.
I’ve checked that every so often for years and I think I’ve only ever gotten lucky once about five years ago when I was able to get a United credit card. What Nick shared is that in that same menu sidebar there’s a separate area that you can check for pre-approved offers.
To find that, log in to your account and click the ‘Main Menu’ button which, on desktop, pops out a menu on the left hand side. Scroll down to the ‘Explore Products’ section and, beneath the ‘Just For You’ option and a few other options, there’s one listed ‘Business credit cards’ if you use a business account log-in, or ‘Credit cards’ if logged in on a personal account.
At the top of the screen, you’ll see the option to switch between looking at Personal and Business cards. Be sure to check both sections in case you’re preapproved for one or more cards. If you are, you’ll see something like the screenshot below.
The reason preapproved offers are so notable is that they bypass Chase’s 5/24 rule.
To determine your 5/24 status, see: Easy Ways to Count Your 5/24 Status. The easiest option is to track all of your cards for free with Travel Freely.
For someone who’s well over 5/24 and expects that to continue indefinitely, the ability to get at least one more Chase card could be an opportunity they won’t want to pass up.
However, just because you’re pre-approved and will bypass 5/24, it’s not always going to be unalloyed good news. After reading Nick’s post a few days ago, I checked offers for both me and my wife. I struck out, but my wife was targeted for a 125,000 bonus points pre-approved Sapphire Reserve card. She applied and was approved – sort of.
She could get the card if she wanted, but she got a popup advising that she wasn’t eligible for the 125,000 Ultimate Rewards welcome offer. I’m not sure if that’s because she had a Sapphire Reserve card when it first came out, or if it’s because she currently has a Sapphire Preferred card, but either way it made her pre-approved offer pretty much pointless. She could just as easily upgrade her existing Sapphire Preferred card to a Sapphire Reserve and not have a hard pull. The welcome offer was the only reason to want the card, so being ineligible was disappointing.
Still, there’ll hopefully be lots more of you for whom this ability to find pre-approved offers will be useful.
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I was pre approved for areoplan card last week at 8/24 applied and was denied for 5/24. Called recon and they said “your over 5/24”
Is it safe to assume that no pre-approvals will show up using this method if my credit is frozen?
Please try and report back.
Well problem is that I don’t see any pre-approval offers but I don’t know whether it is because my credit is frozen or because Chase finds me unworthy for other reasons. I suppose I could thaw my credit and see if that makes a difference, but I don’t know how quickly that would work, if it does.
I wouldn’t have thought that would affect it. I don’t believe freezing your credit prevents soft pulls, so I’d assume those with frozen credit reports are still eligible for pre-approved offers, although that’s obviously not a guarantee you’ll get one.
Okay, thanks! Chase is probably just mad at me for badmouthing the new CSR.
I have all three reports frozen and when I try the link Nick shared, it clearly asks me to unfreeze my credit and tells me to unfreeze Transunion specifically and try back again in a few days. Not sure if this is the same link that Stephen is mentioning in this article, but I am not in the market for a new card, so I don’t want to try it out either way.