When Chase revamped the Sapphire Reserve card and increased its welcome offer the other day, a lot of people decided to lob in an application.
As part of the new application process, Chase now displays a popup if you’re not eligible for the welcome offer. You’re then given the choice as to whether to cancel your application, or proceed without a bonus being attached. That’s a better process than in the past as it means you can still get the card if you deem the benefits valuable enough even without earning a welcome offer.
It appears that this new process isn’t going entirely smoothly though. We’ve now heard from a few readers who decided not to proceed with their applications, but Chase opened new Sapphire Reserve cards for them anyway.
For example, we received the following email from a reader last night:
My son applied for the new personal Chase Reserve card. He got the pop up that he wasn’t eligible for the bonus. He declined the offer but unexpectedly the card landed in his account. I will be helping him discuss this with Chase, but I wanted to let people know it’s probably a good idea to take a screenshot if you get the pop up. We have applied plenty of times with Amex and gotten the pop up and declined with no problems. I did not think this would be a problem but now we did not screenshot it and might have to continue with this offer without the pop up in case Chase does not agree. I will keep you posted but I wanted other people to be aware in case they face this same issue.
Similarly, a different reader emailed us with the following account:
On June 23, I submitted an application for the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Just as you outlined, I was told I was ineligible for a welcome offer due to the number of cards recently opened. I was then given the choice to either proceed without the bonus or withdraw the application entirely. I chose to withdraw, and the Chase website confirmed that my application had been successfully withdrawn.
To my surprise, about ten minutes later I received an email saying I had been approved for the card, and the account immediately appeared in my Chase online portal.
I called Chase and spoke with a representative who acknowledged what happened and said the issue would be escalated. Since then, I’ve received conflicting information from different representatives. I’m currently dealing with the issue, but the resolution remains unclear.
I haven’t yet seen other reports of this specific glitch—being approved after withdrawing the application under the new policy—but I imagine others could run into the same problem now that this process has gone live.
I thought it was worth sharing as it raises important questions about the reliability of Chase’s new application process and what happens when it breaks down.
This issue appears to be the result of growing pains with Chase’s new popup procedure rather than being something more nefarious a la Wells Fargo.
If you find yourself in this frustrating position, you should reach out to Chase to report the problem. I fully expect them to make things right by closing the account and ensuring that the card either isn’t added to your credit report if it’s caught in time, or removed from your credit report if it’s not stopped in time.
In an ideal world, Chase would give an alternative option – you can keep the card open and they’ll attach the welcome offer to it as a gesture of good will. I’d be pleasantly surprised if that’s how they choose to proceed, but it’d be worth proactively suggesting that when speaking to Chase if that’s a resolution that would be agreeable for you.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
Good news from Chase for whoever this happened to. They tell us: “Confirming that if the person would like to keep the card open, then we will make sure they know they’ll be eligible for the new cardmember bonus.”
I have been a pretty happy customer of many types of Chase products in the past, but they haven’t looked very good with how this rollout has gone.
What’s next 1,000,000 point bonuses offers that nobody is approved for?
My experience: I applied through the public offer for 100,000+$500, and sadly my Experian credit report was still frozen (I’d unlocked it, not realizing that’s different than unfrozen). I was directed through an onscreen prompt to unfreeze it and then call to proceed with the application. There was no pop-up at this point, which makes sense as they hadn’t viewed my credit report. I unfroze it, and called, and okayed the application, assuming that the sign-up bonus would be what I applied for since it was the same application they were proceeding with. The customer service rep didn’t mention my ineligibility for the sign up bonus points, but after being approved, she mentioned only the $500 Chase Travel credit. I inquired, and my application didn’t show the 100,000 points. I was transferred to another person, to whom I requested a match – she escalated it, and a day later I received a letter saying I was ineligible – that was it – no explanation.
At no point was I informed that I was ineligible. I certainly wouldn’t have gone through with the applicaiton had I known.
I’ve sent a secure message asking them to give me the bonus points since I wasn’t informed that I was ineligible during the application process. I’ll update here.
They will have a lot of unhappy people!
When is an offer not an offer? This new strategy by credit cards is a sign of desperation and I’d be surprised it won’t be challenged legally sooner or later
The Wells Fargo Sapphire Reserve.
It’s a software issue as opposed to a human rep falsifying an application.
I have find Chase to have notoriously bad customer service, this is not surprising at all. Good luck to everyone!
have found***
Last year I applied for the Chase United Explorer card. I clicked submit at the end of the application and got a message with a system error, associated details, and it said please try again. So I did as asked and went through the application a second time. Guess what? Chase opened two identical card accounts in my name. Thankfully I had taken a screenshot of the error.
I tried resolving this with chase for over a month, even getting all the way up to their executive escalation. They would not undo one of the accounts, they were simply offering to close it but not remove it from my credit reports. I filed a CFPB report and 2 weeks later they magically were able to nullify one of the accounts and can send a letter to the credit bureaus to inform them of the issues. Best of luck to these folks in trying to resolve these issues with Chase.
Is CFPB still a thing? There was report that it was discontinued by the government
He said last year not this year.
I just used CFPB and got a successful resolution to my problem. They helped me to get $700 back which was applied to someone else’s account at Chase. I am very pleased with using CFPB.
Does pop-up appear before or after the hard credit pull. If you decline after the credit pull then wouldn’t that query goes goes into your credit history
The credit pull is less of the issue than Chase reporting that you’ve gotten a new card when you haven’t asked for one.
I understand that. In addition to that I personally would not like to have credit pull in my account after declining
From the reports that I have read, people are getting the pop up at 2 different time points, before and after credit pulls. While Chase changed the rules to say that you can have both the Sapphire Reserve and Preferred, the data points so far indicate most (if not all) people who currently hold a CSP and apply get a pop up even before the hard pull. For those who do not currently hold a Sapphire product, usually they will first do a hard pull, and then sometimes the pop up will appear (often for people above 5/24, etc).
In FMI, there are also reports that there appear to be two different “pop-up” checks in the Sapphire application process.
If they’re able to deny you the bonus based on your card history with them (eg, you have the Preferred) then the pop-up appears before a hard pull of your credit. But there’s apparently a second determination after a hard pull of your credit which may result in a pop-up warning.