A few days ago, we published reports that people were receiving $150 to $250 retention offers for their Chase Sapphire Reserve and Chase Ritz cards. The deal was simply to call Chase and ask if a retention offer was available. I have both of those cards so I figured it was worth a shot. And it was! With one 20 minute phone call, I raked in $575!
A reader named Ed reported that it was best to call between 9am and 7pm ET and so I called on Wednesday at 11:15am. I asked if a retention offer was available on my Ritz card. The agent I spoke with clicked away a bit and said that it looks like there may be an offer “because I have the option to connect you to a senior advisor.”
The senior advisor asked if I was thinking about cancelling the Ritz card and I said yes, I was considering it. He went on to explain to me why I shouldn’t cancel it: I would lose benefits, I could instead change to a less expensive card, etc. Finally, rather than argue the case, I admitted that I didn’t want to cancel, but I had heard that people were being offered $150. He immediately said “yes, that’s a courtesy credit I can give you. Not a big deal.” Score!
I then asked him if there was a similar credit available for my Sapphire Reserve card. Yep. $250! Sweet!
I then asked if he would mind cycling through all of my Chase cards (I have quite a few) to look for similar offers. He agreed. All cards with an annual fee except for my fairly new Hyatt card resulted in cash back with no strings attached! Here are my complete results:
- Ritz Card: $150
- Sapphire Reserve: $250
- Ink Plus: $50
- Marriott Bonvoy Boundless: $50
- Marriott Bonvoy Premier Plus Business: $50
- IHG Rewards Club Select: $25
In total, this 20 minute call resulted in $575 back with no strings attached. Awesome.
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Success today, $150 Ritz and $100 SW Priority. Nothing on Hyatt. Thanks so much, Chase, I love you! And FM too 😉
02/02/21 Called and received $25 statement credits on both of our old IHG cards, and 5000 bonus points on both old Freedom cards. No offer on our Ink card. Previously received $150 credit on our CSR. Thanks for your informative site, and for putting your readers first.
Just received 30,000 points to retain Amex Platinum
[…] sporting events would be played in empty stadiums, bitcoin would hit $29K, or that Chase would give away money like it’s their new hobby. Predicting 2021 in totality would be a tall order, but given how […]
good success on my side! 20 minutes of total time I believe.
Spent 15 minutes chatting with Amex on my business platinum and my wife’s business platinum. Got 50,000 point offer on my card and $100 credit on her card
Ritz: 5 minute call, got $150 credit.
I haven’t had my reserve and ink opened for a year yet, so he told me to call back when my year is up to see retention offers for those.
FYI Chase required me to call in, I tried a secure message but they told me to call.
At least $750 in value for 20 minute call is a good use of my time!
Multiple calls:
1) About 2 weeks ago: Called CSR number. Female rep offered $150 statement credit. I asked about other cards and without checking the accounts, she flat out said only CSR is offering retention credits because it has the highest AF.
2) Today: Called World of Hyatt number. Male rep told me there was no offer on card.
3) Today: Immediately called IHG Select number. Male rep went to transfer me to a “specialist” and then the call dropped.
4) Today: Called IHG back 10 minutes later. Different male rep straight up said they don’t do retention offers “anymore” because they found them not to work. When I asked how long ago this stopped, he said about a year, so I knew he was either lying or didn’t know what he was talking about. He even said there is no more retention department anymore lol.
5) Today: Immediately called IHG back. Different female rep told me there was a $25 offer on my account and asked if I wanted to be transferred to their retention department for a potentially better offer. I didn’t want to potentially lose the $25 and also was in a bit of a hurry so I just accepted the offer and asked if she wouldn’t mind checking my other accounts for similar type of offers. After about a minute on each card: Freedom #1: 1.99% APR for 6 months, Freedom #2: 2500 UR pts, United: nothing, World of Hyatt: nothing.
HUCA saves the day!
TL;DR
After multiple calls:
CSR: $150 SC
WOH: nothing
IHG Select: $25 SC
Freedom #1: 1.99% APR for 6 months
Freedom #2: 2500 UR
Just goes to show HUCA can really work. YMMV of course.
Good luck!
Note: My Freedom cards are the original ones (i.e. not Unlimited, not Flex).
[…] toe into credit card rewards waters, though I’m far from an expert. But if an actual expert like Frequent Miler can save $575 with a 20-minute phone call, surely I can save $35 for myself. Which is what I […]
$150 – Ritz
$25 – IHG
$50 – Marriott Bondless (have only used this card 1x this yr)
$0 – Hyatt
All in under 5 minutes using the same rep
Zero luck on my six cards.
I will second Anand here and say I got the full $95 annual fee credited back for the Ink Plus, instead of just $50 mentioned in this post. $250 for CSR, $150 for Ritz, and nothing for the fee-free 3x Freedom and Amazon. Will try calling again later for Cash Preferred.
Thanks so much for reminding me about this. I called and got $425 over 6 cards in about 10 minutes. And none of the annual fees were due. Easiest retention call ever. Thanks Greg and Nick!
Did a full review of my cards (CSR, United Explorer, Business Preferred) with a retention specialist and struck out on all three. Disappointing, but I’ll still keep them for now. I wonder what the trigger is for retention offers – certain annual spending or maybe spending this year?
[…] and read my tips on making retention calls. I took a page out of Frequent Miler’s playbook (My $575 phone call (complete in 20 minutes)) and called about these 4 credit […]
Just a DP on my C$R
Just called the number in photo. Representative said she had to transfer me to the C$R rep, 12 minutes of silence later I hung up and called the C$R number on card, (800-436-7970), the one with no option tree but straight to human.
I talked about cancelling or a downgrade PC and inquired about annual fee refund.
She offered full refund of annual fee or $150 statement credit and she brought up the ability to get my $300 annual travel credit via Grocery purchase after my December statement close. Very easy.
Other DP’s
Account opened Sept. 2016.
Annual fee posted Oct. 1, 2020.
Many thanks for this post as I would have never thought of retention from Chase, (historically Chase doesn’t play this game).
SO, I called the number on the back of the card and was told there is nothing they can offer. She went into the benefits of the card… Then called the 855 number shown in the post here and also was told nothing is available! I have had the card since August 2016!
Maybe they stopped offering this??