Upgrade offers to Venture X for some cardholders [Targeted]

Some Capital One cardholders have received a nice little upgrade offer to the upgrade to the Capital One Venture X Credit Card and earn 50,000 bonus miles when after spending $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months after upgrading. While not as good as the welcome bonus for opening the card, this could be an attractive offer if you have an existing Capital One card and can’t seem to get approved for another.

The Offer

• Capital One has targeted some cardholders with an upgrade bonus to upgrade an existing card to the Venture X: earn 50,000 bonus miles when you upgrade and spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months after you upgrade. This is a targeted offer coming out via email.

Key Terms

• This limited-time bonus miles offer (Bonus Miles Offer) is nontransferable and applies only to the account identified in this email.
• The Bonus Miles Offer is only available to cardholders who upgrade their account to Venture X by December 22, 2022.
• Your upgraded Venture X account must be open and in good standing at the time the bonus is fulfilled.
• If you change your Venture X card to another card or if your account becomes delinquent, closed, restricted, over the credit line or otherwise not in good standing, you will not be eligible for this Bonus Miles Offer.
• Cardholders who upgrade their account are not eligible for bonuses that may be available when opening a new account.
• Eligible account holders who upgrade to Venture X by 11:59 p.m. ET December 22, 2022, are eligible to earn a one-time bonus of 50,000 miles after spending $4,000 on new, net purchases (purchases minus returns) made between time of upgrade and March 22, 2023 (Bonus Miles Offer Period).
• Only purchases made after upgrading to Venture X will qualify for this Bonus Miles Offer.
• A purchase will be based on the date a transaction posts to the account and must post within the Bonus Miles Offer Period to be included in your minimum spending requirement.
• Purchases that post to your account before or after Bonus Miles Offer Period, cash advances, transfers and checks used to access your account are not considered purchases and will not count toward meeting the minimum spending requirement.
• Any bonus earned will be in the form of miles and will be posted to your account within 90 days of the Bonus Miles Offer Period end date.
• Purchases made by any authorized users or account managers on your account that post during the Bonus Miles Offer Period will count toward the minimum spending requirement, but authorized users and account managers are not eligible to earn their own bonuses.

Quick Thoughts

The public welcome bonus on the Venture X card has been better than this upgrade offer since the card launched. However, while we have certainly had more approval data points on the Venture X than we had gotten in the years prior to the launch of the card in 2021, there’s no doubt that Capital One can still be tough on approvals (particularly for those of us with many accounts with other banks).

If you’re eligible for the new cardmember bonus, I think it’s worth taking a swing at that. However, if you’ve tried and haven’t been able to get approved and/or you’re trying to conserve a 5/24 slot, this upgrade offer could certainly be worth it. The card itself is an easy win in my opinion between the annual $300 travel credit and 10,000 anniversary miles, which combined add up to somewhere around the cost of the annual fee ($395). If you place any value on the ancillary benefits like Priority Pass (note that it will lose restaurant access in January), Plaza Premium lounge access, Hertz President’s Circle status, 5x flights and 10x hotels booked through Capital One Travel, and the potential for occasional offers like the recent one for $75 off a flight booking from the US to Canada or a hotel in Canada, I think it could certainly make sense to upgrade.

Unfortunately through this upgrade offer is targeted and as such some (many?) people just won’t be eligible. It seems that targeted cardholders will have received an email, potentially with the subject line “Your limited-time upgrade invitation: Earn 50,000 bonus miles”.

Furthermore, the upgrade window is pretty short. The email says:

We value you as a Capital One customer—that’s why we’re excited to offer you an opportunity to experience Venture X without applying. All you have to do is claim your offer to upgrade by December 22, 2022.

When you upgrade your current card to Venture X, you’ll keep the same account number, APR, credit line and payment due date.

Those who received the email today have exactly two weeks to accept the offer. You don’t want to miss that email if you got it and you want to upgrade.

While neither my wife nor I received offers to upgrade our plain Venture cards to Venture X cards (she has an existing Venture X), I’m excited to see Capital One offering this possibility. You may have read that last sentence and wondered why we continue to carry plain old Venture cards if my wife has a Venture X. That’s a great question — it doesn’t make sense and we are likely to “upgrade” (Capital One’s term for any product change) to some sort of no annual fee card at some point soon — but I wouldn’t mind Capital One encouraging me to instead upgrade one of them to another Venture X for 50K miles. Here’s to hope for future rounds to come out.

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