So I got a Chase Ink plus last July as part of a credit card churn back in May of last year. I’ve enjoyed the card, especially the 5x points at office supply stores. This has led to many opportunities to get free money, as the various office supply chains (Staples, Office Depot, Office Max, etc.) have deals on gift cards.
Chase Ultimate Rewards are probably my favorite rewards currency out there, since they’re so flexible. But in order to truly maximize them, you need to have a premium card (like the Ink, or the Sapphire Preferred) so you can transfer them to places like Southwest, or United, or Hyatt, etc.. But with the annual fee coming up, and my wife having also gotten an Ink card when the bonus went up to 60,000 points recently, I don’t have the need to have a premium card myself (since I can transfer points to my wife at no charge)
I had called into Chase a few weeks ago as part of my periodic card housekeeping, and they had offered me a retention bonus of 10,000 Ultimate Rewards to keep the card open. I thought about it for a bit but in the end, decided to just cancel the card.
But why can’t I downgrade the card?
What I REALLY wanted to do is just downgrade the card. Chase offers the Chase Ink Cash card, which is a no-fee version of the Ink card. It doesn’t offer a lot of the benefits that the premium versions have, and you won’t be able to transfer points to airline or hotel partners. But what it DOES offer is the 5x points at office supply stores, which is probably the best category bonus out there.
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Now for me, it doesn’t really matter, since I play the credit card “game” in 2-player mode, and as I mentioned earlier, she has the Ink card, so I can always use her card if/when I need to. But I don’t understand why I can’t downgrade the card.
Other banks / issuers allow this. There has been lots of talk about potentially downgrading your annual fee-having Citbank cards to something like the Citibank Double Cash Back card, and I believe Amex also allows this, to something like the Every Day card.
But twice now when I’ve called Chase they have not allowed this. They say, “oh well you can apply for a new card and then cancel this one.” Uhhhh no thanks. I’ll save my credit inquiries for cards where I actually GET a signup bonus
In the end
So in the end, I just canceled the card. I tried to transfer my credit limit, but because it was a business card, they couldn’t transfer the credit limit to my Chase Freedom card but that’s okay.
Anyone have any experience downgrading with Chase? Any tips? Share your experiences in the comments
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Maybe they denied your downgrade request because you write about ” easy points, more points and gaming the system?
They are shutting down accounts for number of reasons these days for all the things you and other bloggers write about
Thanks for the comment Sam. While it is true that I have heard talk of people’s accounts being shut down, I’m not sure that really applies here. After all, they would have been fine to keep my card open (and even offered me a retention bonus). From my understanding in talking with the Chase phone reps, it is a system-wide thing that Chase Ink Plus cards cannot downgrade to Chase Ink Cash cards and that doesn’t make sense to me.
I will be in the same boat you are in a few weeks. I currently have 80,000 UR points from this card and around 40,000 with the sapphire preferred card. If I merge the points into my sapphire account and then cancel the ink card, they wont take those merged points away, correct?
Correct. I had this happen to me a few weeks ago when I closed my Sapphire card. When I did that, they said that they would transfer the points to my Freedom account, but they didn’t – my Sapphire poitns just went away…. Luckily I was able to call Chase and they “rescued” them for me.
So I’d definitely transfer them over to the card that you’re keeping before you close it. That’s what I did with my ink.
Why wouldn’t you take the 10,000 point retention bonus? That’s at minimum $5 more than the annual fee. Makes no sense if you want to downgrade to the cash card anyway.
I agree with the Dr…I would take 10k bonus points in a heartbeat!
But if you want to manufacture 10,000 Ultimate Rewards, can’t you figure out a way to do that cheaper than paying the $95 annual fee?
I guess what they’re trying to say is if you’re paying the $95 fee, you get 10K points, AND if you manufacture 10K points for cheaper than $95, then for = $200 in points.
In hindsight, I should have paid that fee and kept the card…
The only experience I’ve had is exactly the same — no go on the downgrade.
Would like an update. Has anyone had any luck downgrading the Ink Plus to the Ink Cash? Or, has anyone been denied of that lately?
Was wanting SO to get the Ink Plus but don’t want to take a chance of having to cancel and applying for a new Ink Cash when the AF hits.
Update: For those who could not downgrade the Ink Plus to the Ink Cash, did you abide by the 12 month rule of Chase? I know they won’t let you upgrade/downgrade unless the card is at least 12 months old.
I just called them and was able to convert to the Ink Cash from the Ink Plus (though I was doing the business card)
I tried to get the 10K retention but it wasn’t offered.