I decided since it had been more than 6 months (July 08) since I had done this deal last year (hopefully allowing me to close my current account with no penalty), to give it another try for this calendar year. For the record, last year I did eventually get all 21,000 miles even with the $25 annual fee debit card. Oh and I am actually using regular direct deposit from my employer.

So, over lunch I ventured into a local Chase. I was very open that I was setting up another account for the miles offer and that didn’t seem to bother them in the least. I lucked out and got a new(er) and very friendly banker to help me. The office was set up in such a way that we were basically looking at her screen as everything was set up. Since I already had an active account with them, it made things much faster. The system is clearly set up to allow the 11,000 miles from the $25 annual fee debit card. In fact when I was done, they even gave me 2 separate pages noting the miles I would be getting (once the criteria were met).

Also, there are 3 separate places that they need to enter your OnePass #. Make sure they do this. The first is in account set up and appears to give them the ability to show eligibility for the coupon codes later on in the process. The coupon code is entered in after the account is pretty much all set up. Once entered, it brings them to an eligibility screen which shows offers that you earned miles on in the past. The interesting part (to me any way) was that it only listed the 10,000 miles from my July 2008 checking account offer. The Debit card stuff must get tracked separately. A click or so later after specifying the account just set up, there is a space for the OP# on 2 separate lines. Once for the checking account 10,000 mile offer and another on the Debit Card line for the 11,000 mile offer. After entry, they click to confirm eligibility and then it shows the 2 offers as a receipt (pdf) which they printed out and gave to me to keep.

So while I can’t say exactly how many miles I will actually get without following up later on, I got a pretty good feeling that it is set up properly anyway. Last year I didn’t get to see the screen by screen process and was not given the kind of detailed receipt I got this time.