My experience with Chase has been overwhelmingly negative, in terms of customer service representatives having any idea what they're talking about, or even really trying to be the least bit helpful. I would not be at all surprised to find that Chase CSRs don't know the terms of the BA deal, and so I would take anything they say--positive or negative--with a grain of salt.

I do expect BA to live up to the terms announced, and will be very disappointed if BA does not. Both my wife and I shifted quite a bit of business spending for 2009 over to our BA cards so that we could each earn a 2009 companion award, and both of us hit the target, so I am still expecting the companion awards to show up in our accounts. It really would be nice, though, to have clarity on whether this is going to happen, as we could run both cards up to $30K for 2010 easily right away, but might choose to wait till later in the year if we knew that the 2009 certificates were indeed on their way.

Of course, now that BA is cutting SEA-LHR back from 13 to 7 (!) flights per week, award availability here stinks anyhow....

Kurt