Originally Posted by
StartinSanDiego
...benefits are tremendously appealing ...
Not really. Chase built their credit card business through acquisition, and it really shows in this product. Chase does a good job on rewards, and on insurance (which is outsourced), but they have flubbed Priority Pass by outsourcing the administration, and there is little else. They apparently don't have the relationships or knowledge to build emotional hooks into a product.
They must spend more money on this card by mid year to avert a huge wave of cancellations next Autumn. This means offering more benefits to existing cardholders with no incremental revenue from those accounts. They need to create the
impression of an product that is evolving, offering
increasing value over time. If they've only placed a couple hundred thousand cards they face the same problem that Citi has not been able to overcome - they won't have the scale to make the cost per account low, and if they pull back it's over.