Originally Posted by sdsearch

It sounds you're not very familiar with the Aspire card if you think of it as having a $450 annual fee. For many people, it's a near-$0 or even negative "net" annual fee, it they can make use of both the $250 airline credit and/or the $250 resort credit and/or get enough value out of the free night.

In fact, it's quite possible for someone to be more easily be able to afford the Aspire (because of the "net" fee being so low or negative) more than being able to afford the Ascend (which doesn't have any offsets to the $95 AF).

Also, this isn't the first person to get the Aspire with no bonus. Back in January and'or February, several people posted about going for upgrade offers from Surpass->Ascend to Aspire, when there was no upgrade bonus available. Isn't upgrading with no upgrade bonus about the same as signing up with no signup bonus?