bilah1

If you redeem ur points for a revenue ticket you get ff miles on that airline. You are not transferring points but redeeming. The airline assumes you paid for that ticket and appears as though it's purchased thru a travel agency.

millere2

A high balance has nothing to do with getting in trouble. Opening and closing cards to often is a different story if abusing it. There are plenty of people here that hoard millions of UR/MRs.

duke2013

If chase closes your account, is there any way to appeal to ask them to reconsider or by then is it a done deal?

Happy

Based on the incidents I have been told (by those who got shut down), Chase actually sent you a check of the UR point balance, at the value of 0.01 per point of course. But it does not seem Chase would make you losing all your points even when Chase decides to shut you down because it deems you are either using your accounts "Not with Intended Purposes", or you are a high credit risk due to your high credit line / high utilization ratio.

Beltway's suggestions of parking your UR pts at spousal account(s) are good ones if your SO's history with Chase is more "Kosher".

Happy

Mostly done deal, based on stories I have been told - especially if the accounts are closed due to "not used for intended purposes" or "for business reason" (translates to: you are deemed either a high credit risk or a potential fraud.)

Dont think your bank branch manager could help you. They would normally try but not always succeed, especially if Fraud Dept is involved, all bets are off.

Happy

@:-)

Though I think millions might be a bit exaggerated, if those millions come from spending.

But those have gathered a lot of points via open/close too many cards in short period do have their worries about having the high balance (not earned from spending but from sign up bonuses) and the possibility of losing them. I can certainly understand their worry and fear.

Happy

Correct. But then the most value you could get from your UR points would be a measly 0.0125 per point versus twice or more value you would get by using your miles for award tickets which the value per mile could be as high as 0.05 or more even for a coach ticket (that is a last minute to a location underserved by airlines because of family emergency / wedding / whatever event you MUST be there.)

Happy

You get 33% more value or 25% discount - they are the same thing but expressed in different terms when different basis are used in the calculation.

Your math is off, or better way to put it, misled by the banks' marketing wording.

Both UR pts and TY pts when used to redeem an airline revenue ticket, have the SAME value.

They work the same way:

A $100 worth ticket, you only need 7500 points. That is a 25% discount.
75/100 = 0.75, 1-0.75 = 0.25 so you get a 25% discount.

Or, $75 gets you a $100 worth ticket, that is a 33% bonus. 100/75 = 1.3333. So you get a 33% bonus.

It is the SAME thing, except being expressed differently, using a different basis to do the calculation.

The banks do not deceive you when they correctly use the term of 33% bonus but given many folks are a little bit math-challenged since the age of calculator (not to mention the computer), they can be fooled into thinking the above are different. They ain't!

The only advantage is, if one needs to earn status with the airlines, and does not want to shell out cold hard cash to do Mileage Run, then the points would become handy for such purpose because those tickets redeemed by either UR or TY pts are just like regular paid tickets and earn both EQP/EQM/RDM.

However, from the value of redemption point of view, Miles of a FF program almost always yield higher value than the Cash-Equivalent point redemption.

Happy

Could you point the sources of the reported incidents?

AlohaDaveKennedy

Yeah, stop being nervous - you act like you are guilty and expecting The Spanish Inquisition. Forget about it - just answer the knock at your door and come along quietly.

Happy

Actually Chase does disclose the reason(s) - almost always "Accounts are not used for Intended Purpose" or "Accounts are not used for Normal Usage", and "for Business Reasons". The last one of course we dont know what it is for, but my best guess is either you are deemed a credit risk due to your activities on your cards (not just Chase cards but also including other cards you own as Chase does Account Reviews via soft pull just like AMEX does.), or you are deemed as committing some type of Fraud. In one incident the cardholder pushed the envelop too far by engaging the bank branch manager to push a Southwest card open despite being declined TWICE by the Recon dept. Result? SW card was opened for a day. Then all cards got shut down the next day, incl the newly opened SW card.

I would say those who bragged about how many Chase cards they open in a short period of time, they better have Verifiable info on their applications and their other card usages would pass the Account Reviews Chase periodically perform. They may get some newbies luck (like betting on horse-races) but eventually something may come back to bite them at the rear if their "stated" income are not verifiable.

The former reason we can attribute it to Accounts only see the minimum required to earn bonuses, or Accounts being heavily used to get the 5% rebate of 6 months especially with interim payments to get over credit line multiple times during a billing cycle that could get flagged by the computer and therefore attracts human scrutiny. One thing leads to another.

Happy

@:-) ^

Exactly how I feel.

84fiero

I was only thinking of the stories I had personally read, and the posters had said Chase refused to give a reason, supposedly. But if they have given statements like the above, that seems like enough of an explanation for me if I had been using (or rather, not using) the cards like that and got caught with my pants down.

The OP for this thread seems to have nothing to worry over given their situation. But these kinds of stories like those someone linked to upthread, are a cautionary tale though to plan carefully and think about the longterm strategy of the game.

tassojunior

In Chase's eagerness to approve me for many new cards, I do worry that they have extended too much credit line. That could potentially cause a shut-down so I am considering asking that some limits be lowered.

bluto

There's a whole thread going on over at dan's deals about Chase closures. I've only skimmed the thread but I think there's probably ten firsthand accounts there of accounts being closed and the thread is 57 pages long. Most of the folks there who have reported having their accounts closed did nothing worse than your average MilesBuzzer. The closures seem to be picking up in frequency lately. I think those of us who have dismissed it as isolated incidents of 2-3 cases might be underestimating the risk.