The last weekly update mentioned I was going to do a mini app-o-rama. I applied online for 2 cards that night: the CitiBusiness Platinum Select American Airlines AAdvantage World MasterCard (what a mouthful!), and the Chase IHG Rewards Club card. I’ll post full reviews of each card later, but for now I’ll just mention each card’s bonus offer.
- CitiBusiness American Airlines AAdvantage card: 50k miles after $3k in 3 months spend
- Chase IHG card: 70k IHG points after $1k in 3 months spend
Here’s how my online applications fared:
Boooo… No one likes to get the “Application Pending” message. It’s so anticlimactic compared to the “Congratulations! You’re awesome enough to get our great rewards card! Great job, sport!” message you get when you’re instantly approved. Alas, I got two ‘pendings’ so I called both reconsideration lines the next day.
I got through to a live person with Chase after 1 ring. After I asked about the application he quickly put me on hold so he could find someone to review my app. When he came back after 3 minutes and told me to hold again I asked him if my total credit limit with Chase was the reason my application was pending. He said it was over the limit he’s authorized to approve, but he had recommended a credit increase (meaning I would get the new card) based on my credit report. Before he could get me on hold again I asked him if he could just transfer some credit limit for the new card from one of my existing Chase cards. He quickly told me that it would work, he asked which card I wanted the credit limit transferred from and how much, and put me on hold to finalize it.
When he came back after another 3-4 minutes the application was approved, pending identity confirmation. He added Rachel to the call (same person I talked to last time I needed to verify my ID) and after a few questions she verified that it was really me. Everything went quickly, smoothly, and most importantly, the way I wanted it. I’ll chalk this call up to another example of Chase’s excellent customer service.
The next call was to Citi’s application status hotline. After hearing that my app was still in process, I followed the prompts to speak to customer service. This may have been a mistake since I already had a direct phone number to the CitiBusiness recon line. I think all I got for my laziness was an extra 20 minutes on hold. When I finally got a real person on the line, it went very smoothly. He checked on my application and verified my income and identity. After 2-3 minutes on hold he informed me I was approved and would get the card in the mail within 5-7 business days. It arrived a week later (today). Overall the Citi customer service was good, but the hold time was annoying.
Why only 2 card applications, bro?
Good question. A friend of mine questioned my choice and number of cards for this latest round, and I don’t blame him. Conventional wisdom says “App 3 cards; make each app-o-rama count, son!” While I usually agree with that wisdom, there are several reasons for my decision to only get 2 cards this time around.
- We may be applying for a mortgage or mortgage pre-approval within the next few months. While my high 700s credit score probably won’t suffer enough to make a difference on a loan application, I don’t want to push it. My logic may be a bit off, but it makes me feel better to tone it down a bit for the time being.
- There are no *spectacular* offers out there at the moment. All the standard “good” offers that are available right now are already in my wallet or in my safe. And the really good cards I still have yet to get (Chase Hyatt, Southwest Rapid Rewards to name a few) don’t fit into my timing strategy at this point.
Overall, this nice little app round gets me 50k AAdvantage miles (currently my favorite airline miles) and [at least] 70k IHG points, which fills a weak point in my overall points and miles portfolio. Stay tuned for more details on the offers, as well as full reviews on my new cards!
In the meantime, here are the links to the flyertalk wikis for the cards in this post. The wikis contain links to the card offers; and the most recent forum posts contain data and reports on people’s recent applications and bonus offers.
Flyertalk IHG Card wiki
Citi American Airlines cards/offers