For as long as I remember Chase has had an unofficial policy of matching to a higher credit card sign up bonus as long as you applied within 90 days, the offer you’re matching to is public and if the offers had the same annual fee (e.g they won’t match to an annual fee waived first year offer if your original offer didn’t state that. This wasn’t always enforced).
When the Chase Sapphire Preferred launched to a new bonus of 80,000 points a lot of readers reported not being successful getting matched. At the time I was confident that they just needed to wait a day or two so the front line customer service representatives could be trained. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case and Chase is still not matching this offer.
Chase is also denying matching bonuses on the Chase IHG 140,000 + $50 bonus (although there is a report of a successful match on the Chase IHG 100,000 no annual fee offer) and Marriott 5 free night certificate offer. It’s a shame that Chase has made a change to this unofficial policy, I suspect it’s a sign of more increased bonuses coming and also a small cost cutting measure. Unfortunately it leads to applicants with a bad taste in their mouth if they sign up for an inferior offer and I wonder what effect it has long term on application rates due to analysis paralysis.
