(Update 12/13/23: This law was passed and just went into effect for cards closed from December 10, 2023 and beyond. New York residents should have all redemption options available to them for 90 days after a card is closed.)
The New York senate has passed ‘Senate Bill S7104A‘ that states credit card customers must be given a 90 day grace period to use credit card rewards after a card is closed.
IF ANY CREDIT CARD ACCOUNT OR REWARDS PROGRAM IS MODIFIED, CANCELLED, CLOSED OR TERMINATED, THE HOLDER MUST RECEIVE NOTICE FROM THE ISSUER OF SUCH CANCELLATION, CLOSURE, TERMINATION OR MODIFICATION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, AND IN ANY EVENT WITHIN FIFTEEN DAYS OF SUCH CANCELLATION, CLOSURE, TERMINATION OR MODIFICATION. BEGINNING WITH THE DATE ON WHICH NOTICE IS SENT, THE HOLDER SHALL HAVE NINETY DAYS TO REDEEM, EXCHANGE, OR OTHERWISE USE ANY CREDIT CARD POINTS
The terms of the bill also provide an exclusion for fraud and misuse.
THE PROVISIONS OF SUBDIVISION TWO OF THIS SECTION SHALL NOT APPLY IN THE CASE OF FRAUD BY THE HOLDER WITH RESPECT TO THE CREDIT CARD ACCOUNT OR ANY RELATED REWARDS PROGRAM, OR MISUSE BY THE HOLDER OF THE CREDIT CARD ACCOUNT OR ANY RELATED REWARDS PROGRAM.
During the recent American Airlines saga, American Airlines claimed the cancelled account holders participated in fraud and American Express uses misuse language when clawing back points/cancelling accounts. That being said this new bill could be useful for cards with annual fees as you could cancel the card and still have 90 days to use the points, although presumably any multipliers or increased redemption rates you normally get for holding the card (e.g Chase Pay Yourself Back) wouldn’t apply. Many card issuers also already offer a grace period for annual fee refunds.
In the past some card issuers have prevented residents of specific states (notably Iowa) from applying for cards due to certain local legal requirements. It’s unlikely that this would be the case in New York due to the market size, but specific exclusions could be put in place.
Hat tip to imnion
I switched the address on my Sapphire card to NY (relatives PO box) so if they shut me down for churning inks I can take them to arbitration. They can claim misuse but it won’t be worth it for them to fight in court.
Just so we understand, how many ink cards did you open/have?
Currently have 9 open. Every pair nets 275,000 points. (using P2 referral) that’s a ~23 percent return on the $12k you need to spend. If you redeem thru Sapphire reserve its~34%. Any way you want to manufacture spend is worth it at that return. I’m working on 4 cards right now. Will open more as soon as possible. This is a better return than the amex NLL and 99 AU offers from a couple years ago
Any chance you can tell me how you got to the 275k figure?
I did a couple of calculations myself but do not get there.
Btw, I got the elevated BRM offer for the Premier earlier this month, so 150k UR + 25k UR for 10k spend. Minus $195 AF. Also have CSR to redeem.
Still your set up might be better going by that 275k number.
Also, if you don’t mind me asking, do you close any of your cards within the first year to not run into the problem of having too much credit extended by Chase?
Lastly, since you mention “pair”, do you do 2 card applications in the same day (MDD style)? Or do each card app separately on different days, with I assume some waiting period in between?
TIA 🙂
trying again since original comment seems to be lost to Spam after an edit (annoying!)
Any chance you can tell me how you got to the 275k figure?
I did a couple of calculations myself but do not get there.
Btw, I got the elevated BRM offer for the Premier earlier this month, so 150k UR + 25k UR for 10k spend. Minus $195 AF. Also have CSR to redeem.
Still your set up might be better going by that 275k number.
Also, if you don’t mind me asking, do you close any of your cards within the first year to not run into the problem of having too much credit extended by Chase?
Lastly, you mention “pair”. Do you do 2 applications in the same day (MDD style)? Or separate them, doing each application on different days (with I assume some waiting time in between)?
Thanks in advance…
To answer your questions in order:
I open an ink unlimited and an ink cash using P2 referrals. SUB on each card is 90k, plus 40k for each referral, plus 15k for the spending (unlimited at 1.5 pts/$ cash at 1 pt/$) 90+90+40+40+15=275.
I don’t think you can redeem premiere with CSR- there was a glitch allowing it but it lasted only several hours.
I’ve never closed a card. I have so far gotten approved for another 3k on each card I open (I believe that is the minimum.) I then transfer from other cards reducing them to 500 or 1000 credit limit (how low you can go depends on the rep)
I usually do two in a row, but I’ve been getting automatically approved, or if it goes to review then switches to approved within several minutes. If you do it during the day you can call recon on first if you have to before applying for the second one.
For anyone that already read this far down, I’ve been toying with the idea of opening merchant services as office supply and then I can run the money on my inks thru that and earn 5 pts on the cash and 1.5 on unlimited, resulting in a small gain after the fees. I can do it under P2 (different last names and can use diff addresses) to avoid getting shut down. Can anyone recommend me a cc processor with reasonable fees that won’t ask too many questions?
Thanks for the reply. Very informative!
For whatever reason I never thought about using (or at least calculating) an ink cash at just 1%, hence my confusion with 275k.
Side note: I have 3 ink cash (via downgrades years ago) and continually max out the 25k limit on ‘office supplies’ for each of the cards every year.
But I’m using some good old fashioned in-person methods for unloading, so can’t help you with your last paragraph…
Now that I’ve finally been under 5/24 for a few months, I’m still uncertain if I’m gonna continue to wait 90+ days between apps or try to ramp it up like you?
Getting good value over the years churning banking boni with them as well as taking advantage on stuff like the ink spend and quarterly offers on multiple Freedom/Flex cards (again all ‘collected’ via downgrades), so a shut down would suck.
But also feel like this current situation won’t last forever and I might feel that I missed out.
Chase has a hard limit on how many business cards you can get it’s 2 in 90 days or possibly 2 in 30 days I don’t recall exactly. I also have ways to manufacture spend but they all involve outside factors that can change at any time. I’m looking for a setup where I control the whole process, even if I net a few percent less.
Regarding closing– I just checked the application and there does not seem to be any language in it regarding bonus forfeit if closed within x amount of time.
How do you avoid irs reporting limits when depositing? Do you split up into different banks?
And looks like you’re right, sadly.
checked the combine points section at chase and this pops up on top of the page:
Moving points to Ink Business Premier is final and irreversible. Ultimate Rewards points cannot be moved from the Ink Business Premier card to another Chase card.
With the elevated offer it’s still over $1500 in profit so not too bad.
Or I can always wait for the next glitch to transfer them… 😉
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/point-transfers-from-chase-ink-business-premier-now-possible/#comment-1739619
Good decision to do it right away.
I still hadn’t even applied for the card yet at that point, so had no chance.
And to answer your question above: if you refer to MO’s, yes I have a few that I use for mobile deposits. The ink spend mainly goes through loading though (as I survived each past shut down wave somehow).
Welcome to the site
This is why I will never visit NY… you can’t even fly without a firearm from that airport and every other airport in the US you could. I hate CA and NY so much!
Huh?
Lol. Read it a few times.
Wow, I guess I need to get a firearm if I want to return from NY.
This is about the most redneck thing I’ve read all of 2023 lol. That’s impressive.
There is 18 more days left, don’t give up yet. You may find more than this.
Alot of hate in the comments … Pro gun rights non owner here… NY is one of the only states without pass thru law… This guy has a point!
I could see this potential law having unintended consequences. Say you get shut down from Chase and they claim you abused the rewards program. Under this law they would not be required to give NY residents the 90 day grace period to transfer your points out as they’ve typically done. Would they actively choose to take this route? Idk, but still possible with a strict interpretation. Remember, they are the ones who decide you engaged in “abuse” of their program
Correct me if I’m wrong but the law doesn’t forbid to give better conditions than these minimums…
NY strikes again.. Work for a company that we can’t cancel them for a year for non-payment of premium. We got to eat premium while they get the benefits and hope we get paid after year is up. Shaking my head. Great for the consumer, very anti business. Businesses have bills as well right now and are in rough positions as well as joe consumer no ones has endless pocket books
JPMC and Citi have deeper pockets than the average consumer – they’ll be just fine. Worth noting, in my (limited) dealings, Citi offered me 90 days for points use after cancellation of a card.
When Citi shut me down they took away $10k in points on my double cash card.
Filed arbitration against them and they sent me a check thankfully.
why would you keep so much in CB.
I don’t, that was about 20 days of cashback that was pending and going to be posted on my next statement. Couldn’t have withdrawn it yet.
You put $500,000 through a credit card in one billing statement?
Yes. Used to buy around $20,000 of Simon prepaid debits daily and bought money orders with them every day.
No wonder you got shut down. There’s so much red flags, a bull would go blind.
Lmao. I mean, more power to you if you figured out a way to liquidate that much, but I’m surprised the IRS or feds didn’t get involved. Yes it’s legal, but damn does that look like money laundering.
Wow… with that much spend I do not understand why would they close your account (unless you were doing something unwelcome)… If it was not MS, but an organic spend you could probably buy an airline on your points, not to mention fly 1st or business :)))
haha, that’s great. In CA we’ve been told to issue 6 months of premium refunds because our 7 year tail business “might” have less risk during covid (despite evidence of the opposite)
They just keep spending OPM
Do you work for a premium finance company or insurance company?
It’s a real issue that laws and regulations hurt businesses. I deal with a few employee protection laws on my job that definitely seem dumb in some aspects.
However, people go through the trouble of drafting these laws and regulations only after multiple bad powerful actors do whatever they do to hurt the individuals and get away with no consequences. There would be no need to regulate an industry if the industry is capable of regulating itself. So let’s not blame the government… blame instead the bad apples in business for hurting their own peers in business.
Points and miles have real value. Glad to see at least some states and people advocate for consumer protections.
Too many idiots parrot the lie that deregulation is good and somehow benefits them. Nope. That only helps the oligarchs, ya dipshit. And unless you’re Bezos or Buffet or the Koch Bro that isn’t dead yet, you likely aren’t bein’ helped by deregulation, son.
It’s next to impossible to fight and win against these big banks and major corporations.
Whether it’s a new state law or more funding to CFPB, I (and this “blog” community) should welcome it.
Heh, STFU, man… /s
First of all, let’s see how far this bill goes. We’ll check back. Secondly, if you think regulations are why you get the best products and pricing as a consumer, then places like EU and Canada will have the best everything forever. Instead, these places host some of the worst corporations, products and prices anywhere in the world. The best customer treatment is always present when the customer has the ability to say ‘hey if you treat me bad, I’ll go to the guy right across the street’. If you did any amount of strategy work in your life, lived in different places and tried to compare how things work, you’d understand. CFPB itself is needed because it’s crazy complicated for anyone to even enter the banking space. Go check out how even very well-funded upstarts like SoFi are struggling to get a banking charter. It’s the same regulation folks who didn’t bargain enough for the consumer in the 2008-09 crisis because their brain just doesn’t work. They could’ve easily said, I’ll bail you out if you promise not to foreclose anyone. Instead, 5 million+ homes were foreclosed. You want to talk about income equality? It’s the same folks that designed quantitative easing that’s now the core cause of the wealth inequality. It should’ve been pretty easy to predict what would happen if you inject steroids into economy. But in a way these people are smart. Income equality is now their catchphrase, that’s their primary business now. But no one says wait a minute, you guys keep causing these problems that eventually benefit you. Even a first year economic student or an average person on the street who has any capacity to think would tell you regulations favor incumbents. But people like you focus more on getting applause from your peer group, that’s just how you’re wired. In the process you don’t think independently or intelligently. You think New York regulators are working day and night for the average consumer? If that’s the case, most store cards that charge retroactive fees would be illegal. Or for that matter 29.99% interest rates. Equifax breach wouldn’t have happened. Even after the fact what regulations can you list that’ll avoid the next brrach like equifax? If you reread everything I wrote I never said big corporations are good. They are what they are but they need to be constantly displaced. If you have to read thousands and thousands of pages of regulations before even starting a business, it’s more than likely you’re going to be stuck with the incumbents. I mean Walmart isn’t cheap because there’s ten regulators hovering over them all the time, it is cheap because if they raise the milk price by 10 cents a significant percentage of their customer base will go somewhere else. Check out how regulations worked in NY historically. You’ll find a give and take understanding where NY regulators have quick access to the financial records of not only anyone in the country but a significant… Read more »
JJ, I get what you’re saying, and I read your entire detailed response. I realize you’re advocating more for a free market system that regulates itself (you know, consumers go to the competition if they don’t like a company’s policies or prices or whatever). However, the idea of regulations and regulators is to hold those corporations accountable. Us little consumers cannot often hold them accountable on our own. Most remedies, like the legal system and class action lawsuits, mainly benefit the attorneys.
I appreciate your thorough response to my somewhat sarcastic commentary. Tryin’ to keep what can otherwise seem depressing and defeatist as light as possible.
Free market after 2008 is nuts IMO. At the end is just us who pay for them when they fucked it up
I wish Hawaii would adopt this. Hawaii legislators usually just copy bills that other states have already passed. It’s amazing how consumer protection laws in other states have not made its way here.
Well they are coming via ship that far. It’ll take few years for the bills to come ashore. It’s easier here in mainland.
The Senate can’t pass a law.
Updated title
The galactic senate can do whatever he wants.
I love democracy.
user name does and does not check
As always, they’ll the tax the rest of the folks to provide for this specific group. Isn’t that the whole business model?
High earners don’t carry the balance but force merchant acceptance. In turn, people that pay with cash/debit card + people that carry balance pay for the rewards.
Compared to that dynamic, managing this without losing margin is a piece of cake for any issuer.
The only ones that’ll be primarily affected by all these stacked up micromanagement from the government is the next entrepreneur trying to start a business in this space.
Cool rant. Mad ups
Swipe fees, AF’s, and selling data to ‘marketing partner’s. Issuers make plenty off of high earners.
Many low earners with simple cards probably pay close to a platinum fee of a high earner, or sometimes even more with little to no rewards. It’s just not labeled as annual fee. Cash advance, FTF, retroactive interest, balance transfer. And in some cases even things like overlimit.
Also, annual fee isn’t all profit. There’s a whole host of real costs running high value benefits from travel programs, concierge services, underwriting for insurance benefits etc. There’s a huge amount of complex demand predictions that go into this thing.
The main focus of AF is to make you use the card so you keep the card network valuable, which in turn helps the issuer/network earn high swipe fee which in turn is distributed to cash payers and debit card users.
Also, if you’re using the best possible card for each transaction, swipe fees may not always cover the rewards esp for non-Amex cards.
You can also look at high spenders going bust. Amex files plenty of those lawsuits and settles for a fraction. All that cost is spread to everyone.
All chargebacks and disputes are a huge cost for the merchant and they in turn redistribute it to all their customerbase in the general economy – whether high end or low end, whether card users or not.
We can go on and on.
But, ultimately, all this is off point. It’s not high vs low earners. It’s just the unnecessary government involvement addressing all these special cases, which the issuers will find a way to pay for by mugging some other customer.
If this eventually becomes a law, they’ll assemble a press conference and talk about it for an hour and the governor will sign with fanfare all the while there’ll be a little more burden added to some unsuspecting folks.
They could just let the market play itself out. No one is forced to sport a high AF credit card. If enough people cancel, the issuers will probably come up with a less artificial organic solution that goes beyond NY and will likely be a little fairer.
Well needed. If I get taxed for earning the points then they can’t just delete them
You don’t get taxed for cc points, though. (Right?). It’s a rebate.
Get taxed on referrals, even though the terms say you don’t own the points.
At least they don’t use TPG’s valuations
I think you get taxed on referral bonuses, and these can take the form of points.
Taxation is theft!
If you really think that, then please don’t drive your car on the interstate highways that were paid for with my tax dollars. And don’t use airports or other taxpayer-financed facilities.
Even if you believed that, you already helped pay for the roads and airports so you have every right to use them.
Yeah, and what’s the deal with Amex charging for converting MR to airline points?! I know they’re waiving fees on that this year due to Cares Act or whatever, but still.
That has to do with a very specific airline tax (one of the bloggers wrote about it). It’s a bit of a complex situation but they are just passing a cost on to you rather than eating it. CARES act waived that cost for amex so they are waiving it for you
Oh I get it, just saying it sucks that Amex throws that on consumers instead of eating it themselves. Kind of reduces the value of their program. You know, the program we support with our annual fees and the merchant fees they collect with our transactions.