Questions and Answers

Lucky,

My wife and I have been churning credit cards for about 6 years now. We are not heavy churners but we have gone through probably 100 cards in that time.

Three times in the last 9 months I have signed up my wife or myself for a card and then when we completed the spend, we didn’t get the bonus because we had the card before. I just forgot about it.

How can I avoid this? Should I call and ask the credit card company [I]before [/I]getting the card?

Thank you very much,

Bryan

Do you remember which cards you were denied the bonus for? American Express cards are typically once per lifetime on the bonus….

My wife was denied on the AMEX SPG. She was also denied on a Chase card, I think the Freedom.

For Amex, what is the “unit” that is once in a lifetime? If there are business and personal cards are they counted separately or together?

And for Chase what is the unit, are personal and business different?

Thanks for responding.

For AMEX, they are counted separately. So in your wife’s instance, she could get the bonus from the SPG Personal AMEX and the SPG Business AMEX.

Chase, I haven’t heard of a similar restriction on the bonus. They obviously have their 5/24 rule, which I’m sure you are aware of being a regular credit card user. But if she was over 5/24, she wouldn’t have even been approved for the Chase card.

Maybe someone else with better knowledge of Chase can chime in.

For Chase, let’s say you’re trying to get the bonus on a Freedom again. I *think* you must have closed the Freedom at least 6 months ago and cannot have gotten a sign-up bonus in the last 24 months. But that may not be 100% accurate.

Have you considered creating a spreadsheet to keep track of your cards? Application date, approval date, bonus amount, when you got the bonus, when the card was cancelled and other useful information should be included.

Yes, I have. That would work going forward, but what about all the cards that I have had in the past seven years?

I think you probably have to comb through your credit reports and try to identify what you had (free at annualcreditreport.com). With American Express you can call in and ask to see if you have had a specific card before. Could probably do that with other issuers but I haven’t tried it.

[QUOTE=”Gaurav, post: 35209, member: 79″]I think you probably have to comb through your credit reports and try to identify what you had (free at annualcreditreport.com). With American Express you can call in and ask to see if you have had a specific card before. Could probably do that with other issuers but I haven’t tried it.[/QUOTE]

That is a good idea. I also have Credit Karma. Will just have to build my history.

Thanks very much.