Two Chase Credit Card Bonus Promotions – But Are They Any Good?

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UPDATE: Some or All of the offer(s) mentioned in this post have now expired

I hold a number of Chase co-branded credit cards and, towards the end of last week, I received two very similar promotions from Chase both of which offer me an opportunity to earn bonus points. Both of the promotions are clearly designed to entice me to put more spend on my co-branded Chase credit cards and, as I’m sure quite a few readers would have received very similar emails, I thought I’d take a look at just how good these promotions are and if they’re worth considering.

Chase IHG Rewards Visa Bonus

The bonus offer (Offer Expired):

From 1 October to 31 December 2016 use your IHG® Rewards Club Credit Card and earn an additional 1 point per $1 spent on each single purchase of $1,000 or more — earn up to 8,000 bonus points.

• The offer applies to any type of purchase
• There is no need to enrol – you will automatically get the bonus points if a transaction qualifies
• The bonus is in addition to what you would normally earn.

I value IHG Rewards points at around 0.6 cents each so, based on that valuation, each transaction of $1,000 or more would earn the card holder an effective rebate of $60.

If I was booking an IHG stay (InterContinental, Holiday Inn etc…) this could be a nice bonus to earn because I’d also be earning 5 bonus points per dollar for using an IHG co-branded credit card at an IHG property…..but that’s as far as I think I’d go.

The Chase IHG Rewards credit card earns 1 point/$ on categories in which I’m likely to spend $1,000 in a single transaction and even though this bonus would lift that to 2 points/dollar, that’s still only an earning rate of 1.2 cents/dollar – I can do better than that with almost all of my other credit cards.

Chase British Airways Visa Bonus

The bonus offer (Offer Expired):

Earn 1 additional Avios per $1 spent on every purchase of $1,000 or more with your British Airways Visa Card from 10/1/2016-12/31/16 — up to 8,000 extra Avios

• The offer applies to any type of purchase
• There is no need to enrol – you will automatically get the bonus points if a transaction qualifies
• The bonus is in addition to what you would normally earn.

Clearly not too much imagination at play at Chase HQ as this is basically the same offer as has been published for the IHG Rewards credit card!

The Chase British Airways Visa earns 3 Avios/$ on transactions with British Airways but only 1 Avios/$ on all other purchases.

I value Avios at around 1 cent each (although I can definitely get more value out of them than that) so, essentially, the promotion is offering me a 2 cents/dollar rebate on all non-British Airways transactions and a 4 cents/dollar rebate on transactions with British Airways….and this results in an interesting situation.

I wrote a post on Friday explaining why I think the Amex Platinum personal card has effectively killed the Chase BA Visa and, under these promotion terms, I don’t see too much changing.

You can now earn 4 Avios/dollar with either the Amex Platinum or the Chase BA Visa card when purchasing airfare through British Airways and, as Membership Rewards points are more flexible than British Airways Avios, I can’t see many reasons why someone would choose to use the Chase Visa.

However, when it comes to shopping categories that don’t earn bonuses with any of the credit cards I have, this promotion gets interesting.

I don’t value any of the popular loyalty currencies above 1.8 cents/point so as this promotion effectively earns me 2 cents for every dollar I spend it’s interesting.

When I add the 2 cents/$ earn rate to the fact that my Avios balance could do with a boost right now I find myself tempted by the promotion. With that in mind there’s a good chance that I would use my Chase BA Visa if I was going to make a substantial purchase in a category where no other credit card gives me a bonus.

The irony here is that the Chase British Airways Visa Card is still not very good for British Airways purchases (which is what it’s supposed to be designed for) but may actually have a use for other spend.

Bottom Line

I don’t see anything in the Chase IHG Visa promotion that would tempt me to spend any more on that credit card than I was going to anyway….and I only put IHG spend on that card anyway.

The Chase British Airways Visa bonus is a little more interesting because it gives me the option of earning 2 Avios/$ on all categories and, as long as I don’t use the card to spend in categories where I’d earn a bonus with another card, that isn’t a bad deal.