A few brief thoughts on the Chase Sapphire Reserve and the month of AUGUST
Hello DISchurners friends and welcome to the month of August. If you're anything like me, you have no idea that it's August because you're still waiting for March Madness, the Masters, the NBA Finals, and a bunch of other things to happen before it could possibly be August...but I assure you, it is in fact AUGUST.
A bit of backstory on the CSR:
August has a very interesting history with the Chase Sapphire Reserve card. You see, back in August 2016, the Chase Sapphire Reserve Card (CSR) was released. Newer churners may not even remember a time before the CSR existed but to many long-time churners it was a defining point in churning history.
The CSR and it's all-time high bonus of 100,000 UR POINTS (yes you read that right) for just $4k MSR was indeed a game changer. What was once a fringe hobby suddenly got thrust in to the mainstream. People were talking about this new credit card and it's sign-up bonus worth $1,500 in free travel! A $450 annual fee seemed like a non-issue. This card, and its big-time bonus brought a bunch of people into the churning game and in my humble opinion, too many of them stuck around. What's done is done, and there's no sense in crying over spilled milk but the Pre-CSR churning days are thought of as the "good old days" by many a veteran churner.
Nonetheless, this new card came along...and attracted a ton of new people, BUT most churners at that time weren't going to be eligible because of that pesky 5/24 which at that time was still a fairly new concept (it first came along in mid-2015).
The LEAKED link:
Monday August 15th, 2016... I'll never forget it. Sometime during the Monday work day, a LIVE link for the CSR was found, and the card wasn't going to be released for another week. And even crazier...the link did NOT have a 5/24 restriction!!
I ALWAYS perused r/churning on Mondays... I was bored, it was Monday, you know the drill. Well this Monday...I didn't. I was busy...doing who knows what... by the time I caught my "T" home...the link was DEAD!
Close to a hundred of my friends on r/churning took advantage of the link in the couple of hours it was up. And then a week later, when the card was officially launched, 5/24 was in place, and everybody who missed out on the leaked link got denied.
For those that care to read a bit more
here and
here.
August 2017... The ONE Sapphire to rule them all.
On or around August 27th, 2017 - Chase implemented a new rule on the Chase Sapphire card lineup. As we all know now, the "one Sapphire rule" basically tied the bonus eligibility on the 2 cards together. If you earned a bonus on either Sapphire card in the past 24 months, you were now ineligible for a bonus on the other one. So all of those new CSR fans who thought, wow I could get some more URs by grabbing a CSP... were suddenly not able to do so. CSR holders clung to their card stating "My Precious!" (Ok that last part is a little Gollum humor)
August 2018... no CHURN for you!
AGAIN On August 27, now in 2018 (what a crazy coincidence), just weeks before people would officially be able to churn the CSR due to the 24 month restriction... Chase dropped a hammer on churners: 48 MONTH RESTRICTION on the Sapphire line. So now not only was the one sapphire rule in affect, but if you earned a sapphire bonus on either card in the past 48 months you were shut out! Support links lived on for another 3 weeks or so but then those were gone too.
Also in or around August 2018 is when rumblings started about the death of the double dip as Chase began manually closing cards that were applied for on the same day. Of course, as we know now, there still is the MDD which is alive and well to this day, but the death of the double dip was scary for many churners. You can read more about that
here.
If you haven't been around this game long, you need to realize that we basically expect doom and gloom. There's a LOT of bad news in this game, lol. You just learn to roll with it!
TODAY... August 2020
So why write all of this now? Well, an interesting milestone is about to arise. Some unknown churner out there will soon be the first person to churn the CSR. If the earliest you could apply was 8/15/16 via a leaked link or 8/22/16 via public link, then even if you met your MSR immediately, that first statement close would not have occurred until Sept 2016 meaning 48 months would happen in Sept 2020. I wonder if there's somebody out there who grabbed a CSR via the leaked link and is still under 5/24 ready to be the first to churn the CSR??
If you're one of those early CSR applicants, it might be worth looking back to see when you earned your CSR bonus because you soon might be eligible for a new Sapphire card.
To be eligible for a CSP and/or CSR bonus here's what I believe are the restrictions:
- Not currently a cardholder of a CS, CSP, or CSR (if you have one you can simply PC to a CF or CFU to get around this - you don't have to close the card).
- 48 months have passed since you earned (and posted) any signup bonus on a Sapphire card.
I hope you enjoyed this little walk down memory lane. I am somewhat of a churning historian so it was fun to put this together!
