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Chase Pre-Qualified Offers
As we know, Chase doesn’t like to approve those who got five new credit card accounts within the past 24 months. And this week that got extended to many co-branded cards and business cards – previously, it was just for Freedom and Sapphire cards.
Many reports indicate that certain preapproved/prequalified offers from Chase will help you bypass the 5/24 rule and allow you to get approved. This does not mean you are guaranteed to be approved, but that you have a good chance.
Most of the preapprovals I’ve heard about were for the Sapphire Preferred card. Some have been preapproved for the INK card, especially if you have a business relationship with Chase, like a Chase business checking account or possibly if you have other Chase business credit cards. A Reddit member just went into Chase to open a Chase business checking account with a $500 bonus and was told he’s preapproved for an INK card. (That card might have a 70,000 point signup bonus too.)
There are a number of ways of potentially circumventing the 5/24 roadblock:
- Get a pre-qualified offer in-branch
- Chase Private Clients seem to have more success getting approved
- Get a mailer (or an email) with an invitation code
- Targeted offers might be exempt from the 5/24 rule
Let’s take a look at each of these.
Branch Pre-approval
If you go into a Chase branch, they can check to see if you are prequalified for any credit cards. The idea here is not to simply go in-branch to apply for a card, you have to ask them specifically to find any prequalified offers showing for you.
Many people have gone into a Chase branch for an unrelated reason, and the banker would casually mention that s/he sees that are preapproved for the Sapphire card or a different card. I suspect they make money on approvals so they are always on the lookout to offer these to clients who come in.
In any case, if you get lucky and the banker tells you that you are preapproved for a card, you should be past the 5/24 hurdle and you’ll be able to get approved for the card if everything else checks out.
Be sure to apply in-branch using the pre-qualified offer. Just because you have that offer in-branch, it doesn’t mean that you can simply apply using a regular online application.
Even if you checked the online checker and don’t see any offers, you still might be pre-qualified in-branch. There are different criteria used. (More on the online checker below.)
Private Client
Frequentmiler reports that Chase Private Clients get offers which circumvent the 5/24 rule. (Private Clients tend to get superior offers as well.)
Various data points seem to indicate that Private Clients don’t have the 5/24 limits at all, and they’d be able to get approved even using an ordinary online application (not only in-branch).
Mail Invitation
The other option is to get the elusive invitation-only offer in the mail. Sorry, I can’t tell you how to convince Chase to send you one. 🙂
My friend E* from Demflyers shared with me a picture of what a preapproval looks like. Note the invitation number at the top-right and at the bottom of the letter.
This preapproval was from a few months ago, sent to someone she knows. They had applied for the Sapphire Preferred card and got denied. A week later they got this invitation-offer in the mail, applied, and got approved.
Targeted Credit Card Offers
Chase will sometimes offer signup bonus offers targeted for specific people. One example an occasional higher-than-usual United MileagePlus offer which requires a login to your United account to see if the system will give you the offer.
Frequentmiler speculates that these offers may not have the 5/24 limitation. It might also vary based on the offer.
Online Pre-Qualify Checker
You can check for your pre-qualified offers from Chase here. There are also similar pre-qualified checkers, such as CardMatch. But we don’t have any evidence that applying through this link will help you bypass the 5/24 problem.
To learn more about pre-qualified offers with Chase and other banks, see these posts:
- View Your Pre-Approved & Pre-Qualified Credit Card OffersÂ
- View Your Chase Pre-Qualified Credit Cards
Note that when using a pre-qualified offer from any method described in this post, you typically can’t use a friend’s referral link. It may be possible to tell the banker that you were referred to the pre-qualified card by a friend, and they’ll be able to credit the friend with bonus points. Let us know if you have success with that.
Thanks also to uscreditcardguide for some good info on this topic
