My last round of credit card applications was in November, so this week I decided to apply for a few new cards. I wanted to include two small experiments in this round; both of which proved successful after a small mistake on my part.
Which Cards Did I Apply For?
Alaska Airlines Personal Visa - 30,000 Miles
To take advantage of Alaska Airlines’ generous stopover rules on international award tickets and to build up my miles, I went for both the personal and business versions of this card. I’m sure people have been approved for both, but hadn’t heard of many reports of people getting approval for both versions on the same day (read more down below).
The 30,000 mile bonus offered on this card is earned after the first purchase so this was an easy one to add to my round of applications and did not add to a total minimum spending requirement.
Result: Approved after receiving a call from Bank of America several days after submitting my application.
Alaska Airlines Business Visa - 25,000 Miles
The Alaska Airlines Business Visa offers 25,000 miles after the first purchase as well. I was approved after calling into the reconsideration line and answered a few questions regarding my business.
Result: Approved instantly after calling the reconsideration line.
Chase Ink Plus - 50,000 Points
I grabbed the Chase Ink Plus to earn 50,000 more Ultimate Rewards points. I had yet to have the Ink Plus business card, but now seemed like a good time to increase my Ultimate Rewards point balances. Between the 50,000 points from this card and the 45,000 points from my Chase Sapphire Preferred that I applied for last November I easily replenished my Ultimate Rewards account.
Result: Approved instantly after calling the reconsideration line.
Marriott Rewards Business Credit Card - 30,000 Points + 2 Free Nights
After getting the Marriott Rewards Premier Credit Card card last year I figured now was a good time to grab another one of the three Marriott cards offered. Bad timing? Yes, I was wrong...Marriott announced their devaluation two days after I applied for the card. Hopefully I can still find some good uses for the category 1-4 free night certificates, but inevitably there are fewer and fewer properties to choose from after each devaluation.
Result: Approved instantly after calling the reconsideration line.
The Experiments
Experiment # 1: I first wanted to apply for both the business and personal Alaska Airlines Visa cards. There are few reports of people getting both versions of this card at the same time, but I assumed it was possible to get both in the same day since Bank of America has some of the most lenient rules for earning the welcome bonus on these cards multiple times. It’s even possible to have multiple Alaska Airlines cards open at the same time.
The missing application. After hitting submit on both the personal and business applications, I received a pending status on both cards. The next day I called into the reconsideration lines for both cards and was instantly approved for the business card, but when the rep searched for my personal application they weren’t able to locate the application within their system. After trying to pull it up by name, social security number and address, there was nothing.
At first I thought I may have closed out of the application window on accident before the page was done loading. With no reference number I thought I was out of luck and didn’t feel it was worth applying for the card the day after realizing that the application was not successfully submitted. However, Bank of America called me today to ask several questions about the application and I was instantly approved. Mistakenly I did not enter the apartment unit number in the application and it was flagged for fraud--thus not showing up in the system and sent to a different department. After confirming my address the fraud department representative told me I was approved for the card.
Experiment # 2: I’ve heard conflicting reports about receiving the free night certificates for signing-up for multiple versions of the Marriott Rewards credit cards. For multiple cards you would be eligible for the bonus points, but not for multiple free night certificates. The bonuses on these cards are split between Chase, which awards the points and by Marriott which gives out the 2 free night certificates. Since the terms state that the bonus is only eligible for first time cardholders I was unsure of whether or not one would be able get the free nights on the multiple versions of the card.
“This one-time bonus offer is valid only for first-time Marriott Rewards Credit Card Cardmembers. Previous and existing Marriott Rewards Credit Card Cardmembers are not eligible for this bonus offer. Chase is not responsible for offer fulfillment.”
The results? Two free night certificates were deposited into my account the day after getting approved for the card.
As I gear up for life on the road (or out of a bag) full-time starting in June, I am still building up my miles and points accounts before I depart. Likely I will launch another round of applications before I head to Asia and plan to focus on earning more free hotel nights.
With only four cards this round of credit card applications was fairly conservative; all-in-all I got 135,000 points and 2 free nights. If the second Alaska Airlines card didn't come through I would have been slightly disappointed, but in the end I think it was a successful round and look forward booking some awards using Alaska Airlines miles in 2014.
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