IHG Business Card Lifetime Language
On the heels of the great 200,000 points IHG Business card offer returning it was noticed that Chase slid something else into the terms that was not a welcomed sight. There is now some new IHG Business card lifetime language we have to worry about. We have seen this come to some of the Ultimate Rewards products, but it hasn’t been the same for co-branded cards. I hope this isn’t the first of many of such changes, but I am not holding my breath.
New Application Terms
Here is what the IHG Business card lifetime language looks like on the 200K bonus offer applications:
‘The new cardmember bonus may not be available to you if you have ever had this card. We may also consider factors pertinent to your business in determining your bonus eligibility.’
It appears that the new restrictive terms have not made it to some old links that are still showing the 140K offer according to Doctor of Credit. People may be tempted to try to grab that if they have had the card before, but are outside of the 24 month bonus window. It is possible you may still get the new pop-up though.
Old Application Terms
The old application terms looked like this:
This new cardmember bonus offer is not available to either (i) current cardmembers of this business credit card, or (ii) previous cardmembers of this business credit card who received a new cardmember bonus for this business credit card within the last 24 months.
Those are the terms we have all become so accustomed to. That is no longer the case with the new IHG Business card lifetime language. If you try to grab a link that hasn’t updated with the terms yet be sure that you take screenshots of everything in case you run into issues later.
How Will These New Application Terms Work In Practice?
If these are anything like the Sapphire rules then may is going to be doing a lot of heavy lifting for Chase. There are no real hard and fast rules when they go to these terms. Some people have been approved even when recently getting one of the other cards (or same card), while others have been denied after not carrying the card for a long time.
I think that the type of customer profile you have with Chase is the determining factor. If you are considered a profitable / valuable customer, to whatever backend rankings they have, then you can wiggle around the rules. If not, then you are likely to be denied if having the card before. That is my take on it at least after seeing a lot of data points out there. It is probably worth the hard pull for people to try and see if they are interested in the welcome offer though.
New IHG Business Card Lifetime Language
This is yet another negative change by Chase to their application rules. It looks more and more like Amex’s application rules, but possibly worse. I say worse because the rules are so murky that it creates frustration.
While I like the IHG program, and the personal card, I don’t think people were lining up to scoop this card up over and over again. Because of that this isn’t the biggest loss. What I do fear is this makes its way to other products that people do care about getting every two to three years.
What do you think about the IHG Business card lifetime language being added? Do you think it will continue to spread to other cards? Let me know down below or over in the MTM Facebook Group.
