Complete Guide to Downgrading and Switching Products to Earn Welcome Bonuses on Chase Sapphire Cards

He Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card and Chase Sapphire Reserve® They are two of our favorites travel credit cards on TPG.

Both gain valuable Pursue ultimate rewards points, giving you access to some of the Best hotel and airline transfer partners. in business. You will enjoy access to the easy-to-use Chase Travel℠ Portal which allows you to redeem points for a wide variety of travel bookings, including rental cars, hotels, flights, tours and activities.

Both cards come with added perks that can easily justify their respective annual fees ($95 for Sapphire Preferred and $550 for Sapphire Reserve).

Finally, both cards also offer generous welcome bonuses:

• Favorite Sapphire Chase: Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases within the first three months of account opening
• Chase Sapphire Reserve: Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases within the first three months of account opening.

But did you know that you can earn the welcome bonus on both Sapphire cards and even earn a welcome bonus more than once on each card?

Here’s how to do it and why downgrading and upgrading Sapphire cards should be on your radar.

Related: Chase Sapphire Preferred vs. Sapphire Reserve: Should You Go for the Mid Tier or Premium?

Chase Application Restrictions Overview

Chase has three main restrictions if you want to be approved for any of the Sapphire cards:

• The 5/24 rule: To be approved for any Chase card, you generally cannot have opened five or more personal credit cards at all banks in the last 24 months. Most travel cards issued by Chase are subject to the 5/24 approval rule, including co-branded cards. This means that you need to be low 05/24 to be approved. The 5/24 rule only applies to approval of cards issued by Chase, but its 5/24 count includes personal credit cards from all banks.
• The 48 month rule: You won’t be able to get a bonus on a Chase card if you currently have that card in your wallet or if you earned a welcome bonus. on that exact card in the last 24 to 48 months.
• You must not currently have any open Sapphire cards.

Remember that May 24 is not the only factor that determines whether your Chase credit card the request is approved – his credit scoreincome, debt levels and many other variables are also considered.

The easiest way to check your 5/24 status is to sign up for the free credit report service at experian (make sure you don’t accidentally sign up for a paid service).

Open the credit section, then tap to view your Experian credit report. From there, tap “Accounts” and then “Views” at the top right to sort by the date you opened your account. From here, count everything opened in the last 24 months.

Chase only looks at whether an account has been opened; It doesn’t matter if it has since been closed or downgraded.

Finally, Chase has some general app restrictions. Typically, you can only open one personal card and one business card every 90 days, and Chase will often limit the total credit they will extend to an individual borrower, so sometimes it’s necessary to change lines of credit to get approved.

Read more: The definitive guide to restrictions on credit card applications.

When (and how) to downgrade your Chase Sapphire cards

If you have one of the Sapphire cards and it’s been at least 48 months since you earned a welcome bonus on the card, you might be eligible to earn one again, but you’ll need to be strategic about following the Chase rules mentioned above.

Remember, you cannot earn the bonus on any of the cards if you currently have a Sapphire card, so you must be “Sapphire-free.” As we discuss below, there are several reasons why you should downgrade an existing Sapphire card instead of canceling it entirely.

The good news is that you don’t need to wait two years after canceling or downgrading to be eligible for a welcome bonus; The time counted is from when you previously received the bonus.

For example, let’s say you got the welcome bonus on the Sapphire Reserve card in August 2021. In that case, 48 months will have passed by September 2025. As long as you are under 5/24 years old and meet the other general credit criteria As described above, you can reduce your Sapphire Reserve and thus be eligible for the welcome bonus at either Preferred sapphire or the Sapphire Reserve At that time.

Requesting a card downgrade is pretty simple: Call the customer service phone number on the back of your card and speak to a Chase agent to tell them you want to downgrade to a card with a lower annual fee or no annual fee. You can also contact Chase through a secure messaging portal on their site, but reports suggest that product exchange requests must be made over the phone.

Keep in mind that you must stay in the Chase brand family when you downgrade a Sapphire card and you can’t upgrade from a personal card to a business card. As a result, the most popular options for a downgrade include Chase Unlimited Freedom® and the Chase Freedom Flex®.

If you’re lucky, you might even get a prorated refund of your annual fee when you downgrade to a card with a lower annual fee (especially if you do so within 30 days of the annual fee posting on your statement). Chase will not need to run a credit check as it will keep your existing account instead of opening a new one.

You will retain the account number, balance, and expiration date of your previous product when you downgrade your card. You will receive a new card with the new product name within a few days, but since the card number will be the same, you will be able to continue using your old card under the terms and benefits of the new one before and even after. You are issued a new card.

Why you should downgrade and not cancel

The age of your credit accounts accounts for 10% of your total credit score. Therefore, keeping this account open will continue to improve your credit score.

Downgrading instead of canceling will also allow you to maintain your overall credit limit, which influences your credit utilization ratio (It helps your score to have access to a lot of credit as long as you don’t use too much). By keeping your utilization low, you also keep your score high.

On the other hand, canceling your card can affect the average age of your accounts and increase your credit utilization rate by lowering your overall credit limit. It may also delay your ability to apply for a new Sapphire card.

At least one TPG staff member canceled his Sapphire Reserve card outright, and when he applied for the Sapphire Preferred card almost a week later, he was denied. Several Chase representatives, including in person at a Chase branch, told her that because accounts can legally be reopened for 30 days, she couldn’t apply for the Preferred card until her current Sapphire account was officially closed a month later.

So, if you ever want to apply for a new Sapphire card without a long delay, consider downgrading an existing Sapphire card instead of canceling it.

Plus Ultimate Rewards points They are lost when your account is closedalthough the terms and conditions state that you will have at least 30 days from the closing date to redeem points if your account is in good standing.

The big downside to downgrading a card is that you typically won’t receive a welcome bonus for the card you’re downgrading to. However, if you plan to earn a big bonus with a Sapphire card after downgrading, you can still get ahead.

What happens if they deny me?

If Chase denies your new Sapphire application and you have complied with the above restrictions, it is worth calling to ask if options are available.

Some TPG employees who downgraded a Sapphire Reserve card to apply for the Sapphire Preferred card had to change credit lines to be approved. In other words, Chase looked at their overall financial picture and decided it had given them all the credit it could.

But by talking to representatives and agreeing to move some of the credit lines from other cards to a new Sapphire Preferred, they convinced the issuer’s representatives that they could open a new card responsibly.

Others had to call the bank reconsideration line and verify your income and mortgage information to be approved. Although there were some additional hurdles to jump through, in every case I found, former Chase Sapphire cardholders who were outside the 48-month window were ultimately approved for Chase Sapphire Preferred.

In a nutshell

Although it can be a little complicated, you can get the welcome bonuses on the Chase Sapphire Preferred and Chase Sapphire Reserve, even if you already had (or still have, but are willing to downgrade) one of them. You just need to be strategic and flexible and work around Chase’s application restrictions for both cards.

Start by reviewing all of your credit card accounts and determining if you’re outside the 48-month bonus eligibility period for these cards and if you’re below Chase’s 5/24 limit.

If that’s the case, consider whether you can switch to another Chase card and then apply for the new card when you’re ready. While you may be approved within a few days of downgrading, it’s safer to wait at least a few weeks before applying for a new one, just to make sure you’re no longer marked as an existing cardholder.

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Apply here: Favorite Sapphire Chase
Apply here: Chase Sapphire Reserve

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