Rapid Travel Chai

Chase Offers launched in late 2017 and ends March 31, 2018.

Use up your offers by 3/31 if any interest you. Many of us did some variation of choosing a few offers such buying Amazon gift cards at Whole Foods and then not using the associated credit cards for anything else.

Only the Chase Slate and Chase Marriott cards participated.

Like Amex Offers, But Not

Chase Offers was a response to the popular Amex Offers. The marketing goal is to get higher card usage, to vault a card to ‘top of wallet’ for everyday purchases. Amex has been running their offers long enough that the financial model must make sense to them, presumably well-funded by participating merchants.

The problem with Chase Offers is that it is a bolt-on of Visa Offers. A separate webpage and log-in are required. With no convenient link from the Chase webpage, Chase Offers doenot become part of regular routine as with Amex Offers. Customer complaints about credits not posting get lost in customer service finger-pointing between Chase and Visa.

Chase is quickly killing a flawed product. Should we applaud?

A Second Life?

If Chase Offers is never to return, then it does seem premature and questionable to not have run this experiment with cards like the Chase Freedom Unlimited that have broader popularity and can vie for top of wallet space. The Slate and Marriott cards are weak, not fitting the customer profile of people willing to visit a separate site to find dollar-saving deals.

We can hope Chase picked the right idea (copy Amex Offers) and quickly realized their execution was poor.

The positive in this experiment is that several offers were good quality and reasonable size. Compare to Bank of America’s offering that caps some offers at maximum rebates in tiny amounts like $2.

If Chase has avoided or extricated themselves from any contractual obligations to Visa, perhaps a real Chase Offers for its better cards, integrated into Chase accounts, is on the way.