2017.4 Update: According to recent data points, this method is now dead. It worked for about 3 weeks.
Chase IHG Credit Card has always been one of the best cards that we recommend to keep, mainly because you can receive an annual IHG Free Night without any category restrictions from the second year after paying $49 annual fee. Using the annual free night in a high-category InterContinental Hotel is simply fantastic. But relatively speaking, the sign up bonus of this card is not great. Normally the public offer is 60k+5k points, you can get extra $50 statement credit by using dummy booking. If you ask Chase to match offer, you are able to get 80k+5k points bonus, but $50 statement credit would be taken back. Through the dummy booking, only a small number of people could see 80k+5k+$50 bonus. It’s really difficult to get both the extra 20k points and $50.
In fact, everyone is able to see a landing page with 80k+5k+$50 offer by clicking this link directly: https://creditcards.chase.com/a1/ihg/80plus50saml. The problem is that if you continue to click “apply now”, you will see “offer not available” and then you are redirected to a page with only 60k+5k bonus.
Only people who get targeted to the 80k+5k+$50 offer would successfully enter the normal application page. Is there any way to crack it? One of our reader renji found a way may work for some people. The steps are listed below:
- Requirement: need to have an IHG account, need to have a Chase account, but no IHG credit card.
- Steps：
- Log in to Chase account;
- Log in to IHG account. Make a dummy booking, and look for the dummy booking link;
- Most people should still see the 60k+5k+$50 offer, click into the landing page and then go to the application page. (Note that you must click into the application here, only visiting the landing page is not enough.）
- And then click this link directly：https://creditcards.chase.com/a1/ihg/80plus50saml.
- At this point, you must see 80k+5k+$50 offer page, click “apply now”. If lucky enough, you will be able to enter the normal application page. You will find IHG Rewards # field that has been automatically filled in.
- If this doesn’t work, check if you are still logged in on Chase. If you are logged out somehow, log in again into Chase, and repeat step 4~5.
- If this still doesn’t work, you can try it again by using a different browser, clearing cookies, etc.
Note that you shouldn’t use incognito mode, as you definitely won’t see the final application page in incognito mode.If you still can’t see the application page after you follow all the steps, then this method may not work for you.
Many readers helped to test this method. Several readers are able to enter the application page and submit the application without issues. Reader niuzhazha repeated this whole process and he found his new IHG card is already in his Chase account this morning. But this method didn’t work for everyone. That’s why we added YMMV words in the title. An annoying point about Chase application page is that it doesn’t show up the sign up bonus information. renji have already confirmed with Chase that the sign up bonus is 80k+50k+$50 after applying, so do not worry about Chase honoring the bonus.
Data points are highly welcomed ~
H/T: renji
Disclaimer: This article is talking about bank loophole. Such a loophole can not exist permanently, the bank may update the system to fill the loophole at any time. This site does not guarantee 100% success rate, with the credit card industry term called YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary). This site is not responsible for unsuccessful. For the things mentioned in this article, be sure to follow the Churner Basic Law: Please do not call the bank to ask about any related things! This article is about bank’s loophole, the bank’s customer service shouldn’t know about it. Giving them the call is just to remind them of the existence of loopholes and then accelerate the death of the loopholes. So do not call! Do not call! Do not call!
This is a translated article , please click “中文” at the top right corner of this page (desktop version) for the original Chinese version. The article is written by physixfan, and translated by boboo.