Chase Sapphire
Posted on: July 5, 2010
The Chase Freedom Credit Card has a lot of cool features for individuals looking for a new line of credit; benefits such as $50 cash back on your first purchase, no annual fee and up to 3% cash back from there, depending on whether these purchases are in line with what you typically purchase with your credit card or not. That all sounds very good, upon further examination you are first considered for their Chase Freedom Visa® Signature card, and then automatically be in the running for their Chase Freedom Visa® Platinum card (if you are not approved for the prior card), before you get the Chase Freedom Credit Card.
Seeing that your credit is pulled for two different cards in this application we figured we'd take a look at the terms of those two different cards and see how they compare in order to inform customers of what they were getting themselves into. The Chase Freedom Visa Signature card can have an APR up to 31.24% variable, though the interest rates for other transactions such as balance transfers and cash advances were definitely a bit lower than that. Your grace period is 20 days, your transaction fee for balance transfers is generally 3% but cannot exceed $99. One clear advantage of the Signature card over the Platinum card is that there is no over the limit credit fee. This is information we pulled from the Rate, Fee and Other Cost Information from the First Usa website that is promoting the card.
With the Signature card the Bonus Rebate of the initial $50 is applied after 6 to 8 weeks; the 3% works out to a 1% base rebate for each dollar of additional purchase and a 2% bonus for $1 of eligible purchases gleaned from those 3 categories of which you shop the most. Outside of that, you can get a maximum of $12 a month on $600 of net purchases. Once you are actually a card member with them though those terms can change, which are outlined in information they mail to you at that time.
“Okay that is good and all but what about the Platinum card that they say I may be eligible for if I cannot secure the Signature card”, is what you are probably wondering about at this point. That was the card I wasn't able to get information on; if you look at the Chase website you find a lot of promotional information about the idea of the Freedom card in general, without a lot of differentiation as to what the differences between the two cards are or any benefit of getting one card over the other. Logic would dictate that if you cannot get the Signature card, you certainly would not be able to get a Platinum card, though we found similar verbage at this website which suggests that other card is just a plain old Chase Platinum Visa Card.
This time the over the credit limit fee is $39 and their is no rebate plan whatsoever. As far as balance transfers; no more than $75. So it's still a bit hazy as to whether or not an application for the Chase Freedom Credit Card isn't a slick way to direct consumers towards their regular Chase Platinum Visa Card, which does have some benefits that are negligible but certainly not as enticing as their rebates. Either way, consumers are paying a lot in interest once that grace of being a new customer wears thin and there aren't any clear indications as to what the credit limit would be for either card as well …
Chase Sapphire - Zero APR Credit Card 
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