{"id":13765,"date":"2026-05-29T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=13765"},"modified":"2026-05-29T00:01:46","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T06:01:46","slug":"chase-shutdowns-the-new-behaviors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/29\/chase-shutdowns-the-new-behaviors\/","title":{"rendered":"Chase Shutdowns: The New Behaviors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since March-ish (Smarch), both American Express and Chase have been shutting down some of the biggest gamers in the sport. They&#8217;re looking different than past shutdowns, so let&#8217;s document some new behaviors starting today with Chase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Shutdown: What of the Ultimate Rewards?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In recent years when you&#8217;ve been shutdown by Chase, they&#8217;ve given you 30 days (or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.loeb.com\/en\/insights\/publications\/2022\/03\/new-york-law-requires-credit-card-rewards-programs-to-give-notice-of-reward-program-changes\">90 in New York<\/a>) to cash out your points. That&#8217;s all changed though; we&#8217;ve seen two new recent behaviors with points, neither of which matches what used to happen:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Some accounts have points forfeited immediately (and a few of those will have a line-item that says &#8220;courtesy adjustment&#8221; to add insult to injury)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Some accounts have points cashed out at 1.0 cents immediately<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The old 30 day point rule isn&#8217;t around like it used to be, at least for the big guns. There&#8217;s also varying behavior on what happens with pending points that post after you&#8217;ve been shutdown. Again, you&#8217;ve got two possibilities, and <em>what happened with your stash of points seems to have no bearing on what happens with your pending points<\/em>. Your pending points will either:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Be transferrable when they post<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Forfeited<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you&#8217;re shutdown, a random number generator seems to choose which action Chase will take with your posted points, and a different random number generator seems to choose which action Chase will take with your pending points. What&#8217;s the random number generator? I think a team of humans is handling these cases, and they&#8217;re not completely consistent with one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Deposit Accounts<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Avoiding <a href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/18\/chase-shutdowns-aml-and-deposit-accounts\/\">Chase deposit accounts is manufactured spend 101<\/a>, but not everyone follows that advice. For recent shutdowns of cardholders with deposit accounts we&#8217;ve seen a bit of random behavior there too:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Some shutdown cardholders have their deposit accounts stick around<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Some shutdown cardholders have all of their deposit accounts closed<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Some shutdown cardholders see <em>some<\/em> of their deposit accounts closed<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think the varied behavior here is a further indication that we&#8217;re dealing with a team of humans that isn&#8217;t completely consistent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Causes<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The cause for most of the shutdowns is probably pretty obvious if you spend a few minutes thinking about how one might scale, then spend a few minutes thinking about how you might scale your scale, but let&#8217;s just say it boils down to one or both of:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Earning lots and lots of points in a way that&#8217;s not sustainable for Chase<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Redeeming lots and lots of points in a way that&#8217;s not sustainable for Chase<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If that\u2019s not enough and you like bad translations, there&#8217;s public info on some of these <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uscardforum.com\/t\/topic\/508548\/16\">recent Chase shutdowns at UCSF<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Avoiding The Shutdowns<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you&#8217;re a heavy-hitting whale that&#8217;s not yet shutdown at Chase, you probably know that what you&#8217;re doing is moving toward a brick wall, and you&#8217;re probably doing your best to earn as much as you can before the wall wants its dues. A common sentiment amongst most affected by the shutdowns seems to be &#8220;it was worth it&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you&#8217;re not a heavy-hitting whale, this probably isn&#8217;t something you need to be super concerned about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Permanence<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you were shutdown, what does getting back in look like? Well, you might be surprised to learn that it seems random:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Some people get back (seemingly-permanently) after waiting a month or two<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Some people get back after waiting, only to have the cards cancelled shortly after activation<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Some people are instantly denied or have approvals rescinded before cards can be activated<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Again, the same process governing the other aspects of recent shutdowns is probably governing these too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Mini-Analysis<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve avoided mentioning something because I largely don&#8217;t agree with it, but, let&#8217;s mention it anyway: there&#8217;s rampant speculation that the rise of AI has given Chase an easy way to find the gamers. The only evidence I can see for this is the inconsistency because AI is currently great at that, but I genuinely think that&#8217;s just humans doing human things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think what&#8217;s new and why we\u2019re seeing new waves and behaviors is that we recently got:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Uncapped 8x earning<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Lots of 2 cents per point redemptions<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Taken together at volume, those things probably caused a big enough blip on someone&#8217;s radar to have a team look into what was going on. But what do I know?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Have a nice weekend friends!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"330\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-23.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13766\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-23.png 330w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-23-275x300.png 275w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 330px) 100vw, 330px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"font-size:14px\">Chase&#8217;s equipment shows why it was hard to see the blip before we arrived at \u201c8x*2cpp = bad\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since March-ish (Smarch), both American Express and Chase have been shutting down some of the biggest gamers in the sport. They&#8217;re looking different than past<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meta","category-whomp-whomp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13765"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13770,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13765\/revisions\/13770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}