Hidden Southwest Card Promotion You Need To Register For
As regular readers know, the Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards card from Chase is now my go to card. The interesting thing is that this card seems to get better and better. At least there seems to be more promotions coming out lately.
Concierge Promotion
A couple months ago, I wrote about this promotion from their Visa Concierge program. I was still waiting for my credit to show up, so I decided to give them a call. Remember, 16 Rapid Rewards credits is a free flight. That would be the equivalent of 25,000 airline miles, if you could actually find a free domestic flight for that number. That means a single Rapid Rewards credit is worth about 1,500 miles. Really it is worth almost double that because Rapid Rewards are still fairly easy to find compared to “saver” rewards on Delta, United, US Airways, and Continental. American is a bit better in my experience.
Double Points on Gas, October Through Year’s End, But Only If You Register!
I think I picked the wrong month to start bicycling to work. Anyways, when calling about the status of the concierge promotion, I was asked if I had registered for the gas promotion. My response was, “What gas promotion?”. It turns out that they are giving you double credits for gas purchases from October 1st through the end of the year. If you register, they will give you credit retroactively, so get on the phone now! Fortunately, my wife is still driving plenty.
Targeted Promotion For Monthly Spending
I also received a targeted promotion for spending $1,000 a month from September through November, no doubt because I had not been using this card much previous to that. If I hit $1,000 a month on each of those months, I will get an additional 2 Rapid Rewards credits. I will take what I can get when it comes to these things.
What Is Going On?
The representative I spoke to was really quite clear. They just want me to use the card. The cynic in me worried about what message they are sending to people who are in debt. I am sure that they would tell you that they just want customers to use their card instead of another, just like tobacco companies always claim their advertising is only to get people to switch brands. They would never want to encourage smoking, right?
The bigger picture here is that the market for reward cards remains highly competitive, long after many industry mouthpieces claimed the CARD Act would kill them. It is well known that the cost of acquiring a new customer remains high; at least several hundreds of dollars. What Chase seems to be doing is going after new customers in a novel way. They are encouraging existing customers to actually use their product. As an existing customer, I signed up for their generous sign up bonus, then rarely used the card. These incentives have achieved their desired effect as I am now using it for most of my spending.
