The rumors began more than a month ago, on blogs and internet forums: Chase was preparing to unveil a new credit card. Within the thriving online subculture of credit-card churning, obsessed with maximizing reward programs, expectations were high.
The new Chase Sapphire Reserve card, released last week, more than met them. Despite its whopping $450 annual fee, so many people signed up amid the online frenzy that on Wednesday, the bank ran out of the actual cards.
Chase approved "tens of thousands of applications" in the first two days, said spokeswoman Lauren Francis; the majority of the cards are going to millennials. And the bank didn't have enough of the special cards—made with a proprietary mix of embedded metals—to meet the demand, so for the time being, it's sending out regular plastic versions.
"It significantly exceeded our strongest expectations," Francis said.
Chase says it has spent nothing so far on marketing the new Sapphire Reserve card; all the interest in the Sapphire Reserve is coming from word of mouth or the Internet.
Indeed, as credit-card reward programs have grown more generous, online forums and bloggers have become fonts of ingenious ways to exploit them for free travel or cash. To accrue sign-up bonuses, for example, some credit-card churners end up cycling through dozens of credit cards.
Banks, hotels and airlines don't necessarily condone such strategies. But the online buzz among churners and other points-obsessed customers has become a roar that's also reached card offers' broader intended audience: affluent people who travel frequently.
On Reddit's increasingly popular "churning" forum—which has shot up from 42,000 to 53,000 subscribers in just the last four months—a megathread about the Chase Sapphire Reserve card has attracted 10,000 comments.
"I've never seen hype for a card like I saw with this," said Shawn Coomer, a travel blogger in Las Vegas who has been credit-card churning for more than five years.
The card is "magical," said Frank Leppar, a resident of Weirton, West Virginia, who already has his new card. "The sign-up bonus is amazing. It's one of the better, if not the best, card out right now."