A few months ago I got an offer from Chase which said this:
I think I was “chosen” for the offer because I rarely use my Chase card anymore (just a few bucks every month or so to keep it active). Anyways, this offer caught our attention and so we (me and my wife) stopped using our respective Citi Diamond Preferred Cards (that were giving us ThankYou points) and started using my Chase credit card for all our purchases..in the hopes of getting that free companion ticket. $500 was no big deal because our regular credit card expenses average about $800 per month (all of which is paid off).
And finally it came…the free ticket voucher that we were eagerly waiting for. Below are a couple of scans from the voucher. Have a look and let me know what you think about this. The voucher basically divides all of the US into different zones (first image) and there is a price table for zone-to-zone travel (last image).
Essential fine print: There is a $9.95 processing fee for each ticket and taxes and fees are not included in the above rate chart. I will not disclose the rest of the fine print at this time. 
So what do you think of this free airline ticket offer from Chase? Is this a teaching moment about free stuff?
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I wish I had this Chase card before I booked for those LV deals
Would you be Roll #611?
Off the topic - I am not good with guessing game I guess
Not a very good offer. I just booked two roundtrip tickets from “Zone 5″ to “Zone 1″ for Christmas travel and it cost us $560 on Jetblue, including taxes and fees.
This would have cost us $520 taxes and fees for ONE ticket with another ticket “free.”
Looks like a scam. Chase didn’t make any of this information available until AFTER you had already earned the offer? I’d be pretty pissed.
Rip. Off. I don’t think it would ever cost someone $400 to fly from KC to Chicago or StL to Indianapolis or anything like that. In fact, you could probably get two round trip tickets for less than $400 for a lot of those city pairs.
nku: you are fortunate you didn’t have this kind of a deal
Alex and Dimes: Yeah I came to the same conclusion based on some rough estimates. I am playing with some real numbers now and should have something concrete by Monday.
I tend to see this a LOT with most “free” companion ticket offers. That, or they require that your original ticket cost at least $500. If you were getting first class international-type service with that it’d be a deal, but not in this case!
Chase was supposed to send the “free” companion ticket that I qualified for. But, it’s been 9 months and they still haven’t come thru. I’ve called and called, talked to managers. All they do is keep promising that it is in the mail and to allow a bit longer time. Last time (couple weeks ago) they said tickets were being processed and will get them in 7-10 days. Never got them. Is this a scam or what?
They sent me the offer. I followed the instructions and they never sent me a companion ticket. I wrote them a letter, they responded telling me they were going to send a companion ticket and once again, they never did. I’ve contacted them now for the 4th time, just trying to get my companion ticket.
I have a free ticket from united i forgot all about, and found today and i have to use it by January. Just wondering if theres any big events or something going on somewhere i might want to catch.
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