Don’t cancel: How to downgrade a Chase credit card

It’s easy to justify paying hundreds of dollars in credit card annual fees when you can fully use card benefits like travel credits, dining credits, shopping credits and airport lounge access. But it’s harder to keep paying those fees if you carry multiple credit cards with similar benefits or are simply trying to cut down on expenses.

If you’re not getting enough value from a credit card to offset its annual fee, you can downgrade it to a different product with a lower or no annual fee. You could cancel the credit card, but that can have unintended consequences, like a drop in your credit score. More often than not, you’ll be better off requesting a downgrade as a product change rather than canceling a card outright.

Every card issuer handles product changes differently. In this guide, I’ll examine how to downgrade a Chase credit card.

Should I downgrade my credit card?

Downgrading your card allows you to maintain your credit line and your average age of credit so it doesn’t have the same negative effect on your credit score as canceling a card might. Plus, it’s better to have a good track record of maintaining accounts rather than opening and closing many accounts.

Downgrading a card may also allow you to earn a sign-up bonus that you would otherwise be denied. Chase is not as strict as some other issuers, but it does impose restrictions on earning sign-up bonuses.

You generally won’t be able to earn an introductory bonus on a Chase card if you currently hold that card in your wallet or if you earned a sign-up bonus on that exact card in the last 24-48 months. To earn the bonus on a card again, you must cancel or downgrade the card before reapplying for it (and not have earned a bonus for it in the last two to four years).

Depending on the card, the policy may also lump the entire card “family” together.

For instance, let’s say you currently have the Chase Sapphire Reserve® and have waited 48 months from when you earned the sign-up bonus. If you now want to apply for the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card for its sign-up bonus (60,000 bonus points after spending $4,000 in the first three months from account opening), you must first downgrade the Sapphire Reserve.

That’s because you’re only allowed one Sapphire-branded card at a time. The personal Southwest credit cards have a similar family restriction.

Another major restriction on Chase cards is the issuer’s 5/24 rule. In order to be approved for a Chase card, you cannot have opened five or more personal credit cards across all banks in the last 24 months. If you are not allowed to apply for another card, you could request a product change to a different card if its benefits are more appealing to you.

The one big disadvantage of downgrading a card is that you typically won’t get a welcome bonus for the card you’re downgrading to. However, depending on your situation, the pros may outweigh the cons, and there’s nothing stopping you from reapplying for the card you’re giving up and earning another welcome bonus down the line.

What cards can I downgrade to?

Most rewards credit cards are part of card families, and product changes can typically only be done within that family. This means you likely won’t be able to downgrade from a card like the Chase Sapphire Reserve to a United℠ Explorer Card or other cobranded card, even though they are both Chase-issued credit cards.

Instead, you would need to downgrade the Sapphire Reserve to either the Sapphire Preferred or another Ultimate Rewards-earning card like the Chase Freedom Flex® or Chase Freedom Unlimited®.

Sometimes, you may even be able to request a product change to a card that’s no longer available to new applicants. For instance, Chase still allows cardholders of Marriott-branded personal credit cards to change to the Ritz-Carlton Card even though it was closed to new applicants in 2018.

There are a few more restrictions to be aware of. First, you must have had your card for at least 12 months before you can downgrade it. Also, you cannot switch between personal and business cards even if they are within the same family (i.e., the Chase Sapphire Preferred to the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card).

Finally, opportunities to downgrade are not always consistent, and what’s offered to one person won’t necessarily be offered to another.

The information for the Ritz-Carlton credit card has been collected independently by The Points Guy. The card details on this page have not been reviewed or provided by the card issuer.

Related: The power of the Chase Trifecta

Protect your rewards

Since you’re not closing your card account, you won’t lose your points. However, if you downgrade a Chase Sapphire Reserve or Sapphire Preferred to a Chase Freedom Flex or Freedom Unlimited, you will lose the ability to transfer those points to hotel and airline partners (unless you have another fully transferable Ultimate Rewards-earning card like the Ink Business Preferred).

If you don’t have another transferable Ultimate Rewards-earning card, you may want to consider transferring your points to a hotel or airline partner before the downgrade. Make sure you transfer your points to a partner you frequently book with since once they’ve been transferred, they’re stuck with whatever partner you chose.

Alternatively, it is possible to transfer your Ultimate Rewards points to a household member if they have an eligible card. However, you’d need to call to request this, as Chase doesn’t allow you to do so online.

Contact customer service

Requesting a card downgrade is fairly straightforward: Call the customer service phone number on the back of your card and speak to a Chase agent. Chase also lets you contact them via a secure message portal on their site, but reports suggest that product-change requests must be made over the phone.

If you’re lucky, you might even get a pro-rated refund of your annual fee when you downgrade to a card with a lower annual fee (especially if you do so within 30 days of the annual fee posting to your statement).

Since you’re maintaining your existing account — as opposed to opening a new one — Chase will not need to perform a credit check.

When you downgrade your card, you will retain your old product’s account number, balance and due date. You’ll receive a new card with the new product’s name within a few days, but since the card number will be the same, you can continue to use your old card under the terms and benefits of the new one before and even after you’re issued a new card.

Related: Does canceling a credit card hurt your credit?

Bottom line

Canceling a card isn’t always a good idea because of the hit to your credit score, so downgrading is a great alternative. Like other issuers, Chase typically doesn’t advertise product-change options, so not many cardholders know this technique exists. However, it’s fairly easy to do.

You won’t earn a sign-up bonus when you downgrade your card. Conversely, downgrading a card may make you eligible to earn a sign-up bonus that you would otherwise be denied. It can be a great way to optimize your wallet and save on annual fees.

Related: Chase Sapphire Preferred vs. Sapphire Reserve: Should you go mid-tier or premium?