Barclays no longer approving 10K Anniversary Bonus for non-preferred members

That… was a long title.

Also see: Barclays bumped my US Airways card bonus to 50K miles!

My partner applied for the Barclays US Airways Premier World MasterCard on December 14th – the version that offers a 10,000 mile anniversary bonus for each year of card membership. He found out today, January 15th, that he was denied.

Reason? No Preferred Status with US Airways.

Here is the letter they sent him today:

Rejection letter from Barclays (click to enlarge)

The kicker is that I applied for the offer in early December when it was 40,000 miles after first purchase and with the 10,000 mile anniversary bonus and got an instant approval. Shortly after, Barclays even bumped my bonus to 50,000 miles and deposited an extra 10K Dividend Miles into my account. I have no status whatsoever with US Airways.

Here’s the new offer with 50K miles after first purchase and 10K anniversary miles…

…but don’t touch it if you don’t have status!

Bottom line

More of a cautionary tale than anything, and I didn’t want anyone to miss out on the current referral bonus (that runs until January 18th) over the allure of the 10K bonus… because if you don’t have any type of status with US Airways, you’ll most likely be denied.

Interesting to note that the letter explicitly mentions that the credit wasn’t even ran. They must’ve detected the status level via the Dividend Miles number and instantly rejected it. Also interesting that it took them over a solid month to get the decision letter out. Transitions indeed.

Anyway, if anyone would like to be referred to the current 50K offer, I have some invites left. Just shoot me an email at zynner@gmail.com and I’ll get it to you.

If and when the card is upgraded to the Barclaycard AAdvantage® Aviator™ Silver World Elite Mastercard®, you’ll get Global Entry fees reimbursed.

But no transaction fees, effective immediately, even with this one. And any spend you put on it will carry over if/when you upgrade to Aviator Silver.

Consider this a data point as well as a further glimpse into everything that’s going into this merger.

(I also love when my “bottom lines” are longer than the actual text of the article. Just love that.)

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