Every credit card is getting a smart chip these days, which means a lot of expired cards. My shredder is rated for 12 sheets of paper at a time, and up until recently handled every credit card, CD, and DVD sent its way. But not the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card. I knew it had a little extra heft due to some sort of metal (aluminum?) sandwiched between layers of plastic, but that fact somehow didn’t register in my shredding fervor… until I heard an awful crunching noise:
The results: The numbers on the back of the card are still visible, and the magnetic strip may still be readable. My shredder still works, although it has been making some funny noises. Not sure what to do with it now, perhaps industrial-grade shredder could finish the job? Now you know why Chase has started sending folks a prepaid mailer to send back your card when they replace it. 🙂
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Tin Snips also do the trick if you have them. One of the Chase CSRs even mentioned it to me.
We have two of these cards hanging around somewhere in my kitchen because we have yet to be successful getting Chase to send us the mailer to return them. Who are the ad wizards who came up with this?
These cards make great little scrapers. You can scrape ice, old paint, old caulk out of concrete etc.
Chase didn’t offer me a mailer, so I’ve put them to good use.
Once they’ve eroded past the point of usefulness, use tin snips to cut them in half (or three). Throw one half in the garbage, and keep the other till the next load. Thieves would need to intercept both loads to piece it back together (unlikely).
Chase has always sent us a mailer to put the old cards in to be destroyed. I can’t imagine cutting through that credit card – it’s so thick.
I did the exact same thing. However, my shredder didn’t survive, yet my the card did.
So it turns out that on the upper left side of the back of the card is written in fine print, “Contains metal DO NOT SHRED.”
Hey, you’re right! …but only on my new chip card (which I guess I never really looked closely at before). My old non-chip card does not have that text.
They are always changing the fine print. Now on the cards as well 🙂
It isn’t just the Sapphire card. My wife had a metal card that I ran through the shredder. It looked like yours afterward and I was wondering what to do with it. Then it occurred to me that Staples has a shredder on display that can shred pennies so I figured that I would take it with me the next time I visited Staples and see if it would shred the card. It would have worked if the card hadn’t already been chewed up, but the pieces of metal sticking up prevented the card from being pulled through and it jammed. It was a little difficult to pry it back out but I eventually did. If you take a hammer and smash the pieces that are sticking up so the card is flat again and take it to Staples they probably have a Mailmate shredder on display that you can run it through and then retrieve the pieces from the container afterward. You could also burn the card and it would ruin the plastic coating and strip but it wouldn’t be as fun. That Mailmate shredder is small but surprisingly powerful.
built to last, i guess. lol.