Confronted with a “Special Handling Required” error when trying to transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards points to an airline or hotel? Here's what to do.
Recently I was trying to transfer a few thousand Chase Ultimate Rewards points from my husband's account to his Hyatt account, to top up his balance for an award night. Unfortunately, instead of transferring, we received the following error message:
“Special handling required. We are unable to process this transfer online. Please call the number on the back of your card for assistance.”
In point of fact, you typically *don't* need or want to call the number on the back of your card, if the reason the points aren't transferring online is a mismatch in the name on your Chase account and the name on the airline or hotel account you're attempting to transfer to. Instead, call the airline or hotel in order to amend your name on your airline frequent flyer or hotel loyalty account, so that it matches the name on your Chase account. In this case, my husband had the name Gregory on his Chase account, but the name Greg on his Hyatt account, so I called Hyatt.
The friendly Hyatt representative I spoke with was able to quickly change his name on his Hyatt account to Gregory, which took effect instantaneously, and we were then able to transfer the points without any issue.
Have you run into the “Special Handling” error or other problems transferring Chase Ultimate Rewards points to partner airlines or hotels?
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