TD one-time bonus offer rule

What it does

Every TD credit-card offer page carries the same sentence with only the product name changed. The TD Double Up version reads: "This offer only applies to new TD Double Up Credit Card accounts during the promotional period and is non-transferable. This online offer is not available if you open an account in response to a different offer that you may receive from us or if you previously received a One-Time Bonus Offer on this Account or any other account with us. Eligible purchases do not include purchases of any cash equivalents, money orders, and/or gift cards or reloading of gift cards." Two things in that sentence decide how far the bar goes. It governs "This online offer", and it names in the same breath a different offer TD may send you directly, so a targeted offer sits outside it. And the trigger is having RECEIVED a bonus, not having held the card.

How it works

• The bar is on the bonus you took, not on the account you had. A TD card you opened and closed without ever earning its welcome bonus does not count against you, and we do not treat it as a bar.
• No waiting period is published anywhere. The other durations on these pages are the spend window for earning the bonus and the posting lag for paying it, neither of which is a clock you can wait out, so treat an online offer you have already taken as used up. That permanence is our reading of TD's silence rather than something TD states.
• TD writes the bar more broadly than we enforce it. TD says "on this Account or any other account with us"; we apply it only to the card whose bonus you already took. We hold back for one reason, and it is not that we like erring this way: the only way we could enforce the wider version today would warn you about the wrong card by name, and we would rather tell you less than tell you something false. So check with TD before applying for a second TD card if you have taken one of these bonuses.
• TD never defines the term it capitalizes. "One-Time Bonus Offer" appears as a defined term on every offer page and is defined on none of them, so what counts as one is TD's reading. That is the main reason we grade this rule medium rather than high, and why the card stays applicable with the bonus flagged rather than being dropped.
• One TD page states the restriction and another leaves it out. The TD Cash special-offers page carries the same paragraph with this clause cut, while the TD Cash product page carries it in full. We encode the fuller version, which is the one a reader reaches from TD's own product navigation.
• The business card is inside the same rule. TD's Business Solutions page carries the identical sentence, with no wording about a business, an entity or an EIN anywhere in it, so opening a second business does not reset anything.
• This is a bonus rule, not an approval rule. You can still be approved for the card; the welcome bonus is the part at risk. We have not read any TD application limit, so we publish none.

What to do

• Take the TD card you want most first. There is one public online bonus on offer here as far as TD's own wording goes, and no published way to become eligible again.
• If you have taken a TD bonus before, ask TD where you stand before you apply. Their sentence reaches further than our rule does, and they are the only ones who can tell you how they read it.
• A targeted offer that arrives in your mail or your online banking is a different offer. TD's own sentence says so, so do not assume this bar applies to it.
• If you held a TD card and never earned the bonus, say so in your card history. The answer changes the verdict here, and we ask because it does.
• Read the offer terms on the page you apply from. TD states this in the legal text under the offer, and at least one TD page leaves it out entirely.