A poster at FW is saying that many new Chase accounts actually have a 30 day period in which to make their initial balance transfer without paying a fee:

Chase just sent a memo to it’s credit supervisors telling them that some accounts that required a BT at the time of application to avoid BT fees, actually had a 30 day period in which to make a BT with no fees! Mine was one of them. So they must have had more complaints than just mine. So I moved 50% of that card’s cl to my interest bearing acct without any BT fees!. I think that the language on the application was very unclear and that is what caused all of this. SO if you got stuck paying a BT fee on a new account call Chase and see what they can do.

Sounds like this won’t apply to everyone, but the info may be useful for some rate surfers.