Do you hoard credit card points? (1 Viewer)

[culdeus]

Oof, Chase Sapphire Reserve just dropped details on their "refresh" and it's REAL bad.

Annual fee goes up from $550 to $795, AND the 1.5x redemption in the Chase travel portal is gone.

In exchange they will now have rotating "special offer" 2x redemptions in the travel portal (which we all know will be rare and probably useless), and "$2700 in value" for a bunch of lame credits that most people won't use, and even for those that do they are broken up so you have to use them every month to get the full value out of them. Like a $500 credit at Edit Hotels. Hotels that usually run $1,000+ per night. And the $500 credit you can't even use all at once it has to be spread across multiple bookings. Completely useless.

Obviously makes the Sapphire Reserve a dead card which I already didn't love that one anyway, but I worry the other premium cards will see this as an opening to massively devalue their cards as well since Chase has opened that door.

1.5x travel was the main reason to keep it. If you did basically $300 worth of Uber you could use the credit up making it $150 ish AF to find decent cpp. Basically dead now.
They loosened up inks a little bit. I was able to get one recently. With 99AU and fluz basically dead there isn't much good news right now.

 

[Buckna]

Oof, Chase Sapphire Reserve just dropped details on their "refresh" and it's REAL bad.

Annual fee goes up from $550 to $795, AND the 1.5x redemption in the Chase travel portal is gone.

In exchange they will now have rotating "special offer" 2x redemptions in the travel portal (which we all know will be rare and probably useless), and "$2700 in value" for a bunch of lame credits that most people won't use, and even for those that do they are broken up so you have to use them every month to get the full value out of them. Like a $500 credit at Edit Hotels. Hotels that usually run $1,000+ per night. And the $500 credit you can't even use all at once it has to be spread across multiple bookings. Completely useless.

Obviously makes the Sapphire Reserve a dead card which I already didn't love that one anyway, but I worry the other premium cards will see this as an opening to massively devalue their cards as well since Chase has opened that door.

1.5x travel was the main reason to keep it. If you did basically $300 worth of Uber you could use the credit up making it $150 ish AF to find decent cpp. Basically dead now.
They loosened up inks a little bit. I was able to get one recently. With 99AU and fluz basically dead there isn't much good news right now.

I got approved for an Ink Cash Monday, had some unexpected Vet Bills this week and couldn’t wait to see what this announcement was going to be. I had cooled my velocity since late last year after all the people reporting denials and stuck in AMEX PUJ for a while now. (I recently got an AmaZing Biz with 1k pts for 5k spend because I’m starting to run short on options.) 2 Inks currently open most recent at 9 months, approved for only a 2K credit limit so I know I was on the verge of denial. Shuffled some credit limit from the oldest Ink and will close it in a few days. This is my 12th Ink over 4 years so these have been pretty lucrative!

Biggest concerns to me with CSR announcement are the still unknowns like Chase announcing they may be going to implement their own version of PopUpJail like AMEX. The ambiguous answers around if the 48 month Sapphire language is going away allowing sooner subs vs a different report that it may be extended past 48 months to a longer period is troubling too. If these new cards (including the new Sapphire Biz with a $795 fee) don’t have big SUB’s they’re going to be DOA. The new Biz credits in particular are completely worthless to me.

Edit: Plus no one has mentioned if PayYourselfBack is affected, if with these new cards Travel Portal is getting nerfed, I have to imagine PYB is going to take a hit too.

 

[Sammy3469]

Oof, Chase Sapphire Reserve just dropped details on their "refresh" and it's REAL bad.

Annual fee goes up from $550 to $795, AND the 1.5x redemption in the Chase travel portal is gone.

In exchange they will now have rotating "special offer" 2x redemptions in the travel portal (which we all know will be rare and probably useless), and "$2700 in value" for a bunch of lame credits that most people won't use, and even for those that do they are broken up so you have to use them every month to get the full value out of them. Like a $500 credit at Edit Hotels. Hotels that usually run $1,000+ per night. And the $500 credit you can't even use all at once it has to be spread across multiple bookings. Completely useless.

Obviously makes the Sapphire Reserve a dead card which I already didn't love that one anyway, but I worry the other premium cards will see this as an opening to massively devalue their cards as well since Chase has opened that door.

1.5x travel was the main reason to keep it. If you did basically $300 worth of Uber you could use the credit up making it $150 ish AF to find decent cpp. Basically dead now.
They loosened up inks a little bit. I was able to get one recently. With 99AU and fluz basically dead there isn't much good news right now.

I'd have to see the math on other programs, but even at $795, I know I'll make back $300 in travel, $300 from Stubhub, $300 in dining (our favorite local place is in the program), and $200 or so on AppleTV. For me, what they did is probably an upgrade.

 

[GennyScreamers]

Sitting on about 230K chase points. Just flew my family of 5 to Orlando and back in May transferring the points to Southwest. My wife and I are planning on an all inclusive resort trip next October for our 10 year wedding anniversary. Hoping to pay for almost all of it with my remaining points.

 

[fruity pebbles]

Chase Sapphire Preferred dropping the 1.25x in their travel portal just like Reserve dropping the 1.5x. Was one of my favorite features. Good part is the points you accumulate through October are still good for the 1.25x for two more years.

 

[Instinctive]

Chase Sapphire Preferred dropping the 1.25x in their travel portal just like Reserve dropping the 1.5x. Was one of my favorite features. Good part is the points you accumulate through October are still good for the 1.25x for two more years.

This is just the cents per point you get to literally book travel in their portal, right? Not earning bonuses and not related to transfer partners?

 

[fruity pebbles]

Chase Sapphire Preferred dropping the 1.25x in their travel portal just like Reserve dropping the 1.5x. Was one of my favorite features. Good part is the points you accumulate through October are still good for the 1.25x for two more years.

This is just the cents per point you get to literally book travel in their portal, right? Not earning bonuses and not related to transfer partners?

Correct

 

[FreeBaGeL]

Chase Sapphire Preferred dropping the 1.25x in their travel portal just like Reserve dropping the 1.5x. Was one of my favorite features. Good part is the points you accumulate through October are still good for the 1.25x for two more years.

This is just the cents per point you get to literally book travel in their portal, right? Not earning bonuses and not related to transfer partners?

Correct. Currently for instance if a flight is 100,000 points to book you can book it using only 66,000 points in the travel portal. After the refresh, it will cost the full 100,000 again.

You can still transfer to partners, that part is unaffected. The travel portal 1.5 perk was nice because sometimes it was actually cheaper than transfering to the travel partner, sometimes the flight you want is blacked out on the travel partner (but you can still book it through Chase), and most of all as a frequent Delta traveler you could use it at places that aren't direct transfer partners.

I did confirm that the 1.25 redemption of the regular Sapphire Preferred is going away too, though it sounds like for that one any already existing points you can still redeem at 1.25 for the next two years (but any newly accrued points after October won't be able to redeem at that amount). I'm not sure if the Reserve has the same 2-year window but I would assume so, and if so it would mean you don't have to rush to spend all your points if the 1.5 redemption through the travel portal was your normal redemption method, but again it won't work on any newly accrued points after October.

 

[Sand]

Oof, Chase Sapphire Reserve just dropped details on their "refresh" and it's REAL bad.

Annual fee goes up from $550 to $795, AND the 1.5x redemption in the Chase travel portal is gone.

In exchange they will now have rotating "special offer" 2x redemptions in the travel portal (which we all know will be rare and probably useless), and "$2700 in value" for a bunch of lame credits that most people won't use, and even for those that do they are broken up so you have to use them every month to get the full value out of them. Like a $500 credit at Edit Hotels. Hotels that usually run $1,000+ per night. And the $500 credit you can't even use all at once it has to be spread across multiple bookings. Completely useless.

Obviously makes the Sapphire Reserve a dead card which I already didn't love that one anyway, but I worry the other premium cards will see this as an opening to massively devalue their cards as well since Chase has opened that door.

1.5x travel was the main reason to keep it. If you did basically $300 worth of Uber you could use the credit up making it $150 ish AF to find decent cpp. Basically dead now.
They loosened up inks a little bit. I was able to get one recently. With 99AU and fluz basically dead there isn't much good news right now.

The 1.5x looks to be good for 2 years (and the Points boost thing also good?). Luckily I renew before the fee goes up, so have a year to figure out if this works. I figure I can pretty easily do the regular travel credit and stubhub. That brings the cost to $195. The TSA Pre is worth a bit, maybe apple TV is worth a shred of something. After that it gets hard as their restaurant thing is laughably only available in 4 cities. And the rest of it is junk.

Once the 1.5x goes away I can't see staying on, even with the great car rental insurance item.

 

[Buckna]

Chase Sapphire Preferred dropping the 1.25x in their travel portal just like Reserve dropping the 1.5x. Was one of my favorite features. Good part is the points you accumulate through October are still good for the 1.25x for two more years.

This is just the cents per point you get to literally book travel in their portal, right? Not earning bonuses and not related to transfer partners?

Correct. Currently for instance if a flight is 100,000 points to book you can book it using only 66,000 points in the travel portal. After the refresh, it will cost the full 100,000 again.

You can still transfer to partners, that part is unaffected. The travel portal 1.5 perk was nice because sometimes it was actually cheaper than transfering to the travel partner, sometimes the flight you want is blacked out on the travel partner (but you can still book it through Chase), and most of all as a frequent Delta traveler you could use it at places that aren't direct transfer partners.

I did confirm that the 1.25 redemption of the regular Sapphire Preferred is going away too, though it sounds like for that one any already existing points you can still redeem at 1.25 for the next two years (but any newly accrued points after October won't be able to redeem at that amount). I'm not sure if the Reserve has the same 2-year window but I would assume so, and if so it would mean you don't have to rush to spend all your points if the 1.5 redemption through the travel portal was your normal redemption method, but again it won't work on any newly accrued points after October.

That is correct, any existing points and CSR holders can get more points thru October and then have 2 years before the 1.5 redemption goes away. But any new points earned after October are at the new 1pt or “potentially 2x pts” rate on select partners. Also any pre-existing CSR holders are grandfathered in at the $550 fee through October, if your renewal is after October it will be at the new higher fee. Also pre-existing CSR holders won’t get the new benefits/credits until after October as well.

 

[Runkle]

Anyone with tips for getting a CL increase from Wells Fargo? Other than calling in and saying "trying to earn more points on this card?", anything to say or mention or do that might help nudge them to a bump?

 

[Instinctive]

Oof, Chase Sapphire Reserve just dropped details on their "refresh" and it's REAL bad.

Annual fee goes up from $550 to $795, AND the 1.5x redemption in the Chase travel portal is gone.

In exchange they will now have rotating "special offer" 2x redemptions in the travel portal (which we all know will be rare and probably useless), and "$2700 in value" for a bunch of lame credits that most people won't use, and even for those that do they are broken up so you have to use them every month to get the full value out of them. Like a $500 credit at Edit Hotels. Hotels that usually run $1,000+ per night. And the $500 credit you can't even use all at once it has to be spread across multiple bookings. Completely useless.

Obviously makes the Sapphire Reserve a dead card which I already didn't love that one anyway, but I worry the other premium cards will see this as an opening to massively devalue their cards as well since Chase has opened that door.

1.5x travel was the main reason to keep it. If you did basically $300 worth of Uber you could use the credit up making it $150 ish AF to find decent cpp. Basically dead now.
They loosened up inks a little bit. I was able to get one recently. With 99AU and fluz basically dead there isn't much good news right now.

The 1.5x looks to be good for 2 years (and the Points boost thing also good?). Luckily I renew before the fee goes up, so have a year to figure out if this works. I figure I can pretty easily do the regular travel credit and stubhub. That brings the cost to $195. The TSA Pre is worth a bit, maybe apple TV is worth a shred of something. After that it gets hard as their restaurant thing is laughably only available in 4 cities. And the rest of it is junk.

Once the 1.5x goes away I can't see staying on, even with the great car rental insurance item.

I think I've had the card for ten years and never once found it beneficial to use their portal.

Doesn't mean it doesn't suck, but as far as our use goes it doesn't move the needle at all. Basically always better to go to a transfer partner, and for our vacations we've always been able to plan around around what's available to get the best deals vs having to take something.

I think one time my wife used their portal and didn't fully get the various status benefits she should have and it was a pain in the butt to make changes, etc. So between that and getting best value we never tried it again.

 

[DA RAIDERS]

Oof, Chase Sapphire Reserve just dropped details on their "refresh" and it's REAL bad.

Annual fee goes up from $550 to $795, AND the 1.5x redemption in the Chase travel portal is gone.

In exchange they will now have rotating "special offer" 2x redemptions in the travel portal (which we all know will be rare and probably useless), and "$2700 in value" for a bunch of lame credits that most people won't use, and even for those that do they are broken up so you have to use them every month to get the full value out of them. Like a $500 credit at Edit Hotels. Hotels that usually run $1,000+ per night. And the $500 credit you can't even use all at once it has to be spread across multiple bookings. Completely useless.

Obviously makes the Sapphire Reserve a dead card which I already didn't love that one anyway, but I worry the other premium cards will see this as an opening to massively devalue their cards as well since Chase has opened that door.

1.5x travel was the main reason to keep it. If you did basically $300 worth of Uber you could use the credit up making it $150 ish AF to find decent cpp. Basically dead now.
They loosened up inks a little bit. I was able to get one recently. With 99AU and fluz basically dead there isn't much good news right now.

The 1.5x looks to be good for 2 years (and the Points boost thing also good?). Luckily I renew before the fee goes up, so have a year to figure out if this works. I figure I can pretty easily do the regular travel credit and stubhub. That brings the cost to $195. The TSA Pre is worth a bit, maybe apple TV is worth a shred of something. After that it gets hard as their restaurant thing is laughably only available in 4 cities. And the rest of it is junk.

Once the 1.5x goes away I can't see staying on, even with the great car rental insurance item.

I think I've had the card for ten years and never once found it beneficial to use their portal.

Doesn't mean it doesn't suck, but as far as our use goes it doesn't move the needle at all. Basically always better to go to a transfer partner, and for our vacations we've always been able to plan around around what's available to get the best deals vs having to take something.

I think one time my wife used their portal and didn't fully get the various status benefits she should have and it was a pain in the butt to make changes, etc. So between that and getting best value we never tried it again.

i've never used it either

 

[FreeBaGeL]

Oof, Chase Sapphire Reserve just dropped details on their "refresh" and it's REAL bad.

Annual fee goes up from $550 to $795, AND the 1.5x redemption in the Chase travel portal is gone.

In exchange they will now have rotating "special offer" 2x redemptions in the travel portal (which we all know will be rare and probably useless), and "$2700 in value" for a bunch of lame credits that most people won't use, and even for those that do they are broken up so you have to use them every month to get the full value out of them. Like a $500 credit at Edit Hotels. Hotels that usually run $1,000+ per night. And the $500 credit you can't even use all at once it has to be spread across multiple bookings. Completely useless.

Obviously makes the Sapphire Reserve a dead card which I already didn't love that one anyway, but I worry the other premium cards will see this as an opening to massively devalue their cards as well since Chase has opened that door.

1.5x travel was the main reason to keep it. If you did basically $300 worth of Uber you could use the credit up making it $150 ish AF to find decent cpp. Basically dead now.
They loosened up inks a little bit. I was able to get one recently. With 99AU and fluz basically dead there isn't much good news right now.

The 1.5x looks to be good for 2 years (and the Points boost thing also good?). Luckily I renew before the fee goes up, so have a year to figure out if this works. I figure I can pretty easily do the regular travel credit and stubhub. That brings the cost to $195. The TSA Pre is worth a bit, maybe apple TV is worth a shred of something. After that it gets hard as their restaurant thing is laughably only available in 4 cities. And the rest of it is junk.

Once the 1.5x goes away I can't see staying on, even with the great car rental insurance item.

I think I've had the card for ten years and never once found it beneficial to use their portal.

Doesn't mean it doesn't suck, but as far as our use goes it doesn't move the needle at all. Basically always better to go to a transfer partner, and for our vacations we've always been able to plan around around what's available to get the best deals vs having to take something.

I think one time my wife used their portal and didn't fully get the various status benefits she should have and it was a pain in the butt to make changes, etc. So between that and getting best value we never tried it again.

I've generally found that redeeming in the portal is around 5-10% cheaper than transfering points to the airline and redeeming via their award chart, but YMMV of course I'm sure it's different for different partners.

For instance I just recently booked the Hyatt Seattle. Transferring to Hyatt it was 23,000 pts/night, for cash rate $315/nt. So redeeming on Chase directly was 31,500 / 1.5 = 21,000 pts/night.

Even more importantly, when booking through Hyatt you can ONLY use points on the absolute most basic room. So even though a SpaceNeedle view room only cost $5 more, it meant when booking with points on Hyatt I couldn't use points to book it at all, but I could still redeem on Chase directly at basically the same price.

And if the basic room is sold out (which is often the case) that means you can't book with points direct with Hyatt at all even though they have tons of rooms available that are slightly different (corner room, upgraded jetted tub, etc) and only a couple bucks more. But you can still book those through the Chase portal.

That's all very specific to Hyatt, but I've run into lots of similar things with airlines too. I always double check before I redeem on an airline site what the rate would be with the 1.5 redemption on Chase and it's often a little cheaper.

Even worse for me, since my home airport is a Delta hub and the majority of my redemptions are with Delta, that means Chase is essentially dead to me since they are not a transfer partner with Delta (but I could previously use the 1.5 in the travel portal to get roughly the same redemption value as if they were).

EDIT: One last little tidbit, if you do the redemption through the travel portal you also earn miles with the carrier on the flight (because the airline treats it essentially as a cash booking), whereas you do not earn any miles when you book with points direct on the airline. So even in cases where the prices end up being the same, it was still beneficial to book through Chase.

 

[Sand]

Oof, Chase Sapphire Reserve just dropped details on their "refresh" and it's REAL bad.

Annual fee goes up from $550 to $795, AND the 1.5x redemption in the Chase travel portal is gone.

In exchange they will now have rotating "special offer" 2x redemptions in the travel portal (which we all know will be rare and probably useless), and "$2700 in value" for a bunch of lame credits that most people won't use, and even for those that do they are broken up so you have to use them every month to get the full value out of them. Like a $500 credit at Edit Hotels. Hotels that usually run $1,000+ per night. And the $500 credit you can't even use all at once it has to be spread across multiple bookings. Completely useless.

Obviously makes the Sapphire Reserve a dead card which I already didn't love that one anyway, but I worry the other premium cards will see this as an opening to massively devalue their cards as well since Chase has opened that door.

1.5x travel was the main reason to keep it. If you did basically $300 worth of Uber you could use the credit up making it $150 ish AF to find decent cpp. Basically dead now.
They loosened up inks a little bit. I was able to get one recently. With 99AU and fluz basically dead there isn't much good news right now.

The 1.5x looks to be good for 2 years (and the Points boost thing also good?). Luckily I renew before the fee goes up, so have a year to figure out if this works. I figure I can pretty easily do the regular travel credit and stubhub. That brings the cost to $195. The TSA Pre is worth a bit, maybe apple TV is worth a shred of something. After that it gets hard as their restaurant thing is laughably only available in 4 cities. And the rest of it is junk.

Once the 1.5x goes away I can't see staying on, even with the great car rental insurance item.

I think I've had the card for ten years and never once found it beneficial to use their portal.

Doesn't mean it doesn't suck, but as far as our use goes it doesn't move the needle at all. Basically always better to go to a transfer partner, and for our vacations we've always been able to plan around around what's available to get the best deals vs having to take something.

I think one time my wife used their portal and didn't fully get the various status benefits she should have and it was a pain in the butt to make changes, etc. So between that and getting best value we never tried it again.

I always use the 1.5x points. Never bothered with moving into hotel points, etc. Just find a good deal, then book through the Chase portal. I got flights to Kauai for $300 equivalent that way (well, free, but using 1pt=$.01).

I guess now this is impetus to use them. I have 320k points that I now have to spend down in 2 years.

 

[Instinctive]

Oof, Chase Sapphire Reserve just dropped details on their "refresh" and it's REAL bad.

Annual fee goes up from $550 to $795, AND the 1.5x redemption in the Chase travel portal is gone.

In exchange they will now have rotating "special offer" 2x redemptions in the travel portal (which we all know will be rare and probably useless), and "$2700 in value" for a bunch of lame credits that most people won't use, and even for those that do they are broken up so you have to use them every month to get the full value out of them. Like a $500 credit at Edit Hotels. Hotels that usually run $1,000+ per night. And the $500 credit you can't even use all at once it has to be spread across multiple bookings. Completely useless.

Obviously makes the Sapphire Reserve a dead card which I already didn't love that one anyway, but I worry the other premium cards will see this as an opening to massively devalue their cards as well since Chase has opened that door.

1.5x travel was the main reason to keep it. If you did basically $300 worth of Uber you could use the credit up making it $150 ish AF to find decent cpp. Basically dead now.
They loosened up inks a little bit. I was able to get one recently. With 99AU and fluz basically dead there isn't much good news right now.

The 1.5x looks to be good for 2 years (and the Points boost thing also good?). Luckily I renew before the fee goes up, so have a year to figure out if this works. I figure I can pretty easily do the regular travel credit and stubhub. That brings the cost to $195. The TSA Pre is worth a bit, maybe apple TV is worth a shred of something. After that it gets hard as their restaurant thing is laughably only available in 4 cities. And the rest of it is junk.

Once the 1.5x goes away I can't see staying on, even with the great car rental insurance item.

I think I've had the card for ten years and never once found it beneficial to use their portal.

Doesn't mean it doesn't suck, but as far as our use goes it doesn't move the needle at all. Basically always better to go to a transfer partner, and for our vacations we've always been able to plan around around what's available to get the best deals vs having to take something.

I think one time my wife used their portal and didn't fully get the various status benefits she should have and it was a pain in the butt to make changes, etc. So between that and getting best value we never tried it again.

I've generally found that redeeming in the portal is around 5-10% cheaper than transfering points to the airline and redeeming via their award chart, but YMMV of course I'm sure it's different for different partners.

For instance I just recently booked the Hyatt Seattle. Transferring to Hyatt it was 23,000 pts/night, for cash rate $315/nt. So redeeming on Chase directly was 31,500 / 1.5 = 21,000 pts/night.

Even more importantly, when booking through Hyatt you can ONLY use points on the absolute most basic room. So even though a SpaceNeedle view room only cost $5 more, it meant when booking with points on Hyatt I couldn't use points to book it at all, but I could still redeem on Chase directly at basically the same price.

And if the basic room is sold out (which is often the case) that means you can't book with points direct with Hyatt at all even though they have tons of rooms available that are slightly different (corner room, upgraded jetted tub, etc) and only a couple bucks more. But you can still book those through the Chase portal.

That's all very specific to Hyatt, but I've run into lots of similar things with airlines too. I always double check before I redeem on an airline site what the rate would be with the 1.5 redemption on Chase and it's often a little cheaper.

Even worse for me, since my home airport is a Delta hub and the majority of my redemptions are with Delta, that means Chase is essentially dead to me since they are not a transfer partner with Delta (but I could previously use the 1.5 in the travel portal to get roughly the same redemption value as if they were).

EDIT: One last little tidbit, if you do the redemption through the travel portal you also earn miles with the carrier on the flight (because the airline treats it essentially as a cash booking), whereas you do not earn any miles when you book with points direct on the airline. So even in cases where the prices end up being the same, it was still beneficial to book through Chase.

Yeah it just depends. If you're just getting normal properties like that you're not gonna find a deal. Same with flights.

But I've done stuff like transfer to Virgin to book Delta One to Tokyo and points book the PH Tokyo for a week, which was WAY fewer than 1.5* the $ cost.

It's all about the game and goals. I generally assume someone using the CSR is travelling at a fancier level than what you described. For us, anything that's not a "luxury" destination we tend to just pay for, and then get awesome deals at the super high end stuff (like when we did first class round trip direct to Aukland and used points for fancy hotels in Aukland, Christchurch, and Queenstown - those things alone on that one trip were like $35-40k worth of travel all done on reward points).

If you're not seeking that level of reward, I can't imagine a card like CSR ends up worth it even going the 1.5 way versus even something like the Freedom Unlimited or the AmEx one that rotates categories.

 

[culdeus]

Oof, Chase Sapphire Reserve just dropped details on their "refresh" and it's REAL bad.

Annual fee goes up from $550 to $795, AND the 1.5x redemption in the Chase travel portal is gone.

In exchange they will now have rotating "special offer" 2x redemptions in the travel portal (which we all know will be rare and probably useless), and "$2700 in value" for a bunch of lame credits that most people won't use, and even for those that do they are broken up so you have to use them every month to get the full value out of them. Like a $500 credit at Edit Hotels. Hotels that usually run $1,000+ per night. And the $500 credit you can't even use all at once it has to be spread across multiple bookings. Completely useless.

Obviously makes the Sapphire Reserve a dead card which I already didn't love that one anyway, but I worry the other premium cards will see this as an opening to massively devalue their cards as well since Chase has opened that door.

1.5x travel was the main reason to keep it. If you did basically $300 worth of Uber you could use the credit up making it $150 ish AF to find decent cpp. Basically dead now.
They loosened up inks a little bit. I was able to get one recently. With 99AU and fluz basically dead there isn't much good news right now.

The 1.5x looks to be good for 2 years (and the Points boost thing also good?). Luckily I renew before the fee goes up, so have a year to figure out if this works. I figure I can pretty easily do the regular travel credit and stubhub. That brings the cost to $195. The TSA Pre is worth a bit, maybe apple TV is worth a shred of something. After that it gets hard as their restaurant thing is laughably only available in 4 cities. And the rest of it is junk.

Once the 1.5x goes away I can't see staying on, even with the great car rental insurance item.

I think I've had the card for ten years and never once found it beneficial to use their portal.

Doesn't mean it doesn't suck, but as far as our use goes it doesn't move the needle at all. Basically always better to go to a transfer partner, and for our vacations we've always been able to plan around around what's available to get the best deals vs having to take something.

I think one time my wife used their portal and didn't fully get the various status benefits she should have and it was a pain in the butt to make changes, etc. So between that and getting best value we never tried it again.

I've generally found that redeeming in the portal is around 5-10% cheaper than transfering points to the airline and redeeming via their award chart, but YMMV of course I'm sure it's different for different partners.

For instance I just recently booked the Hyatt Seattle. Transferring to Hyatt it was 23,000 pts/night, for cash rate $315/nt. So redeeming on Chase directly was 31,500 / 1.5 = 21,000 pts/night.

Even more importantly, when booking through Hyatt you can ONLY use points on the absolute most basic room. So even though a SpaceNeedle view room only cost $5 more, it meant when booking with points on Hyatt I couldn't use points to book it at all, but I could still redeem on Chase directly at basically the same price.

And if the basic room is sold out (which is often the case) that means you can't book with points direct with Hyatt at all even though they have tons of rooms available that are slightly different (corner room, upgraded jetted tub, etc) and only a couple bucks more. But you can still book those through the Chase portal.

That's all very specific to Hyatt, but I've run into lots of similar things with airlines too. I always double check before I redeem on an airline site what the rate would be with the 1.5 redemption on Chase and it's often a little cheaper.

Even worse for me, since my home airport is a Delta hub and the majority of my redemptions are with Delta, that means Chase is essentially dead to me since they are not a transfer partner with Delta (but I could previously use the 1.5 in the travel portal to get roughly the same redemption value as if they were).

EDIT: One last little tidbit, if you do the redemption through the travel portal you also earn miles with the carrier on the flight (because the airline treats it essentially as a cash booking), whereas you do not earn any miles when you book with points direct on the airline. So even in cases where the prices end up being the same, it was still beneficial to book through Chase.

Yeah it just depends. If you're just getting normal properties like that you're not gonna find a deal. Same with flights.

But I've done stuff like transfer to Virgin to book Delta One to Tokyo and points book the PH Tokyo for a week, which was WAY fewer than 1.5* the $ cost.

It's all about the game and goals. I generally assume someone using the CSR is travelling at a fancier level than what you described. For us, anything that's not a "luxury" destination we tend to just pay for, and then get awesome deals at the super high end stuff (like when we did first class round trip direct to Aukland and used points for fancy hotels in Aukland, Christchurch, and Queenstown - those things alone on that one trip were like $35-40k worth of travel all done on reward points).

If you're not seeking that level of reward, I can't imagine a card like CSR ends up worth it even going the 1.5 way versus even something like the Freedom Unlimited or the AmEx one that rotates categories.

With Hyatt you can get way more than 1.5cpp on their big name property. That is really hard to do if you don't value luxury properties and even a mid level regency is all you need.

For casuals this is a big hit. I haven't had a csr in a three years. 1.5 wasn't worth it but this will probably pinch a ton of people.

 

[Orange&Blue]

Oof, Chase Sapphire Reserve just dropped details on their "refresh" and it's REAL bad.

Annual fee goes up from $550 to $795, AND the 1.5x redemption in the Chase travel portal is gone.

In exchange they will now have rotating "special offer" 2x redemptions in the travel portal (which we all know will be rare and probably useless), and "$2700 in value" for a bunch of lame credits that most people won't use, and even for those that do they are broken up so you have to use them every month to get the full value out of them. Like a $500 credit at Edit Hotels. Hotels that usually run $1,000+ per night. And the $500 credit you can't even use all at once it has to be spread across multiple bookings. Completely useless.

Obviously makes the Sapphire Reserve a dead card which I already didn't love that one anyway, but I worry the other premium cards will see this as an opening to massively devalue their cards as well since Chase has opened that door.

I was going to get it but the preferred had a great SUB so I had the wife get that instead. We won't get the reserve for sure now. What a horrible refresh.

 

[Marauder]

I read somewhere that the Sapphire Reserve has been a big money loser for Chase every year since it was launched. That's the reason for the refresh.

The problem is that most of the people who sign up for it are sophisticated users who pay their balance off every month and take advantage of all the perks, especially the 1.5x redemption. I'm going to have to take a serious look at it over the next few months to see if it is worth renewing or if there is a better option. I'm sitting on 210K points right now. I should probably book a nice vacation to use those up.

 

[Desert_Power]

Oof, Chase Sapphire Reserve just dropped details on their "refresh" and it's REAL bad.

Annual fee goes up from $550 to $795, AND the 1.5x redemption in the Chase travel portal is gone.

In exchange they will now have rotating "special offer" 2x redemptions in the travel portal (which we all know will be rare and probably useless), and "$2700 in value" for a bunch of lame credits that most people won't use, and even for those that do they are broken up so you have to use them every month to get the full value out of them. Like a $500 credit at Edit Hotels. Hotels that usually run $1,000+ per night. And the $500 credit you can't even use all at once it has to be spread across multiple bookings. Completely useless.

Obviously makes the Sapphire Reserve a dead card which I already didn't love that one anyway, but I worry the other premium cards will see this as an opening to massively devalue their cards as well since Chase has opened that door.

1.5x travel was the main reason to keep it. If you did basically $300 worth of Uber you could use the credit up making it $150 ish AF to find decent cpp. Basically dead now.
They loosened up inks a little bit. I was able to get one recently. With 99AU and fluz basically dead there isn't much good news right now.

I'd have to see the math on other programs, but even at $795, I know I'll make back $300 in travel, $300 from Stubhub, $300 in dining (our favorite local place is in the program), and $200 or so on AppleTV. For me, what they did is probably an upgrade.

Yeah. I was marginal on keeping this card around, but the StubHub and Apple Music are definitely going to be ones I can use. Dining not being here in Charlotte is a bummer but looks like plenty down in Charleston where I go frequently.

Renewal isn't till Feb so should be able to double dip these new ones before I have to decide? Not bad.

 

[Desert_Power]

Oof, Chase Sapphire Reserve just dropped details on their "refresh" and it's REAL bad.

Annual fee goes up from $550 to $795, AND the 1.5x redemption in the Chase travel portal is gone.

In exchange they will now have rotating "special offer" 2x redemptions in the travel portal (which we all know will be rare and probably useless), and "$2700 in value" for a bunch of lame credits that most people won't use, and even for those that do they are broken up so you have to use them every month to get the full value out of them. Like a $500 credit at Edit Hotels. Hotels that usually run $1,000+ per night. And the $500 credit you can't even use all at once it has to be spread across multiple bookings. Completely useless.

Obviously makes the Sapphire Reserve a dead card which I already didn't love that one anyway, but I worry the other premium cards will see this as an opening to massively devalue their cards as well since Chase has opened that door.

1.5x travel was the main reason to keep it. If you did basically $300 worth of Uber you could use the credit up making it $150 ish AF to find decent cpp. Basically dead now.
They loosened up inks a little bit. I was able to get one recently. With 99AU and fluz basically dead there isn't much good news right now.

The 1.5x looks to be good for 2 years (and the Points boost thing also good?). Luckily I renew before the fee goes up, so have a year to figure out if this works. I figure I can pretty easily do the regular travel credit and stubhub. That brings the cost to $195. The TSA Pre is worth a bit, maybe apple TV is worth a shred of something. After that it gets hard as their restaurant thing is laughably only available in 4 cities. And the rest of it is junk.

Once the 1.5x goes away I can't see staying on, even with the great car rental insurance item.

I think I've had the card for ten years and never once found it beneficial to use their portal.

Doesn't mean it doesn't suck, but as far as our use goes it doesn't move the needle at all. Basically always better to go to a transfer partner, and for our vacations we've always been able to plan around around what's available to get the best deals vs having to take something.

I think one time my wife used their portal and didn't fully get the various status benefits she should have and it was a pain in the butt to make changes, etc. So between that and getting best value we never tried it again.

I've generally found that redeeming in the portal is around 5-10% cheaper than transfering points to the airline and redeeming via their award chart, but YMMV of course I'm sure it's different for different partners.

For instance I just recently booked the Hyatt Seattle. Transferring to Hyatt it was 23,000 pts/night, for cash rate $315/nt. So redeeming on Chase directly was 31,500 / 1.5 = 21,000 pts/night.

Even more importantly, when booking through Hyatt you can ONLY use points on the absolute most basic room. So even though a SpaceNeedle view room only cost $5 more, it meant when booking with points on Hyatt I couldn't use points to book it at all, but I could still redeem on Chase directly at basically the same price.

And if the basic room is sold out (which is often the case) that means you can't book with points direct with Hyatt at all even though they have tons of rooms available that are slightly different (corner room, upgraded jetted tub, etc) and only a couple bucks more. But you can still book those through the Chase portal.

That's all very specific to Hyatt, but I've run into lots of similar things with airlines too. I always double check before I redeem on an airline site what the rate would be with the 1.5 redemption on Chase and it's often a little cheaper.

Even worse for me, since my home airport is a Delta hub and the majority of my redemptions are with Delta, that means Chase is essentially dead to me since they are not a transfer partner with Delta (but I could previously use the 1.5 in the travel portal to get roughly the same redemption value as if they were).

EDIT: One last little tidbit, if you do the redemption through the travel portal you also earn miles with the carrier on the flight (because the airline treats it essentially as a cash booking), whereas you do not earn any miles when you book with points direct on the airline. So even in cases where the prices end up being the same, it was still beneficial to book through Chase.

Yeah it just depends. If you're just getting normal properties like that you're not gonna find a deal. Same with flights.

But I've done stuff like transfer to Virgin to book Delta One to Tokyo and points book the PH Tokyo for a week, which was WAY fewer than 1.5* the $ cost.

It's all about the game and goals. I generally assume someone using the CSR is travelling at a fancier level than what you described. For us, anything that's not a "luxury" destination we tend to just pay for, and then get awesome deals at the super high end stuff (like when we did first class round trip direct to Aukland and used points for fancy hotels in Aukland, Christchurch, and Queenstown - those things alone on that one trip were like $35-40k worth of travel all done on reward points).

If you're not seeking that level of reward, I can't imagine a card like CSR ends up worth it even going the 1.5 way versus even something like the Freedom Unlimited or the AmEx one that rotates categories.

With Hyatt you can get way more than 1.5cpp on their big name property. That is really hard to do if you don't value luxury properties and even a mid level regency is all you need.

For casuals this is a big hit. I haven't had a csr in a three years. 1.5 wasn't worth it but this will probably pinch a ton of people.

Feels like I have to try to get less than 2 ccp with Hyatt right now. Wonder how long they can keep this award chart around.

 

[culdeus]

Oof, Chase Sapphire Reserve just dropped details on their "refresh" and it's REAL bad.

Annual fee goes up from $550 to $795, AND the 1.5x redemption in the Chase travel portal is gone.

In exchange they will now have rotating "special offer" 2x redemptions in the travel portal (which we all know will be rare and probably useless), and "$2700 in value" for a bunch of lame credits that most people won't use, and even for those that do they are broken up so you have to use them every month to get the full value out of them. Like a $500 credit at Edit Hotels. Hotels that usually run $1,000+ per night. And the $500 credit you can't even use all at once it has to be spread across multiple bookings. Completely useless.

Obviously makes the Sapphire Reserve a dead card which I already didn't love that one anyway, but I worry the other premium cards will see this as an opening to massively devalue their cards as well since Chase has opened that door.

1.5x travel was the main reason to keep it. If you did basically $300 worth of Uber you could use the credit up making it $150 ish AF to find decent cpp. Basically dead now.
They loosened up inks a little bit. I was able to get one recently. With 99AU and fluz basically dead there isn't much good news right now.

The 1.5x looks to be good for 2 years (and the Points boost thing also good?). Luckily I renew before the fee goes up, so have a year to figure out if this works. I figure I can pretty easily do the regular travel credit and stubhub. That brings the cost to $195. The TSA Pre is worth a bit, maybe apple TV is worth a shred of something. After that it gets hard as their restaurant thing is laughably only available in 4 cities. And the rest of it is junk.

Once the 1.5x goes away I can't see staying on, even with the great car rental insurance item.

I think I've had the card for ten years and never once found it beneficial to use their portal.

Doesn't mean it doesn't suck, but as far as our use goes it doesn't move the needle at all. Basically always better to go to a transfer partner, and for our vacations we've always been able to plan around around what's available to get the best deals vs having to take something.

I think one time my wife used their portal and didn't fully get the various status benefits she should have and it was a pain in the butt to make changes, etc. So between that and getting best value we never tried it again.

I've generally found that redeeming in the portal is around 5-10% cheaper than transfering points to the airline and redeeming via their award chart, but YMMV of course I'm sure it's different for different partners.

For instance I just recently booked the Hyatt Seattle. Transferring to Hyatt it was 23,000 pts/night, for cash rate $315/nt. So redeeming on Chase directly was 31,500 / 1.5 = 21,000 pts/night.

Even more importantly, when booking through Hyatt you can ONLY use points on the absolute most basic room. So even though a SpaceNeedle view room only cost $5 more, it meant when booking with points on Hyatt I couldn't use points to book it at all, but I could still redeem on Chase directly at basically the same price.

And if the basic room is sold out (which is often the case) that means you can't book with points direct with Hyatt at all even though they have tons of rooms available that are slightly different (corner room, upgraded jetted tub, etc) and only a couple bucks more. But you can still book those through the Chase portal.

That's all very specific to Hyatt, but I've run into lots of similar things with airlines too. I always double check before I redeem on an airline site what the rate would be with the 1.5 redemption on Chase and it's often a little cheaper.

Even worse for me, since my home airport is a Delta hub and the majority of my redemptions are with Delta, that means Chase is essentially dead to me since they are not a transfer partner with Delta (but I could previously use the 1.5 in the travel portal to get roughly the same redemption value as if they were).

EDIT: One last little tidbit, if you do the redemption through the travel portal you also earn miles with the carrier on the flight (because the airline treats it essentially as a cash booking), whereas you do not earn any miles when you book with points direct on the airline. So even in cases where the prices end up being the same, it was still beneficial to book through Chase.

Yeah it just depends. If you're just getting normal properties like that you're not gonna find a deal. Same with flights.

But I've done stuff like transfer to Virgin to book Delta One to Tokyo and points book the PH Tokyo for a week, which was WAY fewer than 1.5* the $ cost.

It's all about the game and goals. I generally assume someone using the CSR is travelling at a fancier level than what you described. For us, anything that's not a "luxury" destination we tend to just pay for, and then get awesome deals at the super high end stuff (like when we did first class round trip direct to Aukland and used points for fancy hotels in Aukland, Christchurch, and Queenstown - those things alone on that one trip were like $35-40k worth of travel all done on reward points).

If you're not seeking that level of reward, I can't imagine a card like CSR ends up worth it even going the 1.5 way versus even something like the Freedom Unlimited or the AmEx one that rotates categories.

With Hyatt you can get way more than 1.5cpp on their big name property. That is really hard to do if you don't value luxury properties and even a mid level regency is all you need.

For casuals this is a big hit. I haven't had a csr in a three years. 1.5 wasn't worth it but this will probably pinch a ton of people.

Feels like I have to try to get less than 2 ccp with Hyatt right now. Wonder how long they can keep this award chart around.

Hyatt is still footprint limited so it doesn't have a lot of natural elites. They work people over on the low end. Cpp of their cat1/2 stuff is super low.

 

[culdeus]

I read somewhere that the Sapphire Reserve has been a big money loser for Chase every year since it was launched. That's the reason for the refresh.

The problem is that most of the people who sign up for it are sophisticated users who pay their balance off every month and take advantage of all the perks, especially the 1.5x redemption. I'm going to have to take a serious look at it over the next few months to see if it is worth renewing or if there is a better option. I'm sitting on 210K points right now. I should probably book a nice vacation to use those up.

Reserve lost a ton of money but it got people to think of chase as a bank they put their savings in.

 

[culdeus]

Oof, Chase Sapphire Reserve just dropped details on their "refresh" and it's REAL bad.

Annual fee goes up from $550 to $795, AND the 1.5x redemption in the Chase travel portal is gone.

In exchange they will now have rotating "special offer" 2x redemptions in the travel portal (which we all know will be rare and probably useless), and "$2700 in value" for a bunch of lame credits that most people won't use, and even for those that do they are broken up so you have to use them every month to get the full value out of them. Like a $500 credit at Edit Hotels. Hotels that usually run $1,000+ per night. And the $500 credit you can't even use all at once it has to be spread across multiple bookings. Completely useless.

Obviously makes the Sapphire Reserve a dead card which I already didn't love that one anyway, but I worry the other premium cards will see this as an opening to massively devalue their cards as well since Chase has opened that door.

I was going to get it but the preferred had a great SUB so I had the wife get that instead. We won't get the reserve for sure now. What a horrible refresh.

As a reminder the preferred loses some in this change as well. 1.25 is gone.

 

[Buckna]

New bonuses are live, referral’s not yet available.

CSR 100k pts + “up to” a $500 one time additional travel credit for 5k spend (make sure to spend $500+ in one transaction to get the full value of the credit) (pretty disappointing)

CSR Biz 200k pts for 30k spend (oof)

I don’t think these are going to be very popular, the Biz in particular is awful unless you can make use of some pretty niche credits or are an MS’ing machine

 

[BeTheMatch]

Here's what I don't understand: in an era where we're seeing virtually every business charge a fee to the customer for using a credit card, we're also seeing the credit card companies scale back their rewards? Why would we continue to use credit cards?

 

[culdeus]

Here's what I don't understand: in an era where we're seeing virtually every business charge a fee to the customer for using a credit card, we're also seeing the credit card companies scale back their rewards? Why would we continue to use credit cards?

I don't see fees for credit cards very often.
And I would say they are not scaling back rewards nearly as much as tightening their lending standards. Those are highly correlated but completely different things.

 

[Desert_Power]

Here's what I don't understand: in an era where we're seeing virtually every business charge a fee to the customer for using a credit card, we're also seeing the credit card companies scale back their rewards? Why would we continue to use credit cards?

I seem to enjoy the multiple thousands of dollars of value I get from cards each year. I don't frequently see places doing this but do note it.

 

[kupcho1]

This is somewhat related ...

I always, and I mean always, use the grocery store points to reduce my bill every time I check out. I just assumed everyone does this since (a) the points don't earn interest and (b) the store could terminate the program at any time. I asked the cashier how many people deferred using their points and she said ~90%.

That seemed high, but anectodally, it tracks with the people checking out ahead of me.