Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card: Earn 80,000 Bonus Points After Spending Expired

First off, you have to be a traveler to really get the full benefit of this card. Then, you have to look at this card as essentially a 1 year card wherein you will get 80,000 points (or 90,000, with the additional 10,000 from signing up in-branch, spend $6000 over 6 months). You will pay $95 for the card, you'll get $50 in hotel credits through Chase Travel website, making it $45 for the year. I did some comparisons and the hotel prices are the same compared to the official channels (e.g. Marriott.com). The only downside is that you won't get to use cash back deals offered by the likes of AMEX or BoA, although Chase at times has such deals (Westin, Fairfield, Sheraton, etc.). There is currently an AMEX deal for $120 cash back on $300 spend at Marriott. What is nice is that hotel purchase to get the $50 credit will score you 5% cash back versus say BankOfAmerica or Wells Fargo Autograph 3%.

Regarding the points-to-flights benefit. 80,000 points is $800 cash back or $1000 if redeemed through Chase travel (Chase Sapphire Preferred gets you 25% bonus). All nice and good as long as you book the right airlines. You are essentially buying a ticket with points, with the prices matching the official channels. Unfortunately, for American Airlines and COPA (among many others) Chase charges a baked-in premium to book (i.e. the price of the ticket costs more on Chase), For AA it is $40-$50, for COPA it is $16, for Spirit it is $7, Air Canada $5, etc. Delta, United and JetBlue all have no premium. So if you want to maximize the value you are limited on airlines.

I did an example booking with AA. It is $380 for the flight, booked with miles it is 20,500 miles and $92 in taxes. Approximately $0.014/mile. Booked with Chase it is $430. Without sapphire preferred it would be 43,000 points, with the Sapphire Preferred 25% discount its 34,400 (its 25% increased value of the point, so therefore a 20% discount)

An example booking with United. It is $170 for Economy, booked with miles is 15000 miles and $5.60 in taxes. Approximately $0.011/mile. Booked on Chase it is also $170 (no difference). Without sapphire preferred it would be 17,000 points, with the Sapphire Preferred 25% discount its 13,600.

For Delta. $175.9, 15000, $5.60, $0.0115/mile. Also $176 on chase, 17590 without discount, 14,072 with it.

Yeah so it really is only good for airlines which dont have that baked in fee (United, Delta, JetBlue).

After the first year, you do get 10% rewards back in how much you spent in the year on the card, although you are going to get hit with another $95 annual fee. You will get another $50 travel credit so it is again just $45. So unless you reallllllly travel a lot on United, Delta and JetBlue and reallllly book a lot of hotels wherein the 2% added cash back (over Wells Fargo Autograph travel 3%, or Bank of America online 3%) will cover the $45 cost (i.e. $2,250 in spending), this card is just good for the signup bonus...wherein you will use the bonus during the 1 year you have the card such that you can get the 25% added redemption value, and specifically only on Delta, United or JetBlue. The other benefits, the cash back are bested by other cards. While you get the billed cash back rate, in reality it is 25% boosted since the redemption value is increased at Chase travel. 2% travel is actually 2.5%, 3% dining is 3.75%, 3% streaming is 3.75%, 1% everywhere is 1.25%. CITI Double cash is 2% everywhere, Wells Fargo Autograph is 3% travel. The streaming and dining are clearly nice. I'm grandfathered into the CapitalOne SAVOR card when it was free, so I get 4% dining. SavorOne (the current free card) is 3% dining, so you are losing out on 0.75% (on $3000/yr in dining that is $22.50/yr). Streaming 3.75% is nice, but how much a year does anyone actually spend on streaming? $200? $300? $400? That extra 0.75% isnt a big difference maker. In other words, using this as your every day card is leaving a LOT on the table since other cards get better cash back rates.

So yeah the bottom line is, if you fly a lot on United, Delta or JetBlue, look at this card as a one-year rental PLUS A HARD CREDIT PULL to get $955 in flight value ($1,000 - $45 cost after hotel credit) if you spend $4000 in 3 months, or $1080 in flight value if you spend an additional $2000 in the 3 months after the first 3 months for a total of $6000 in 6 months.

What's your take on the reserve once we get another 80k offer popping up again since I know that's a 1 in 4 yrs deal too

I have no loyalty to hotels or airlines. I always buy what is cheapest (and I'm sure I'm not alone in that sentiment). Using points with a hotel group is always a challenge because you have to find a hotel from the group in the area you are visiting (not always a guarantee). Sometimes the best hotels are not a US brand. For example, I go to Cartagena a lot. Yes there is a Radisson, Holiday Inn, and a Hilton, but these are not the best hotels in the area, especially for kids.

Regarding flying, I'm always flying to Colombia, so my choices are either COPA, Avianca, United, Delta, Jetblue, and American. Spirit is through BWI, which is too far out of the way (besides being crap).

COPA, Avianca and American aren't transfer partners with any credit card system.

I don't fly to Europe, Canada or the Pacific, so Alaska Air, Hawaii Air, Aeroplan, Iberia, Avios...these are all worthless to me

For example, I flew to Japan back in 2019 , which would be considered the rare international vacation. I was going purely on price which Delta presented itself as a bargain - IAD-DTW-NRT. Got a RT for $955.

A lot of conditions need to be met for you to make the most of this card:[list=1][*]You can't already have Global Entry. If you already have it, it is a wasted $100 credit that helps to offset the $550 fee.

[*]You kinda need to be a single guy, or have a wife who is willing to get to the airport early to utilize the lounges. The lounge access is a very nice benefit but loses its value if you have a wife who doesnt realize this value, and just wants to get to the airport with the usual 2 hour window (which is completely normal). If you are LUCKY and check-in and security takes a mere 15 minutes, sure, 2 hours before will give you like 1.5 hrs in the lounge. It has been very rare that a 2 hour window has granted my family that luxury. Either check-in is terrible, security is terrible, or the walk to the gate is terrible.

Spending barely an hour in the lounge feels like wasted money - just ask yourself if you would buy a 1-day pass for $50-$70 if you knew you were only going to be in there for under an hour.

[*]I'll just assume the offer is 80k bonus. So the question becomes, are you willing to do a hard pull on your credit for $1200 in value?

Keep in mind it isn't EXACTLY $1200

So the Reserve card cost is around $100ish.

Have sapphire preferred, got denied for sapphire reserve. How do people get both?

Ha
You have wait two year in between or is better to upgrade to reserve?

I mean, to maximize it 100%, sure... but it's easy to get over $550 in value without it.





So you're saying you do NOT already have global entry or precheck?

Because I fly a decent bit and never take more than 5-15 minutes to get through security with it.

Guess that $100 credit WOULD be full value to you!

Also besides the lounge you can get $56 for 2 in restaurant credit at over 2 dozen airport restaurants with priority pass.





No but it has often saved me the price of a meal at the airport- and 1 or 2 guests that price as well. Both ways- plus at any connecting one with a layover.

Also the price of a drink or two if we wanted one.

I've gotten north of $300 on ONE roundtrip in value like this- let alone more than 1 trip.






Why would you NOT?

A hard put is a couple point hit, that typically rebounds in a few months, and ages off your report completely in 24 months.

What BETTER uses for a hard pull do you have?





Correct.

For example I just cited buying a $7000 plane ticket with roughly the # of points you get with this signup offer.

But even ignoring that it should be trivially easy to get a lot more than $1200, even sticking just to Hyatt hotels or coach travel.







You forgot the $180 a year in Instacart credits ($15 a month).
You forgot the free 12 months of instacart+ and Dashpass ($99 and $99)
You forgot the $5/mo door dash credit
You forgot the $10/mo Gopuff credit
You forgot the up to 2 free years of Lyft Pink ($199 worth of credit)

That's $760 worth of credits. Even if you only used 1/4 of them you'd be easily profitable on the card.

And that's without putting a more reasonable value on the airport lounge access for most folks than you did....or counting the value of getting primary rental car insurance... or any of the other travel insurances the card offers.

This is objectively wrong.

Hyatt for example routinely offers you north of 2 cents a point with transfers, meaning 90k points can easily approach $2000 (or more for some properties) in cash equivalent value... Marriot is garbage in comparison.

Further, thanks to airline alliances, you can book nearly every airline in the world with Chase points.

Avios for example can get you short haul American Airlines domestic flights for as little as 7500 points or West Coast roundtrips to Hawaii on American and Alaska Air as low as 26k round trip... and Avios can also get you roundtrip coach to Europe as low as 34k from the east coast via Iberia air (and there's usually at least one 20-30% transfer bonus during the year too making these deals even sweeter). Aeroplan can get you short haul US to Canada as low as 6k points each way as another example. LOTS more out there.... yes the value gets much higher in business or first- but just coach and hyatt hotels will usually beat the hell out of the 1.25 cent portal values like for like too unless you have very very narrow/specific dates and routes you're locked into.

Methinks you need to go do a fair bit more research on this topic my friend-- you're apparently missing out on a lot of value.

How to get $56 credit ?

Got a chase freedom unlimited last year w/ sign up bonus… does that have anything to do with this Saphire card? Am I eligible for the Saphire and bonus or do I need to wait to try for any other bonus?

*Marriott has appx. 6 times as many properties as Hyatt. So, for availability, Marriott points might be valuable.

Priority pass is accepted at a number of airport restaurants (I think like 30 or so last I checked) and you (and 1 guest) can each get $28 in credit off your bill using it there. $28 times 2 is $56.

And speaking broadly you can use it unlimited number of times--- so for example if your schedule was lucky enough to have at least one PP restaurant at your origin, destination, and layover, you could use it at each and get $168 in free restaurant credit...each way.

PP restaurants aren't USUALLY as common as that, but if you're hitting 2 or 3 major airports on a trip odds are decent at least 1 will have a place to use it.





One has nothing to do with the other as long as the freedom didn't put you over 5/24





They're really really not.

Marriot points generally are only worth roughly 0.7-0.8 cents per point.

Since the transfer is 1:1 you're objectively worse off transferring points to Marriott instead of either:

Booking with your card as cash, then offsetting that spend by taking the points as flat out cash (1 cent each)
or
Booking that same Marriott through the Chase travel portal (where you get 1.25 or 1.5 cents per point depending which sapphire you have)

NOTE: You do not typically get any Marriott elite benefits you might otherwise get if you have status with them using option 2... so it may or may not be better to use 1 vs 2 based on that as well... but both beat direct point transfers.



Once in a while they do have a transfer bonus, where you MIGHT beat the 1c cash rate... but that's STILL usually going to be worse than using the travel portal (esp. if you have a CSR).

There's 2 possible exceptions:

1) If you have Marriott points in large # already from something else, and need just a few to top off for a specific booking... then transferring those few might make sense.

2) You have a large transfer bonus going AND you have a specific high-value redemption lined up.... the best example being Marriot gives you a free 5th night when you book with points specifically... so if you found a situation where a specific hotel on specific dates was already offering better than the typical 0.7-0.8 cents....AND you were getting a good Chase transfer bonus....AND you were getting a 5th night free by using points.... if ALL of those are true then it would likely beat using the portal, esp. since any elite status would apply to the booking too.


That said... even for exception #2, you're still going to be much lower value than you can using the points for many airfare options-- so you might still be better off using actual $ for the hotel and saving the points for a high value flight.... YMMV.

What I meant was - if there isn't a Hyatt where you want to stay, Hyatt points have ZERO value. There is a lot of value in knowing that there's a very good chance you'll be able to use your points wherever you go.