Frequent Miler on the Air - Chase Sapphire Reserve: Compelling UR cash out rate? The latest in COVID credit card changes. | Ep48

Episode Date: May 30, 2020

Like, subscribe, and comment! Links to content in the timestamps below. Greg & Nick discuss: -Chase COVID enhancements to CSR and CSP -Should anyone consider redeeming Chase points at 1.5c each for groceries? Is it only for those who are cash-strapped - or should more people think about this option? -Confession time, question of the week, and more Timestamps & links: 1:58 Confession Time: Greg's Airline Incidental Sin https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/amex-airline-fee-reimbursements-still-works/ 10:50 Why Nick doesn't like Early Bird Check-in https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/complete-guide-southwest-companion-pass/#Early_Bird_CheckIn 14:21 What crazy thing did Citi do this week? (Er - What didn't they do?) 17:12 Chase's big new COVID offer https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/wow-chase-responds-with-new-covid-benefits-on-csr-and-csp/ 22:44 Is redeeming points for 1.5cpp a good deal? 35:13 Does it make sense to sign up for the CSR now? 37:46 Upgrade to the CSR now? 41:18 How about the Ritz card? Will Chase do anything for us? https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/ritz-fee-credits-what-works/ 48:43 Capital One's forgotten COVID enhancement https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/capital-one-adds-restaurant-and-streaming-redemptions/ https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/capital-one-brings-back-some-travel-gift-cards-including-special-offers/ 53:26 Question of the week: Can you double-dip Chase grocery rewards with an upgrade?

Welcome to Frequent Miler on the air. Hey, Nick. How's it going? Hello, Greg. It's going great. My goodness. We had snow like two weeks ago. I kid you not. And this week it's been like 80. It's hot. So a nice change, though. I like that. So I'm pretty happy. It's been pretty good these last few days. It sure is. I remember that happened last year, too, at least here in Michigan, where it went right from winter to summer and we had very little spring and uh that sort of happened now although this time we kind of had a spring for a little bit and then it went back to being cold and and then suddenly summer hit yeah so yeah I mean I'm happy to have

summer here that's right yeah I mean so nice just to be able to go out without having put on a big coat and boots and the whole thing, right? I just got sandals. It is. And with this whole sort of quarantine-ish sort of situation that we've been having for this period here, it's nice to finally get some really nice weather because I do happen to live in the middle of nowhere where I can spend a lot of time outside. And so it's nice to be able to do that now and not feel cold. Exactly. Every time I kept seeing snow, I was like, oh man, is this ever going to be over?

I just want to get out of the house. But you know, so now the cabin fever is definitely cured. Good, good, good, good. Good to hear it. So today's episode, we're going to talk all about COVID credit card enhancements because Chase has been fighting back. So we'll talk all about what Chase has in store for us. And a little bit, we're going to also mention something we had sort of, or at least I had forgotten about Capital One,

what Capital One was doing. So we'll get into that in a moment. First, now it's supposed to be feedback time. It is supposed to be, I agree. So I'm a little thrown off guard here because I'm like, yeah, I mean, it is feedback time. Is it not? Is it something? Well, what do you like better than feedback time? vacation time no i it's been so long it's been so long you don't remember apparently i don't so my my other favorite there are there are listeners there are there are rabid fans listening and yelling at you nick they're saying no they're saying it's confession time confession time oh my goodness it's been so long I had totally forgotten how much I enjoy confession time so right yeah I'm definitely looking forward to hearing today's confession so for yeah for those listening

and not watching Nick was doing his evil finger tapping thingy it's hard to explain but definitely looked you have to get like an evil villain. Take a look at it and don't forget to subscribe while you're there. Just picture an evil villain, you know. So, so Greg did something wrong and that's where we're lighting for a moment in his misfortune. But, but, but let's find out what, what, what happened. What do you have to confess? What have you done, Greg? Okay. Well, it all started when Southwest said

that they were going to allow us to convert our travel credits to points, to Southwest points, right? And so I don't actually fly Southwest often. So it's not something that I sort of really am interested in on my own for myself, but I'm very interested in it sort of academically for the blog, you know? So I wanted to create travel credits so that I can do it once it's available. It's not yet available as we're, as we're speaking.

The ability to convert it to miles that is, is not yet available, but, so I wanted to create travel credits so uh i also recently upgraded a business green amex card to a business platinum amex card so that i could take advantage of all the new credits that they're throwing at us to keep us happy during the pandemic. And so that's great. I wrote a post just the other day about all the ways I used my platinum cards during those credits. Right. And I agree. It was great. My son is going to love how Greg used his credit. You want to check that post out. That's right. I sent a couple toys his son's way from the post office.

So hopefully those will be good. I'm sure they will. I'm sure they will. He's going to love them. So you upgraded so you can take advantage of all the limited time benefits on the business platinum. But of course, one of the regular benefits is the incidental airline fee. So, so for the first time ever, I picked Southwest as my preferred airline. Normally I pick Delta and normally I easily earn all those credits through

award fees because I book a lot of awards with Delta and those, those award fees get erased up to $200 a year. So I picked Southwest so that I could basically make Amex, get Amex basically to pay for what will become my miles. And so my idea was to, well, and what I did was I started off, I bought a very low and low cost cash fare ticket. So it was just under $100, paid with my business platinum card. And as predicted on our webpage, which is called something like Amex airline fee credits, what still works. As predicted there, low cost airfare on Southwest does get refunded as if it's a fee. So that got refunded. That's great. Then I, well, yeah. So then I decided to add an actual incidental fee, which, you know, by the letter of the rules ought to work and did work, which was I prepaid for that early boarding thingy that Southwest has.

Early bird check-in. Early bird check-in, right. So it was $40 for the round trip flight. Wow, that's gone up, huh? I guess I remember writing about the fact that it had gone up. I had just forgotten. It used to be $10 and then it was $15. Yeah. I think it might depend on the flight. It does, yeah.

Yeah, but I was happy. Like I wanted it to be more because I want to use up more of the credits. But it ended up, it didn't really matter because my next step was I changed the flight to go somewhere else that was a little bit more expensive. So the last 60-something dollars of my $200 credit was easily spent by that change fee, which is another legitimate fee that they allow. Well, it wasn't a change fee that you were paying.

Well, right. Right, right. Just to be clear for the readers who aren't as familiar with Southwest, it was a fee, yes, because he changed. But okay, that's good enough. So Southwest doesn't technically charge change fees, but if the

fare is different, they charge a difference in the fare. And so as far as I'm concerned, for the purpose of this, it was about as legitimate as you could get. Right. You have to pay a charged when you changed. That's right. Sounds good to me.

So all of that got refunded. That's great. to get $200 in credits, Southwest flight credits, so that I can later convert those to Southwest points. Because as long as you generate those credits between, I can't remember when it started, but up until something like September 7th or something like that, as long as it's generated in that timeframe, you should be allowed to then convert that cash back to miles.

Or incidentally, for anybody sitting on a credit, if it was scheduled to expire in that timeframe, you'll also theoretically at least be able to, not even theoretically, they've confirmed that's going to be the case, you'll be able to convert it to miles at some rate, which we think is going to be favorable. Right. We've been told it'll be favorable, but without any specifics at all. Right.

Okay. So that's the story and that all worked. But then when I went to cancel the flight, I was told I wouldn't get back the $200, but I'd get back $160. And I was like, wait, what? And sure enough, written in big, bold letters in our complete guide to Southwest blah, blah, blah, Southwest Rapid Rewards, is that those early bird check-in fees are non-refundable. Totally non-refundable. I never pay for them because of that. Totally non-refundable. I never pay for them because of that. Yeah. Totally non-refundable. Yeah. Which is such a, like such a customer unfriendly thing that you would never expect from Southwest, right? It's not refundable. I mean, everything is refundable, right? That's why. You just refund the ticket. I mean, my goodness.

Yeah. Can you refund that fee? That's why I didn't read the fine print when I went to buy it. You know, I just assumed it was refundable the same way a ticket is. And why wouldn't it be? Well, so anyway, so that's my confession. I basically threw away 40 bucks. Threw away 40 bucks.

But you confirmed that that $40 did indeed trigger the credit. So anybody who has got the credits and wants to spend it on that, go right ahead. I mean, you could say that $40 was kind of free, but I mean, I could have, had I just not done that step and instead changed to a fare that was twice as much as my original fare, then I'd be getting back the full 200 instead of 160. So yeah, there you go.

Whoops. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Am I guilty? Am I damned for all of eternity? I mean, it depends. So what do you think is your sin in this case? Like what is the thing that you did wrong? Well, it wasn't cheating and going around the rules. The thing I did wrong was not either reading the fine print or reading the complete guide to Southwest Rapid Rewards.

All right, now you're forgiven. That's the part I wanted to hear. Yeah, that's the part I wanted to hear. So you're forgiven. Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that is in the complete guide, but it's in the complete guide to the companion pass. And in Greg's defense, he would have never read that because he's not a companion pass kind of a guy. So it makes sense if you're not usually a Southwest person that you probably wouldn't have read that. So good that Greg confessed this because that is a key gotcha. Those early bird

check-in fees, honestly, I think that it's just such a poor, I don't know, poor value thing in general because of A, the fact that they're non-refundable. So that stinks if your plans change. And then B, if you live in a major market, like let's say you live near BWI or you live near Chicago, you're flying out of one of those places. Just, I feel like the early bird check-in is not a great value for you because here's the thing with Southwest, whoever's starting first in the morning

basically gets the first chance to check in because of course you can check in 24 hours before your flight starts. So if you're starting at Baltimore, but I'm starting at Albany while I'm leaving Albany earlier than you can leave Baltimore. So I can check in for that flight a few hours before you can. And so the early bird check-in isn't necessarily going to get you an A or even, you know, high or low B number, I guess is the case.

Maybe it won't necessarily put you up near the front because anybody connecting to that flight is going to be ahead of you, whether that's an early bird check-in or not. So it's such a scammy sort of a fee to make people pay. But anyway, so I have used it before in times when I thought that I might want it. But now I have my own early bird check-in that comes with me all the time because if you're traveling with, I don't know, a kid up to like six years old or something like that, you get to board between the a and b groups so yeah and the nice thing is your son will be six until he's about nine probably probably probably yeah i'm gonna help him stunt his growth at that point so smoke

keep keep it going oh you're still six. Celebrating your sixth birthday again. Well, luckily, he's got a little one on the way, so little brother. Oh, right. You're safe for a while. At some point, you're going to be like, but you told us not to lie, Daddy. Right, but you want that ILC, don't you, kid? Sometimes you got to work for what you want. I almost never lied about my son's age.

Almost never. Almost never. One exception was in Chicago, we go to check in for the Amtrak train to go back to Ann Arbor. And the masses of humanity have filled up the entire place you know and and but families with kids I think it was nine and under or something like that could go right to the like oh you know the non-crowded waiting area in the front. And so, yeah, it could be that we implied. That your 15-year-old was really nine?

Something like that. We thought you qualified for that section. I kidnapped someone else's little kid. Well, you know, the thing is my son... Just briefly. My son is so confident that he's two, right? And so he's been saying two since before he was two a little bit before, cause we were asking how old he's going to be.

And then he's so set on two. And when you ask him how old any adult is, all of the adults are four and two and that's it. He's like never said the word three apart from when he's counting one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. So I'm not sure he's going to say three for a while. So we may be good for two year old stuff for longer than expected. We'll see. We'll see how it goes when it comes around. So it'll be, it'll be, what I'm predicting is you're going to be at something that, that it's three and under, and he's going to keep saying four, even though he's really three.

We'll see. We'll see. So speaking of crazy things, like, you know, lying about our kid's age to, you know, get a, get, get a head in the line to board the plane or something. What crazy things, since we're speaking of crazy things, what crazy thing did Citi do this week? Yeah. So I couldn't think of anything really crazy, but except maybe the lack of something, which is we've been asked a few times, and I don't remember the answer, but where Citi published the information about how they made the Citi Prestige travel credits easier to earn this year. So supposedly we can now earn them through dining and grocery, I think it was, right? The $250 credit. So the so the crazy thing if anything is they have this

great feature for cardholders and but they're not telling them advertising it anywhere openly you would think they would be doing that in order to try to convince their cardholders not to cancel instead they're keeping it kind of secret keeping that hidden i maybe they're trying to hold it for the retention team so the retention team can be like well i can offer you an easier way to meet your 250 credit this year you my friend can use it at restaurants and grocery stores maybe they're going to try and sell that as though that's a retention offer oh maybe that could be do you remember where we heard the news you know i i assume that we had heard it. No, I don't, to tell you the truth. It doesn't really matter. It's just...

No. Yeah. I don't know where it came from. I'm kind of curious now. But anyway, so I totally agree. And that actually kind of just makes me think of a lot of these little perks and things like that, that sometimes issuers just don't bother to advertise. And I don't really know why. I don't get it. Sometimes there are benefits that they don't advertise and things that I feel like would give people a little bit more value. But for whatever reason,

they just don't seem to want to do that. And yeah, by the way, it is in fact, we got it from Cities Marketing folks. It's from the ad agency that, that sends out their, their marketing stuff. So that, yeah,

that came. So they're feeding it to certain publishers, but they're not. Yeah. Sending an email to their customers. And, and you know, at the,

at the time I had asked, I had written back to ask them where we could find it. If there was an announcement on the website or anything. And, and they had told me there's no official release, but this information will likely be updated on the website or anything. And they had told me there's no official release, but this information will likely be updated on the city website soon. And that was on May 1st.

So it's now May 29th. And apparently it's not soon enough yet. All right. Well, you know, that's fine. They have to keep us with material to use each week. Right. So thank you, Sid. Appreciate it.

We appreciate it. So it seems to me that I think it was last week, you and I were talking about the fact that it was kind of surprising with all of the enhancements that some credit card issuers are making to their credit cards to make it less likely that their customers are going to cancel these travel credit cards, that there wasn't much available to make it easier to redeem points at full value. We specifically talked about that, right? We did. We did. We talked about it just a week or two ago with Amex in terms of the fact that in other countries, in some instances, they were making redemptions more valuable. It

was in Canada, I think, you know, it's two Canadian cents per dollar that you just cash in their membership rewards points, which is like 1.4 cents US. And we were like, wow, that's actually really good. And blah, blah, blah. Sounded like a great deal. We're like wow why wouldn't they do that here right right so what you know we know that that Hilton listens to what we say and reads what we say and now we know that Chase does too because Chase was listening to our podcast or watching our video and said they were taking notes and they were like that's a good idea. That's right. That's right.

That's right. Thank you. I'm glad, glad we got that out there. So everybody knows the influence we have over chase. Exactly. Exactly. So,

so they are now letting the Sapphire reserve card holders redeem their points at 1.5 cents per point value for any charges made at grocery stores, restaurants, or home improvement stores. Right. Starting June 1st, I think is what it is, right? So I think it's June 1st through September 30th, if I remember correctly. So you can redeem those points exactly to erase purchases, to offset purchases for statement credits that'll offset those purchases. Yeah. One and a half cents each clearly they were listening and they realized that yeah that's exactly right some sort of a way to redeem points that way so that's an interesting i mean we pretty much spelled it out exactly like that you know we

were talking about amex but you know yeah so after Amex basically stole Chase's lunch in terms of a much stronger response, Chase came back and they were like, you know what? Frequent miler is right. Here it is guys. That's right. Mic drop. I don't think we got a lot of credit in the press releases either. I don't know why we couldn't get a hat tip out of Chase, but I'd rather they listen and give us credit anyway. We know, we know where it came from. That's right. We know. So that's pretty nice. So what else did they do for us besides the 1.5? Well, they're also reducing the annual fee by a hundred dollars for people whose annual fee renews between July 1st and the end of the year. So if you've got a renewal coming up,

instead of paying 550, you're only going to pay450. That's going to replace the fact that they have been offering $100 statement credit to people whose renewal was between May 1st and now July 1st. I've been giving them $100 credit to offset that. Instead of getting the $100 credit, you'll just get $100 off the annual fee. So it's going to be $450 on next renewal this year for those people still renewing. And then let's see, what else did they... Oh, and they threw us a bone on the $300 travel credit because now the $300 travel credit, if you're not traveling and not spending your money on that, instead you can spend that $300 travel credit at grocery

stores or believe at restaurants, right? Is that what it was? Grocery and gas stations. Gas stations. You're right. Grocery and gas. I knew there was something else. Grocery and gas stations. So if you haven't yet spent your $300 travel credit from the Sapphire reserve, it's going to automatically reimburse from grocery or gas station purchases. Uh, and I believe that actually starts May 31st, but at any rate, um, June 1st, we'll call it for now through the end of the year. That way you don't, don't get confused with it. So, so easy to use that $300 credit. Basically that turns into cash. Even if you were someone who didn't necessarily cash that in pretty quickly for travel, then it should be pretty simple between grocery and gas to use that full $300 this year. Right. It should be a complete no-brainer.

There is a bit of a dilemma for people who want to earn. The other thing Chase is doing and has been doing is giving 5X at grocery stores with the Sapphire Reserve up through June. Up to 1,500 in purchases. Up to 1,500 in purchases. And so I think if you want to take advantage of that and you haven't yet used your $300 in travel credits, you have a bit of a dilemma because you probably won't earn 5X on the $300 that gets rebated. And so that's just sort of annoying, I guess. I mean, I don't know. It would be pretty hard.

Yeah, you should play. Somebody mentioned it earlier. And I can't on one of our posts, they commented today. They're right. They're going to go to a gas station first and spend $300 on a gift card at the gas station. Because that will then take care of that before they go to the grocery store. Yeah. I mean, that would be a good way to do it. Another thing you could do is just book, you know, travel in the future and use the credits the old fashioned way. Again, before you travel, that can be canceled for free or changed for free. And then you won't have to worry about that aspect of it. Right. Right. So there are some ways to do that. So yeah, 5x at the grocery store still for another month up to $1,500 per month in May and in June. So in June, you get

a new new 1500 easy travel credits, points at one and a half cents each. So redeeming the points at one and a half cents each. Is redeeming the points at one and a half cents each. Is that a good deal? I mean, you know, a lot of us like to redeem our points for first class flights and nice Hyatt hotels and things like that. So I saw a lot of people this week that commented in our Facebook group and, and also somewhat on our posts that said, you know, if I was cash strapped, I would consider redeeming Chase points at one and a half cents each. But I mean, my goodness, I can go stay at the Park Hyatt, Paris or the Vendome, whatever that is, or fly Singapore first class or this or that. There's no way I'm going to redeem my points at

one and a half cents each. What do you think, Greg? Is it just somebody who's in a position where they really could use the cash for groceries now that should be redeeming? Obviously, I think it's obvious that if you're in that situation, then yeah, definitely. Sure. Get your groceries. But is that the only group that should be? I don't think it's even close to the only group.

I mean, I think that the Sapphire Reserve has been a solid travel rewards card, even for people that always use the rewards at 1.5 through the travel portal. So if for anyone who had been doing that, now there's an option to sort of just cash out at 1.5. And let me tell you why that's so much better. So let's say you cash out like $2,000 worth of grocery bills over the time period that you're allowed to do that. You could turn around and use that cash back, keep it in a special savings account or whatever so that you know it's earmarked for travel and book travel more directly using discount codes at hotels or for rental cars and booking the cheapest airfare without having to go through all kinds of rigmarole when it doesn't show up on the Chase

portal directly. You could book really any train travel that doesn't show up in the Ultimate Rewards travel portal. You could do all of that. And the net result, it might not feel like you're getting it for free once it's become cash. But if you think of it, the overall net result is you used your points to book that travel at that same 1.5 rate. It's just that you went through an intermediate step of turning it into cash first and you're getting a much better value because now you're booking uh whatever the best way to book what you really want is instead of being constrained by the chase travel portal so uh yeah

i think i think it's it's actually really good for a lot of people. And then even for those of us who often use points for better than 1.5 value by transferring to, let's say, Hyatt, if you have so many points that you're not going to, you don't think you're in any near term going to use them all for things like Hyatt or United or whatever, then I think it's kind of dumb not to cash them out because otherwise they're just sitting there not giving you any value. What do you think? Do you agree?

No, I totally agree. I totally, I mean, I think that some people dismiss this too quickly because they're like, oh, I usually redeem my ultimate rewards more value than that. Well, me too. I usually do. But at the same time, this is good value for their ultimate rewards points.

So even though, yeah, I mean, sure, I'll redeem points in the future for better value. But this is a very solid value. And almost all of my ultimate rewards points were earned at better than 1x. So whether that's one and a half on the Freedom Unlimited or 3x in the right bonus categories on the CSR or 5x on the in cash or things like credit card bonuses or referral bonuses or whatever else, most of that stuff was earned in ways where one and a half cents per point was a darn good return on that spend. And getting that in cash, cash is the ultimate flexibility. I'm

not going to use all of my points right now, but boy, I could invest that cash. I could do something else, buy something else that I want to with that cash. So one and a half cents is a point where I'm like, okay, that's a pretty good deal. And here's the thing. If you know that you're going to replace the points too, there's another piece of it where you say, okay, well, I'm not traveling right now. And I know that this is about how many points I usually earn in a year. I mean, why wouldn't you cash those out and use that right now, basically. And we're saying cash out. And when I say cash out here, like what Greg said, you know, go pay for your groceries and use your points to give yourself a statement credit and toss that cash in a separate little account somewhere, toss it in a

little cookie jar, because it also gives you the opportunities to potentially turn that into more points with partners that aren't necessarily Chase partners. You know, I saw that Mylanomics wrote specifically about Aeroplan, and that was something that we had talked about briefly on our live broadcast this week, where right now Aeroplan is giving the opportunity

to potentially book travel and cancel it and turn it into Aeroplan miles at basically a rate of 1.3 cents a mile. So if you're cashing out your ultimate rewards at one and a half cents, then you're talking about basically, like Greg said on Thursday, giving yourself a transfer bonus to Aeroplan. And if you were to do that, you're getting yourself more than one mile, you know, more than a one-to-one transfer rate by buying those Aeroplan miles at less than what you're cashing out the chase points for. So, and they're not the only airline that'll do that. Sometimes you can get life miles at 1.3 cents. Hotel points are obviously much cheaper. So

basically you're giving yourself the access to the ultimate flexibility cash to be able to book travel to the best value for you. So, and I think that Greg's point about being able to book through a shopping portal, if you're booking a hotel, and stack that with any kind of a discount code, that's big because hotels don't interest me through ultimate rewards because I can't get my elite benefits. I'm not going to earn any hotel points. I can't stack discounts.

But now you can and still get one and a half cents a point. That's a deal to me. I think that's certainly worthwhile. Also, somewhat incidentally, I think I read from you that the Hilton buy points for half cent each was extended. It is, yeah. Not that I'm interested in that particularly, but it occurs to me that we're basically talking about there's an opportunity now to convert Chase points to Hilton at one to three if you want to. Right. So, you know, that's just not something you can normally do.

Not something you can ordinarily do. And, you know, there's so many different opportunities at grocery stores, for instance, that sell gift cards that have fuel point promotions and things like that. So you could potentially be cashing out these points and maybe buying yourself a discounted gift card. Sometimes they run deals on different third-party cards. So maybe you can pick up hotels.com or Airbnb or maybe some other brand that you actually want to buy the stuff at. Maybe you're a reseller and you want to be able to turn your points into merchandise. I feel like there's a lot of different ways to be able to do that. And particularly for the people with really big balances, they're sitting there with a huge balance they're not going to use soon. I mean, why wouldn't you? This is the easiest way to cash out your points. Why

wouldn't you cash out some of those points and do something else with that? So I guess the case where you wouldn't do it is if you're building up your points for a particular award or you want to get to where you have that amount. We talked last time about like, you wanna have a certain number. We don't know what that number is, but you wanna have a certain number of points in each of your transferable points currencies so that you can do the big trip that you want with whoever you tend to travel with.

And so if you're still building that up, you might say, okay, well, I'm not in a redemption mode. I'm in a earning mode. And so that could be a reason not a earning mode. And so that could be a reason not to do it. And that certainly could be a perfectly valid reason not to. But you really have to think about the redemptions. Because I think that the thing that stuck out at me most about this opportunity this week was the way I now look at the opportunity cost of transferring points to partners. Because I look at Europe, for instance, and most carriers,

most partners charge somewhere around 60, 70,000 points each way, a couple maybe charge 50, mid 50s, but let's call 60 the kind of the average for a business class each way to Europe. So you're talking about 120,000 miles round trip for a business class ticket to Europe. So now, if you instead were to redeem that 120,000 points right now, you get yourself $1,800 worth of groceries and stuff. Now, 1,800 bucks in your pocket that you could keep in your pocket today, obviously over time can build up. You could have that in some sort of a high yield account. You could be using it to open new bank accounts or bank account bonuses, use it lots of other ways, invest it to earn a little bit more. And when I look at it, I say, you know, there are airfare sales to Europe. Sometimes you can get round trip airfare for 2000 ish dollars. I mean, I saw today 1800 bucks round trip

on British Airways as I was looking at that sale that I posted on Iceland air, which isn't a very good business class. It was a little under a thousand bucks on Iceland air, but I found some routes were business class on British Airways. It's about $1,800. And we see that now. And then from some of the East coast, you know, East coast airports. And now I look at it and I say, well, man, that, that 120,000 points is really worth $1,800 cash in my pocket. Am I willing to hang on to that in the hopes of, you know, maybe getting a much better redemption in the future? Is it better to redeem that now and take the $1,200 in my pocket today? So there's a big opportunity cost to those transfers.

And I made the same point the other day with Hyatt and that if I'm gonna stay at a 20,000 point a night Hyatt, it is now costing me literally $300 in my pocket because I could get $300 worth of food that I am gonna buy and spend my $300 on, or I can keep that $300 now. I mean, it was theoretical before because you're like, oh, well, I could theoretically book $300 worth of airfare,

but now it's actual cash. Yeah, yeah. So I don't know if you remember this. A while back, I wrote a post about how the more flexible a currency is, like a points currency is, the more, I don't remember the exact wording I used, but in a way, the more painful it is to spend it because of these opportunity costs, because you could be using it for so much else, and in this case, cash back, really. And so now they've made it all, all the, you know, harder basically. And so, um, if now, if, if at the same time you have Hyatt points that, that are in the form of Hyatt points as opposed to ultimate rewards, then, uh, it's easier to spend it

for that same 20,000 a night, uh, stay because that's really the best use of those points is to book a stay. And so you're actually in a way, that was the irony I was pointing out, that in a way that the points that are more constrained become more valuable to me in a way because they're easier to spend. There's no mental cost to spending those. You know, you're not going to feel guilty about it. Whereas I'm going to look at my next 120,000 point redemption, you know, if I'm going to book a business class flight and be like, that flight is costing me $1,800. Well, and add on any fees as well.

Right. So let's say there's $200 in fees, then it's really a $2 dollar right exactly cost to you that it's so true and and sure you could have said that you're getting two thousand dollars worth of value but now you're really losing and in some it to some extent some measurement that eighteen hundred dollars of cash flexibility and i you know i would i generally wouldn't pay that much for a business class flight even though that might be a decent deal. Now, you know, like a good 10% off of the regular cash fare. I probably wouldn't pay that for a round trip flight to Europe. So I feel like I probably should use my points for groceries. Now, all that said, I'm not necessarily sure I'm going to, but I wanted to, because I like,

I like having my points and I want to be able to redeem them for nice flights too. So I get that, you know, I get the desire to use them for Hyatt for nice flights. I just feel like some people were very dismissive of like, Oh, I'm not going to use my points that way. You know, only, only people who are desperate for money should do that. And then it's like, that's not really true. You know, I've seen the sentiment mostly from MSers, but like, Oh, there goes all my, all my UR points, you know, I'm going to spend them all now because I know I'll earn them back eventually before I need to travel again. And I feel like it's, there's definitely some merit to thinking like that. Yeah. Yeah. So I've been doing some thinking about whether or not it makes sense for people to sign up for the card now for these new benefits. Yeah. I mean, does it?

Well, so we talked in the past about the Hilton cards and the Amex Platinum cards, how for a lot of people, those cards now make sense to sign up for because they have such generous benefits this year. This year, yeah. So get them this year, and there's a lot to gain. What do you think, before I tell you my conclusion there? You know, this question has come up, and I feel like I should have a solid answer for it. And I don't, I feel like, um, boy, when I look at it, I say, okay, so the CSR, if you're going to sign up for it now, I think you're gonna have to pay the 550 fee. I don't think you're going to get the four 50. So you're gonna have to pay $550 now. Now sure. The first,

that $300 travel credit, it's always been super easy, but now I would struggle not to use it. So I feel like that's 300 bucks off the top right away. So you're down to 250. And then if you're using DoorDash, you got the $60 DoorDash credit. Now, Greg's already argued with me before that we shouldn't value that at 60 bucks. So I'll say 50 bucks.

Okay. I'll also say that if you're going to spend 60 bucks anyway it's kind of like it leave it alone neck 50 dollars so we're down to 200 bucks now is it worth paying 200 to have priority pass that you probably can't use anytime soon and to be able to redeem your points more importantly at one and a half cents each depends on how many points you're going to redeem i guess i haven't done the math to figure out where the point is, so to speak, where that would make sense. But if you plan to redeem a large sum of points at one and a half cents a pop, then yeah, it does. If you don't plan to redeem them one and a half cents a point, obviously, then I don't think that the enhancement,

the $300 travel credit being usable at grocery stores, I don't think that's a compelling reason to apply. Yeah. Okay. That's exactly where I am with it. That they did, they did a lot to make it so that if you already have the card, it's still a solid value. So you're not losing that much and you're gaining some things. Um, but there's not a lot of the, unlike the Amex enhancements, it's not like signing up for the Sapphire Reserve now makes, you know, makes it more valuable than usual. I still actually think a lot of the value in the card is unusable. So that's true. Until you're traveling again. If you've got a mountain of chase points that you're looking to redeem, then it might make sense. That would be different. And that gets me in. And my next point, which is, I think that it's actually a great time for many people to upgrade from a Freedom or Sapphire Preferred or old Sapphire no fee card to the Sapphire Reserve so that you could take advantage

of all these features. And if you're about halfway into your account year, it is a smoking deal, I think. Because if you're halfway into the count year, they will prorate the next half of the year. And you'll still be renewed within this year, which means you'll renew at the 450 rate. So in that year and a half, you will have two chances to get $300 in travel credits, two chances to get the $60 DoorDash credits, and probably you have a lot of points that you might want to redeem at 1.5 while we have this opportunity to do so. So I actually think for a lot of us, this is the time if you've been on the fence about upgrading, think seriously about it now. I don't see much downside to it. One thing I don't know is if you upgrade now, so I do know or I believe it to be the case that you get a prorated annual fee for the rest of your membership year. Is it based on 550 or is it based on 450? That's a good question. Yeah. I would assume it's probably

based on 550 now because I mean, that's, that's the official annual fee. It's the renewal fee that would be 450. So it'd be like your next fee would be the fourth. Yeah. I just don't know. Will, will they treat it like a annual fee or renewal fee? So who knows? Who knows? Hard to say. Somebody will find out. But either way, I think it's a good deal. There are cases where, like, if you just had your membership year end or you're just about to, then especially if the answer is $550,000, then it's not much different from signing up new as far as what you're getting.

So it really has to do with what your membership year is, which of course, if we're talking about a fee free card, it's pretty hard to determine that. Yeah. Yeah. You would need to either have kept good records or maybe if you call, maybe Chase would be able to tell you when your anniversary day is, if you can get somebody on the phone. I would guess secure message could tell you, but it might not be instant, but yeah, cause with it, with a card like the Sapphire preferred, you could just look at when you were last charged the annual fee and

that's your anniversary date. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But with the annual fee cards, you'd have nothing like that to judge from. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a good point. So I think that that does make a lot of sense for a lot of people. I think the key is that the $300 part of it is not the reason you should be looking to, to upgrade or change unless like Greg said, your mid year, you know, that's not really compelling.

And I do find it a little bit surprising that chase didn't do anything like Amex did in terms of finding something else to offer for credit. But one nice thing, maybe kind of, I don't know, possibly, is that they did note in there that they are going to add this extra redemption, the ability to redeem for statement credits at better than one cent each, to other cards in the future. So we don't know exactly what that's going to look like. A guess would be that that's going to be the Inc. business preferred

and probably 1.25 cents each. But I don't know. We don't have any frame of reference for this. So hopefully they'll add some of that. I'm kind of surprised that they didn't add any other benefits to kind of replace the fact that nobody can use priority pass. How about the Ritz card? People keep asking us about this all the time. We haven't heard anything about the Ritz card yet. Do you think that Ritz card holders are going to get thrown a bone here and be able to use their $300 travel credit in some other way? I don't think it's likely. No. You know, Chase is not advertising this card. They're not allowed to sell it to new card holders. I'm, you know, in our Ask Us Anything thing yesterday,

I did play devil's advocate and said, you know, there could be a case where Chase wants to compete with Amex on the premium Bonvoy card market. They're not allowed to sell an ultra premium, the $450 card. They're not allowed to sell one outright to new customers, but if that market is lucrative in some way, then I could see them doing something to try to keep those customers. As things stand now though, I mean, that card, for anyone who knows how to get value out of those $300 in travel credits, that card is a great value as it is without any changes.

So I'm glad. I think you just republished or updated the Ritz airline fee credits, what still works for redeeming that. So that's good timing on that. So that's what people really should be looking at, not waiting for Chase to do something, but rather learn how to, how to get the most out of it. Yeah. Yeah. Knowing that Chase is listening though, should we have been saying something else here? Yes. I think Chase has to do

something to compete with the AMX Brilliant card. They've got to do something to compete with the amex brilliant card they've got to do something for card holders i mean it would be nice i'd love to see it as much as everybody else and so amex made it so that the brilliant card holders can get that 200 no 300 300 in credits through what grocery spent no dining spend dining spend yeah yeah yeah which i mean nice i guess that 300 credit has always been really easy to use because it was a Marriott credit that you could use in any Marriott. Then you could use it at the front desk to buy a gift card

or to buy gift cards other ways. So I feel like that one's always been a pretty easy one to use. I guess now it is more of that cash in the pocket kind of a thing, sort of like this grocery redemption we're talking about. So I mean, I guess that's nice. So Chase could do something like that with it, I suppose. I really doubt they are. And I think

that the point that Greg made, though, is the key. Like, don't sit around and wait and wonder and don't sit and think to yourself, oh, man, are they going to do anything? Because this is totally unusable. I can't use the credit. You can't use the credit. You just got to think outside the box a little bit. Take a look at our What Still Works post. It can be used. And I doubt that Chase is going to do something about it. So I wouldn't wait and hope that they're going to, because then you're going to be disappointed. Be surprised if they do something with the credit. Be pleasant. Be surprised. Don't wait on pins and needles there. And the thing is, you mentioned, as the devil's advocate here the other day, like you said, you mentioned the fact that maybe they'll do something to try to compete because they

can't sell new customers on this. Now, I wonder, I've never seen this before. And the logical part of me says it can't happen. If Chase wanted to compete that way, let's say that they wanted to compete with the brilliant card, even though they can't issue a new, you know, Ritz card kind of thing. Do you think they would offer an upgrade bonus of some sort to upgrade from the marriott card to the ritz card if that's what they wanted to they wanted to get people on that ritz card that's interesting i i would i would kind of bet that

they're not allowed to do that either you know so who knows what's in those contracts but yeah but you know when when uh marriott and spg merged that's when both mx and chase became marriott card issuers and they did everything in sync and it was clearly because they'd all gotten together with marriott and set down rules you know there's some kind of strict arbitration going on about who gets to do what. And so my guess is that, you know, there was a lot put in there to make it impossible for Chase to really advertise the Ritz card. That would be my. I mean, that would seem reasonable to me. It just seems like

they do allow people to upgrade to it. They do. So, I don't know. I don't know if they could offer some sort of a bonus for people. I think the absence of any sort of an offer for that tells me that at least if they could do it, they don't want to do it, which doesn't surprise me. I don't really envision

them doing it. But the other thing is, Chase is not really known for offering upgrade bonuses except when they're trying to get people off of an old card yeah that's true you know that old premiere card when they moved to the premiere plus which is now something else um they uh they offered all kinds of incentives and they tried different incentives. IHG cards, I constantly get emails. You probably do too for the old club card trying to get us to the less valuable but more expensive Premier. So that's their modus operandi and not to just move people to a more expensive card. I can't think of any case where we've seen, there probably is, probably someone else. There probably is, but I don't think of, yeah.

You don't remember this, but in general, it's not what they do. And I think that in the current environment, I just, I've said it before, I don't think that retaining customers is as large of a priority, given the fact that there's 30 million people out of work and the economy has obviously been really shaky. I don't necessarily think that retention is the top priority. So I said this the other day in response to a comment to someone, I just don't see the RITS card, retaining people on the RITS card as being something important enough to chase right now, given the current environment to even like be a discussion point in a meeting, forget about an action item that somebody feels like is a problem needs to be solved. So I just don't think that's, that's very likely given the

current environment. And the other thing, you know, I've said before is we don't necessarily want chase looking too closely at the Ritz card. Like, I don't want to get rid of it at some point and say, Oh, well, you know what? You get no no more got no no more ritz card for you guys like i would just like them to forget about it like forget it right exactly what which seems like mostly has happened right right right so even even even when uh they announced that all marriott cards would get 6x at grocery stores it was impossible to get solid information from marriott about whether the Ritz card was included. And I only got that solid information by luck because the first of my credit cards to get an email saying,

guess what, your Bonvoy card is getting 6X happened to be my Ritz card that they were talking about. Yep, yep. So clearly somebody is trying to forget about it and I just assume let them forget about it. The card's valuable, it's good, it's a good deal the way it is. Leave it alone. If it isn, is trying to forget about it. And I just assume, let them forget about it. The card's valuable. It's good. It's a good deal the way it is. Leave it alone. If it isn't broken, don't fix it. Leave it alone. So Chase, if you're listening, leave it alone.

That's fine. That's okay. We'll be okay. Everybody will find a way to use the credit. Right, right. So, so here's another thing I find funny. We, we talked recently, you know, we mentioned this earlier in the program that that we said why is nobody in the u.s offering uh full travel redemption for stay-at-home types of things for your rewards like they were offering different perks to keep your card but not they weren't making it so that you could get your travel rewards at full value. But we were completely wrong.

We're so wrong. We forgot about it. I mean, how are we the people that probably wrote first about it? Totally forgot to mention it. I don't know. I blame you because you're the one who wrote it. Sorry, Capital One. We forgot all about you.

So yeah, Capital One has been doing that. They've been offering the chance to redeem. Normally, Capital One points earned from your Venture card or Venture One card can only be redeemed for statement credits against travel purchases at one cent each. Otherwise, it's really poor value. But for like this limited window of time, they've made it so that you can use them

for restaurants and delivery. And was there something else I think? Streaming, I think. Streaming, yeah, there you go. I was looking for what it was in my mind. Yeah, so you can redeem your points for those purchases if you have a Capital One Venture card or Venture One card through September 30th

for restaurant delivery and streaming. And if you've got a Spark Miles card, it was different things for Spark Miles. Right, like maybe cell phone or something. I don't remember what it was. I'm pulling it up right now. But anyway, the point is that they were probably first to do this. And yet we didn't give them any love.

So sorry, Capital One. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. So your new phone or your bill is what I had down with Capital One card. So eligible restaurants, takeout and food delivery on the Spark Miles cards also. And on the Spark Miles cards, it's eligible wireless phone service providers. So you could theoretically use it to pay off a bill on a phone that you got subsidized or just obviously your regular bill or internet or wifi or landline. No, I'm sorry. Internet, wifi and landline services

are not eligible. I take that back. At any rate. Yeah. So capital one has already introduced that. And they said that that's going to be through September 30th. So that's, that's good news. And it is a redemption option for people who are not looking to travel. And I said at the time, and so I'm surprised that we forgot to mention this, that I thought that that was really out of the box, creative. That's right. Like I said that in the post, it was like the exciting thing here is i was like man they they reacted like right away they were on it they were so quick they were the first ones to offer something like that and uh so i i gave them credit in the post but then totally forgot to give them credit in our discussion so well not only that so i wrote the complete guide to covid credit card enhancements where i listed everything that Chase, Citi, and everybody

had done to enhance their credit cards, but Capital One is not there. So after this recording, I'm going to go add it in. Well, that's good. That's good. So that's good to have that. And we wrote a while back about how gift card redemptions were gone for Capital One, and then they came back, but they were missing some of the travel gift cards and things, but some of those are trickling back in now. So that's good news too, if you're looking to redeem Capital One points for gift cards.

Now that's usually poor value. In most cases, it's poor value. However, there are a couple of hotel chains that everybody that has a Capital One card can redeem for at one cent each for gift cards. Now, of course, you could normally just pay for your hotel stay and redeem at one cent each. So I'm not totally sure why you would wanna do it

for a gift card, but maybe you've got a reason. Raffles and Fairmont are both available at one cent per point for gift cards. So you could do that if you wanted to get a gift for somebody, I suppose. And then those of us who had the hotel special offers where we could redeem 64,000-ish points for a $900 gift card for certain chains, that's back. I thought we would never see that again.

When it disappeared, I thought it was done, and it's back. So that's exciting news, too, for those of us in that rare situation of being able to redeem. Yeah. That is so awesome. It is. It is. I was very excited to see that back. It almost makes me wish I had a Capital One card so that I could transfer my points to you so that you could buy me Marriott gift cards or Fairmont gift cards when that comes up. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to have that back because I had redeemed for a couple of those $900 Marriott gift cards and I was hoping to redeem for another one soon and then it's gone and I was like oh man I

should have just put the pedal to the metal earned some more points and redeemed it and I didn't think we would see it because some of the things the way they changed that I thought it was going to be disappeared forever and it's not so you can read more about it if you want and if you know somebody who's got the ability yay for you but uh yeah that'll only apply to a very small number of listeners so right right so that was exciting though for me. So I think that brings me to the question of the week, right? I think it does. Okay. So do you have a question for us? I do have a question for you. And this week's question comes from Aloha 808. So a frequent commenter on the blog and a friendly name and friendly name. Absolutely. And a friendly

guy. I know who it is. So, um, so he commented to ask a question that goes along with what we were talking about before, but I thought it actually made for a little bit of interesting discussion from a few different angles that aren't necessarily relevant to his question. But the question was, and this was talking about the Chase adding groceries on most of their cards as a bonus category.

So the Chase Sapphire Preferred is earning 3X. We talked about this a little while ago. 3X on up to $1,500 worth of groceries. That's in May and then another $1,500 in June. CSR is 5x at grocery stores. Again, $1,500 in May, $1,500 in June. So what Aloha asks us is, anybody know if you can double dip the grocery promo through a Sapphire Preferred to Sapphire Reserve product change? So what he's asking is, let's say, well, I mean, it's still May as we're recording this, promo through a Sapphire preferred to Sapphire reserve product change. So what he's asking is, let's say, well, I mean, it's still may as we're recording this, right?

Let's say he already spent his $1,500 in may on a Sapphire preferred at three X. Could he upgrade to the Sapphire reserve today? And then get a new $1,500 to earn it five X. So is this like one of those, can I get a lifeline, please? I don't necessarily know. No, I mean, my bet is that it would work, but I don't have any proof of that one way or another.

No, we wouldn't have any proof, but why would you think that that would work? Because... With a product change, your number with Chase is probably going to stay the same, right? The card number will stay the same, yeah. I would just think that they would probably track it based on the product more than the specific card. But again, it's really just a guess on my part. I don't have any reason to know one way or another. What do you think?

I think it will. I think it will work. So I think if you have a Sapphire Preferred and you're thinking about upgrading to a Sapphire Reserve, like Greg said, and you're looking to max out that grocery store promo, I think it will work. So if you're listening to this, probably you're going to do this in June because May is so close to over, you probably won't have enough time. So spend your $1,500 in June on your Sapphire Preferred, get your 3X on that for 4,500 points and then upgrade to the Sapphire Reserve. I would bet that you're going to get 5X on $1,500 in purchases. I would also bet by the way that if you ask the customer service representative, there is at least a 50% chance

that they're going to give you the wrong answer because they're going to make it up. So I wouldn't go by whatever they say. I think it'll work. And the reason I think it'll work- I wouldn't go by anything we say either. Well, you remember we talked about that. You need to double check what we say on this show

because it's live, you know? Well, it's not live when you're listening to it. It's live when we record it though. So don't go like go back and edit we don't pause and stop so you never know live on tape live on tape there you go so the reason i think it'll work is because i have product changed before and gotten uh like when i was at the referral cap on a card my product changed to a different card and i was able to then generate referral links for that new card like right away so So, so for example, it was a, I think it was a Marriott card is what it was. And so it upgraded from the old Marriott card to the new Marriott card and the referral cap

had reset right away. So that tells me that something in the computer system recognizes that that's a different type of card with its own cap. So rather than being like, okay, you hit the cap for that. So my thought is that if the computer system recognizes it that way, then I imagine it's probably going to be the same for this. So I think that probably it'll work. Now, another interesting point I thought that that led me to was the fact that with Amex cards, when you product change,

can you product change and take advantage of something like that with Amex and the different bonuses that are going on now, because we've seen upgrade bonuses on various cards and then different sorts of benefits. And so I think this is something that also applies over on that side, right? I, yeah, I think it, I think it definitely does. And, you know, I don't know how many people have been doing this kind of thing, but I'm sure that, you know, on Amex side, the different statement credits, like you could get all the statement credits available for the gold card, then upgrade to the platinum and get those statement credits, that kind of thing. I'm sure that would work. This case just feels a little bit different to me as far as, you know, I don't know, because it's, because it's that 1500 a month cap. I don't

know. It just feels a little different. So I, you know, I think Nick, you just gave us a good reason to think maybe we'll probably work. Like maybe there's a better than 50% chance, but I wouldn't say it's like, I wouldn't say it's a 90% chance. No, I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say 90. It's somewhere in there. And so it's something that I feel like it's, it's a 90% chance. No, I wouldn't say 90. It's somewhere in there. And so it's something, I feel like it's probably worth a shot because I think that there's a better than 50% chance that that would work.

So if you are going to upgrade and you are spending a lot at the grocery store, then I would consider trying to double dip that if that's an exciting redemption opportunity to you right now and you listen to what Greg said earlier about upgrading and you're like oh yeah i think i want to upgrade i think it's worth going for that double dip so so wanted to bring that up because i because there are other opportunities sometimes to be able to do that with other cards especially with the amex cards and keep in mind also that when you upgrade an amex card nice thing we've talked about before

is a lot of times those don't have lifetime language so you might be able to get yourself an upgrade bonus if you see one in your account, even if you've had that card before. And so that opens up opportunities, sometimes product change and take advantage of the chance to earn some new points for doing it. Absolutely. Yeah. So all right. All right. That's very good. I think we're we are all set for this week. Thank you guys very much for being here with us today. So if you want to read more about what we've been talking about, you want to go to the frequent miler.com slash subscribe. Again,

that's the frequent miler.com slash subscribe, where you'll be able to get on our email list and, and sign up to subscribe to this podcast and all the other fun things that we offer, like our Facebook group and Twitter and stuff like that. So thank you guys very much for being out there with us today. We look forward to hearing you guys or seeing you guys or hearing from you guys or something like that. See, that's what happens when you record live,

start mumbling. So thank you guys very much. We'll see you next week. Stop the mumbling. Bye everybody. Bye bye.