Should I keep my ultra-premium card to preserve 1:1 point transfers? | Question of the Week Ep18 | 10-12-26
00:00 This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. This podcast episode is sponsored by Sayley. Sayley is an e-Sim service app created by the security experts behind NordVPN. Instead of paying absurd daily rates to your home carrier or swapping SIM cards on arrival, Saly gives you flexible prepaid data plans and over 200 destinations worldwide. Setup takes just a couple of minutes on your phone before you leave. your data activates automatically when you touch down.
00:36 Plus, in order to reduce your data consumption, Saly actually blocks malicious sites, trackers, and annoying ads while you browse. Whether you need a quick gigabyte for a weekend away or unlimited data for a longer adventure, Saly keeps you connected without any surprise bills waiting for you at home. Ready to upgrade your international roaming? Download Saly from your app store and use our code frequent miler at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase. Details are in the show notes. This week's question of the week, should I keep my ultra-premium credit card to preserve one-to-one point transfers?
01:17 Chuck writes in and says, Do you think other banks will do something similar to what Chase did with Hyatt, requiring the highest-end card in order to maintain the one-to-one transfer? As a side note here to explain for anybody who's unfamiliar, Chase has changed the transfer ratio to Hyatt on most of their cards. it's no longer one to one, it's four to three, unless you have the Sapphire Reserve or Sapphire Reserve for business card. Those two ultra premium cards maintain the one-to-one transfer. That's what Chuck is talking about there. So Chuck goes on and says, will City require the strata elite
01:52 for one-to-one transfers to American Airlines? Will Capital One, we'll Amex, you know, do similar things with airline transfers? I wouldn't want to cancel an elite card only to later learn that I needed it to maintain the value of the points. Your thoughts? So what do you think, Greg? Yeah, well, first of all, do I think other banks will do this? Absolutely. I do. I'm betting. So, you know, Amex recently lowered the transfer ratios for a couple of programs. Now, they're not programs that maybe you'd care about, but the point is they're probably, you know, kicking themselves for not thinking of what Chase thought of. Because what... a great way to encourage people to keep the really high-end cards. If they could have said,
02:38 you know, oh, you're interested in Emirates, transfers, it'll be one-to-one only if you have the platinum card. You know, that seems to me like a no-brainer business decision. So I'm really surprised they didn't think of it. And I bet you that they're like kicking themselves for not having thought of it. So yes, I think it's likely that some other programs will copy that. but I do not think you should be holding on and paying the annual fee for fear that that might happen. Instead, downgrade to a card that is worth it to you. There are often no fee or very low fee options to downgrade to. And then, you know, if this happens and you really want that one-to-one, then you could probably upgrade back to.
03:28 that card when you need it. You might even be able to just upgrade right before you transfer and then downgrade back to your other card without having to pay that big annual fee for the whole year. So there are better options than just holding on to those expensive cards, paying the annual fees for fear that this might happen. This episode was produced and edited by Carrie Yoder, music by Annie Yoder. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today and you'd like to get more of this in your email inbox each day or each week, go to frequentmiler.com.
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