If you plan to spend the equivalent of $3,166.67US outside the United States, the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card is also worthwhile. Chase does not charge a foreign transaction processing fee to Sapphire Preferred charges, but they charge a 3% fee for foreign transactions on the Chase Sapphire Card.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred will also cover the cost of the $95 annual fee is you spend more than $3,166.67 US outside of the United States. Chase Sapphire Preferred card does not charge the 3% foriegn transaction fee that is charged to Chase Sapphire card transactions.

Is this a Visa or MC?

Visa :)

I read somewhere that you can convert the 50K bonus points on the Sapphire preferred to actual airline miles. Any info on this?

loving the features of the card. Although it is a bit disappointing that you must spend over 3k outside of the us or an outrageous 135k just to even out the annual fee. Although doing some quick searches on the ultimate rewards site you find that shopping at macy’s will give you 10 points per dollar, hotels.com at 4 point per dollar and barnes and noble at 7 points per dollar among many others which may quickly add up to the necessary points to even the fee out. And yes the points transfer to miles on a 1:1 ratio on airlines such as Continental but i find that booking through the rewards site with your card may be much better as not only will you rack up points for your flight purchase and you should be getting double points if not more per dollar on top of airmiles. You can also purchase flights with your points and still earn air miles which is another way to go as opposed to simply transferring the points over on a 1:1 ratio.

I have 3 Chase Sapphire cards and they all say “MasterCard” on them.

Your math doesn’t work on the dividend paying for the card. $134,000 in regular spending = 134,000 points. Points are generally worth 1 cent = $1,340. That will definitely cover your annual fee. But the dividend is 7% of your points for the year (134,000 x .07= 9,380 extra points). (9,380 points x 1 cent = $9.38). The dividend is a negligible benefit, definitely won’t cover your annual fee.

Robert, you’ve gotten mixed up with your last calculation. 9,380 points at 1 cent per point would be 9,380 cents. That is equivalent to $93.80, as there are 100 not 1000 cents to the dollar.

I see that for the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card that they waive the $95 fee for the first year. I’m going to Argentina for a a couple wks in the winter, say I get the card now, rack the quick 3,000 I need to get the 50K points and then use the card abroad with no foreign transaction fees. Pay off the card and then cancel it. Anybody see anything I’m losing out on other than the 7% yearly bonus?

Does Chase Sapphire have a business credit card option? We need personal and business. Thanks for everyone’s comments…they help reduce the amount of time to research all of this. I have clients who LOVE this card…which is how I found all of you! Google. (0;

THANKS!!

+++Question+++

I saw a question posted on a other Chase cards site that was unanswered and its a pretty good one.

I have the Chase Sapphire card and you get 1 point per dollar spent. But if you buy from the Ultimate Rewards Mall which can give you more than one point per dollar, for example: Buying from Macy’s.com in the UR Mall will get you 10pts/dollar. Will I be getting 11pts per dollar considering the initial point Chase offers or or will that single point per dollar become obsolete?

There are other stores in the UR Mall which only offer 1pt/dollar. This is where I’d like to know if I will be getting the point from Chase, plus the extra point from the mall which would make it 2pts per dollar? Otherwise like someone else stated, there wouldn’t be any benefit in buying at those stores that are only worth a point/dollar when you can go in person and just buy it there.

Chase Customer Service is second to none. It’s the main reason I stick with the Chase Visa Card.

My son’s laptop recently went out and my wife remembered Visa (we have Chase Sapphire) DOUBLES the warranty. It was just under 2 years since purchase. HP had to fix it twice & looks good now, but they sent you a box for pickup and expedite service and Visa is reimbursing 100%.

Have similar situation coming up. Did you ever get an answer?

don, did u ever get an answer to this question?

your math is wrong. 9,380 points x 1 cent = $93.8 not $9.38. It would cover annual fee.

Does anyone know how many miles you need to accumulate to earn a free ticket from US to Europe with a Chase Sapphire Card? I called customer support and talked 4 specialist, but they couldn’t answer. Lufthansa requires 48,000 miles and United requires 60,000 miles for a free ticket with their credit cards.

How does flight booking work when you have chase sapphire card

1. I have bank of America visa card which gives points. So now if I need to book a flight within US which is say $350 , it will take approx 35000 points

2. If say above flight was continental and I had miles. It would take only 25000 miles .

Now if I have to book same flight using chase sapphire card..will it take 35000 pts or 25000 pts .

Secondly can points be transferred to miles..like 20000 pts to 20000 miles.

What is the card made of? Its really heavy.

Redeeming for airline tickets is easy. You are told how much cash value your points are worth when you start booking. I recently had 36000 points which were worth about $450, so it didn’t matter what flight I chose, I had $450 dollars toward any flight. The flight I needed was over $1000 so I paid the difference on the credit card. If it were under $450 I would still have points remaining in my account.
The choice and price of flights seems very similar to Orbitz or other travel booking companies.

I don’t have annual fee, 4600 points is worth about 50.00 cash

are you sure you have to spend over $100,000k to make up for the $95 annual fee???

for one thing, opening this up gives you 50,000 points off the bat which you can redeem for $500 cash. (some people got in on a 2 day window for 100,000 points I read…..)

so that’s 5 years worth of free annual fees right there.

anyway, 1 point for every dollar you spend, so 1.07 if you consider the 7% bonus dividend at the end of the year.

to redeem $20, it’s 2000 points, so $95 dollars is 9500 points….. that’s less than $9000 you have to spend per year to make $95 in cash back rewards…………….

am i missing something?

On my chase freedom card I’ve very quickly racked up over $100 in cash even after their 25,000 bonus points that I started out with. I know I haven’t spent more than $10,000….i know for a fact it was not more than 20,000……

so what is this talk about needing to spend $135,000 a year in purchases just to make $95 in annual fee back?????

Oh ok…. so besides the sign up bonus 50,000 points worth $500+ and no annual fee for the first year………..

why are people wanting their 7% dividend to pay for the annual fee? You get way more than just that 7%…. 1 point per dollar spent PLUS the 7% dividend….so instead of just earning the $95 from JUST the 7% bonus dividend, if you spent enough to make $95 from the 7% dividend, that means you also earned $1350 from the normal 1 point for every dollar spent….! So people who actually spend 135,000 a year on their card will actually get like $1450 back. not a bad deal.

the truth of the matter is that (not counting the $500+ chase gives you for signing up), all you need to spend is less than $9000……..not that hard by any means…

again, plz enlighten me if i’m missing something here.

Can anyone tell me exactly what the ratio is converting the points to actual airline miles and what airlines can be used? I saw Continental up there but since there won’t be a Continental in another month will the conversion switch over to United?

Thanks.

One best offer by this card I think is the trip cancelation insurance. They covered up to $3000.00 each event(not per person, no medical coverage). I purchased air tickets with this card last year but had to cancel our trip because of medical condition. I had our money back with their trip cancelation insurance. Highly recommand for frequent travelers.

Justin, you are missing something…The $135,000 is only to show the difference between Chase Sapphire, and Chase Sapphire Preferred. If you have Chase Sapphire with no annual fee, you would still get $1350 from spending $135,000 per year. They are explaining that in order for the 7% bonus dividend to pay for the Sapphire Preferred $95 annual fee on its own, you would have to spend $135,714 (135,714/100×0.07=95). This is not completely true as it ignores the fact that international travelers save 3% per dollar spent overseas with the Sapphire Preffered as they do not charge foreign transaction fees on Sapphire Preferred.

Is there a Chase Sapphire Preferred Mastercard? or just a Chase Sapphire Mastercard?

The $135,000 calculation also leaves out another Preferred benefit:

Preferred version gives 1 extra point for hotels and airlines while the Chase Sapphire does not. Both cards give an additional 1 point if hotel and travel is booked through their system.

okay

I’ve had the Chase Sapphire for over a year. I booked airline tickets last year on their website. About two weeks ago we upgraded to Chase Sapphire preferred. Its a great card, but its far from perfect. Here are some of the issues I’ve encountered:
1. Last year with regular card: after booking my airline tickets online with Ultimate Rewards, the airline (Iberia) changed the time of one of the connections, which threw off the entire itinerary. We were not informed by Ultimate Rewards, who basically acted as the travel agent. I found out about the problem when I called Iberia to get seat assignments. Definitely not cool. Iberia said “they never called you?” No. They didn’t. No e-mail either.
2. Preferred card: I have another big trip planned for this year, including international airline tickets, several rental cars, a hotel stay AND a cruise. I’m not kidding you, I spent an hour on the phone the other day trying to get information. Bear in mind that I already made my arrangements, and I was checking to see if Ultimate Rewards travel agency could at least match what I already found. The cruise department is separate from the rental car department. This is dumb and wastes time. Their price was over $250 higher, so even with my bonus points and dividend, I was still better off keeping my reservation. Then I was transferred to the rental car/hotel department. Because I was making international reservations, they could not even quote my request because all three reservations were not related to airports (remember, I’m dealing with ports, not airports). OK so you can’t quote rental cars for me, how about the hotel? I wanted a specific Holiday Inn. yes, it is in England, but very easy to find on the web. These people could not find my hotel to quote me a price. The one who did find it had to do a search from Heathrow, about 80 miles away, and find it on a map. It took about 25 minutes for her to find the hotel. Then she made mistakes on the number of people in the room, and date of arrival. Finally she announced “there are no rooms available.” Wow. Really?
3. After I expressed dissatisfaction with the service, here was the stock answer: Well, at least you can call us back after you’ve made the payment, and we’ll credit your purchase with points. OK but the whole sales pitch to upgrade was to book through your travel agency to get the bonus points. UGH. This isn’t even the whole story – some of the travel agents I ended up talking to were way over their heads.
4. Don’t bother using a human to book your airline tickets. Quote from the guy who answered the phone in the airline ticket department: have you tried our website? It has the same screen that I do. Truthfully their website is easy to use, and I will probably do it again.

I promise you I was pleasant. I told each agent exactly what I wanted, since I had already done the research. I waited and waited for their computer system, and at this point plan to downgrade my card after my trip this year. I have a Capital One card that also gives me no foreign transaction fee, so I won’t actually lose that feature.

I will continue to carry the card, but probably not the Preferred version.

I’ve had the Preferred version of this card since August and so far so good. But it seems you’re missing some other important details. Not only does the preferred version offer the 7% dividend, but the preferred version gives you a 20% discount on amounts needed to book travel through their site. I haven’t yet looked into the costs of travel through their site, but if prices are equal to what you’d get by going directly through the airline or hotel itself, then 20% more is great.

For example lets say you spend $10,000 a year (all at 1% back). That gives you a total of $10,000 points which is equal to $100. You’d first get a 7% dividend for another 700 points which is 10,700 total points = $107. Let’s say that instead of getting $107 cash back for those 10,700 points you choose to redeem them for a hotel room that would cost $107 (10,700 points) normally. Well instead of costing 10,700 points ($107), it’d cost you 20% less or 10,700 x 80% = 8,560 points or $85.60. That’s a savings of $21.40 (2,140 points). So spending $10,000 in a year nets you a total savings over the regular Chase Sapphire of $21.40 + $7.00 = $28.40. So you’d have to spend $33,450.70 to get $95 to cover the annual fee.

That doesn’t even include any savings spent internationally where you’d save the 3% foreign exchange fee. It also doesn’t factor in the fact that you get 2% back on all travel and dining on the preferred version whereas on the regular version you only get 2% back on dining.

So it could be easily possible that you only need to spend as little as $2800 if it’s all spent internationally to save the $95 annual fee. It’s hard to say what the average person would need to spend to save the $95 annual fee given all of these factors.

You can also transfer the points earned to several airline programs at a ratio of 1:1. 25,000 points could get you a flight on an airline that might cost significantly more than the $300 or so you’d be getting value for directly through Chase.

Plus don’t forget about the prestige factor when waitresses or friends are impressed by the look and feel of your card. They’ve also sent out some cool things that you can redeem points for. I’d love to see more special perks like that.

All in all I’ll definitely evaluate whether it’s worth keeping the card once my annual fee comes due, but as of now I’d think it’s worth keeping.

As with Sheila above, I had a horrible time booking my ticket through Ultimate Rewards. I used the service to collect the additional miles, but will never make the mistake again. Ultimate rewards never told me when my flight had been changed, something I only learned by checking my itinerary on the airlines website for a different reason. When I called the airline to resolve the new unworkable flight they were surprised to hear that Ultimate Rewards had not contacted me (the airline had contacted them). When I called Ultimate Rewards to resolve the situation and complain they informed me that they had called and not left a message. I have no idea how they think a no message left call was sufficient. How in the world is anyone to know that a call with no message from a random number (not the UR one) somehow means that your flight has been changed. Their customer service was useless and unfriendly.

I cannot recommend using their travel service to anyone based on my experience. I like the credit card, but I just redeem my points for cash – you get the same amount.

my suggestion to folks who are trying to book a flight….

I found out that transferring your points to a specific airline helps a lot!!!

I recently booked a flight from chicago to dc using British Airways avios points(using american airline)…all i did was transfer my ultimate reward points to avios and i was able to book a round trip ticket for 9000 miles…so technically speaking that is only $90 for a round trip ticket from chicago to dc!!!

To make it easier i would check flight availability first through by logging on to each of the websites before transferring your points to any airlines. I just check the availability first then transfer to the airline that has the flight that I want!

Good luck!

Thank you Daily Markets for the research on the Chase Sapphire CC. Based on the reviews and comments here, I signed up for a card through one of the links on this page. I really appreciate the information and I will do my best to come back to the site and comment on how I like the card. My motivation for getting the card is to find a card that does not flag me as often for possible fraudulent charges. I have a Gold Rewared Amex card and I was flagged at least four times through the XMAS season for possible fraud charges. The hold on the card held up lines, wasted my time, the retailer’s time, etc…it has been a miserable experience. I hope this card is not as strict.

No mention anywhere about automatic $500,000 accident travel insurance while traveling on airlines and charging full ticket to the card. I assume that this is still so.

When I first got the Chase Sapphire card, I was provided with a very detailed benefit guide. The conditions and exclusions were all spelled out. I called Chase today for an updated guide and bottom line: the new guide is worthless. The conditions for trip cancellation and max allowable is not in print to customers. Chase told me I could call them anytime to get info, but they can no longer provide it in print. I reminded them they a large bank. We don’t trust large banks anymore and we want this info in writing. Any thoughts on where I can can complain? Possibly the state insurance department, I suppose.

When booking a flight – is it possible to use partial points to buffer the total cost of the flight? For example if you did not have enough points to cover the total flight cost, can you apply the points that you do have?

What about IRS take on Bonus Points or Cash Reward?

Yes, it’s the Chase Ink account.

@Helen

Yes, through the UR website, you can first apply your points to the tickets and then pay the difference.

Yes, it does apply the points to lower the cost. You can then pay the difference with your card.

I have the sapphire preferred and it rocks. I eat and travel a lot so double points on those are more appealing to my situation than the Citi ThankYou Premier. By the way, I’m not a rock climber so I chose Chase Sapphire Preferred card instead …… (hehehehehehe).

Anyway, I have both sapphire preferred and regular chase freedom cards. I’ve spent about $3k/month total on average on both cards. I never carry any balance. The way I do it is pay the amount due in installment, like $1000/week or something so it’s not so hard on you. In the end, it’s all paid off before the due date comes and no interest ever charged. My wife hates seeing huge amount of credit card bill but I always show her the amount we have to pay for interest, $0. I figure all the bills I paid using the sapphire preferred and the bonus points from the chase freedom, that’s gotta worth at least 9500 in points. Half of my childcare fees alone charged to this card for the year already counted towards the annual free. Also, just by paying bills your annual fee should be covered. Think about it :)

If you’re a responsible person and not after the points so much, this sapphire preferred is an awesome one to have. I’ve had the sapphire preferred card for about 4 months now and I’ve racked about 90k points so far. That’s from the 50K sign up bonus after $3k in purchase within 3 months (within the first month for me), the xmas online shopping bonus from their earn faster mall thinggy, the chase freedom bonus offers thinggy…… let me tell ya …… Chase is paying for my spring break vacation this year!

Is this a mstercard or visa?

I have 100K points what is the best way for me to redeem – cashback or buy merchandise

All this has completely sold me on the Preferred card. I appreciate the detail everyone has provided and thank them for it.

Mastercard

I have the Chase British Airways card, and I’d like to switch it to the Sapphire card (not Preferred). Will I still get the points if I do this, and retain the points I already have?

Can I cancel my Chase Sapphire Card when I have a negative reward point balance? Will they charge me for those points I used?

Virtually all credit cards WITHOUT AN ANNUAL FEE give you one point per dollar. So it’s only the 7% bonus which should be counted towards covering the $95 annual fee.

YES BIG PROBLEM : Cancelling a credit card will absolutely hurt your credit score. This is not a good idea.

First, I would like to thank Ivan Daniel (the author) and every one else for providing very useful information and comments. Based on the info and comments, I applied for the Sapphire Preferred card and have used it for two months now (and have already got my 50K points). I would like to return the favor by providing my two cents that I don’t think it has been mentioned.

I agree that spending $135K per year to earn enough point dividend at 7% to counter the $95 annual fee is probably not attainable for most individuals (for small business, that’s different story). However, I think there is another benefit that the Sapphire Preferred card has and regular card does not have , which is the one extra point Sapphire Preferred card holders can earn for booking travels (flights and hotels). Therefore, if one can spend $9500 per year on travels, it can cover the difference between the Sapphire Preferred card and the regular card. Again, this does not include savings from 7% point dividend and no foreign transaction fee (benefits exclusively for Sapphire Preferred card holders).

I have preferred version and am in Italy. Had my bag backpack stolen. Had a new laptop, ipad, and really expensive camera in there among other important things like passport. The camera and ipad were both purchased within the 90 day window using the card. I know that I have purchase protection on the card and that I can get up to $500 back per claim. I’m trying to figure out what exactly is a claim. Would each separate purchase be a claim or is one police report a claim?

I have used the preferred card since February while traveling through Europe. Besides the point accumulation, the foreign conversion fee waiver is a major positive point.

The card is a Visa, which hasn’t been a problem so far (three more months to go on my trip), but there is a downside as the card has no embedded chip. So have cash ready on the toll roads of Austria. Strange to be missing that feature on a travel card???

Up-side is when a clerk gets hold of it they really look it over since it must be made of metal due to the weight and stiffness. They seem to smile a bit more unless their French; they lower their nose just a bit.

And if you rent cars, the rental insurance is really helpful and can go a long way to covering the $95 annual.

Chow