physixfan      2021-08-17     2021-08-17 136 Comments

Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card Review

2021.8 Update 2: New benefits of Sapphire Preferred card are live now:

• 3x on dining, select streaming services and online grocery (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesales).
• 5x on travel booked through UR portal.
• $50 Annual Hotel Credit per cardmember year. Must be booked through UR portal. New cardmember can use this credit now. Existing cardmembers should be able to use it after their card anniversary.
• 10% bonus points per year. After card anniversary, you will be given 10% bonus points based on the total spend on your Sapphire Preferred card in last year. For example, if you spend $30k in total, you will get 3k bonus points.

2021.8 Update: It seems the $50 grocery credit is not available in branch any more. The in branch offer is currently 100k + first year annual fee waived.

Application Link

• Chase Sapphire Preferred (CSP) 100k offer
• Chase Sapphire Preferred (CSP) 100k+first year AF waived offer: please go to a local branch

Benefits

1. 100k offer: earn 100,000 Ultimate Rewards (UR) points after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months. This is the best ever offer on this card.
2. We estimate that Ultimate Rewards (UR) points are worth about 1.6 cents/point, see below for a brief introduction. So the 100k highest sign-up bonus is worth about $1,600!
3. If you have this card, you can transfer your UR points to partner airlines miles and hotel points.
4. “Pay Yourself Back”: you can redeem UR points for statement credits against existing purchases in select, rotating categories, at a fixed rate 1.25 cents/point. You can also use your UR points at a fixed rate 1.25 cents/point on the Chase UR travel portal. However, with CSR, the redemption rate is 1.5 cents/point, therefore it is more recommended to use CSR to redeem UR points in this way.
5. Points earning rates:
   • [New] Earn 5x UR points on travel booked through Chase Travel portal.
   • [New] Earn 3x on dining, select streaming services and online grocery (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesales).
   • Earn 2x UR points on other travel purchases.Chase is known to be quite flexible with their definition of travel and includes merchants such as Uber and some public transportation.
   • Earn 1x UR point per dollar spent on all other purchases.
6. Primary car rental insurance.
7. [Limited Time] Earn 5x UR points on Lyft, until 2022.03.31. Here is the official link for this promotion.
8. [Limited Time] Free DashPass (Doordash membership) for 12 months. Activation required before 2021.12.31. Here is the official link for this promotion.
9. No foreign transaction fee.
10. Refer a friend: You can earn 15,000 bonus UR points for every approved account you refer, up to a maximum of 75,000 UR points per calendar year.

Disadvantages

1. Annual fee $95, NOT waived for the first year.

Introduction to UR Points

• You can earn UR points with Chase Freedom Student, Chase Freedom, Chase Freedom Unlimited (CFU), Chase Sapphire Preferred (CSP), Chase Sapphire Reserve (CSR), Chase Ink Cash (Business), Chase Ink Unlimited (Business), Chase Ink Preferred (Business), etc.
• You can move your UR points from one UR card to another at any time.
• UR points never expire. You will lose the UR points on one card if you close the account, but you can prevent losing your UR points by moving the points to another UR card beforehand.
• If you have Chase Sapphire Preferred (CSP), Chase Sapphire Reserve (CSR), or Chase Ink Preferred (Business), UR points can be transferred to some hotel points. One of the best way to use UR points is to 1:1 transfer to Hyatt points. UR points can also be transferred to some airline miles. One of the most common and best way to use UR points is to 1:1 transfer them to United Airlines (UA) miles (Star Alliance), and combine them with the UA miles earned from the UA card. Other good options are: Southwest (WN) (Non-alliance), British Airways (BA) (Oneworld), Virgin Atlantic (VS) (Non-alliance), etc. If you use UR points in this way, the value is about 1.6 cents/point.
• If you have Chase Sapphire Reserve (CSR), you can redeem your UR points at a fixed rate 1.5 cents/point towards air tickets or hotels on UR travel portal; if you have Chase Sapphire Preferred (CSP) or Chase Ink Preferred (Business), you can redeem your UR at a fixed rate 1.25 cents/point towards air tickets or hotels on UR travel portal.
• If you have any of the UR cards, you can redeem your UR points at a fixed rate 1 cent/point towards cash.
• In summary, we estimate that UR points are worth about 1.6 cents/point.
• For more information about UR points, see Maximize the Credit Card Points Values (overview), and Introduction to UR: How to Earn and Introduction to UR: How to Use (very detailed).

Recommended Application Time

1. [5/24 Rule] If you have 5 or more new accounts opened in the past 24 months, Chase will not approve your application on this card, no matter how high your credit score is. The number of new accounts includes all credit card accounts, not only Chase accounts. See this post for details about how to possibly bypass this rule.
2. The product is not available to either (i) current cardmembers of any Sapphire credit card, or (ii) previous cardmembers of any Sapphire credit card who received a new cardmember bonus within the last 48 months. Note that what this 48-month clock starts from when you last got the sign-up bonus, not the time you open the account or close the account.
3. Don’t apply for more than 2 Chase credit cards within 30 days, it’s highly likely that you will get rejected.
4. We recommend that you apply for this card after you have had other Chase credit cards for at least 3 months, or after you have had a credit history for more than a year.

Summary

Although its spending rewards structure looks bad nowadays, CSP (or CSR) is still a must-have card for the UR points system because with CSP (or CSR) you can transfer UR points to partners to maximize their value. The sign-up bonus is really attractive! However, now you can only choose from either CSP or CSR in the 48 month period. And don’t forget the 5/24 Rule. You really have to choose between CSP and CSR!

Related Credit Cards

• Chase Sapphire
• Chase Sapphire Preferred (CSP) (this post)
• Chase Sapphire Reserve (CSR)

Recommended Downgrade Options

• Chase Freedom. Even if you already have a Freedom, you are still able to downgrade your CSP to have a second Freedom.
• Chase Freedom Unlimited (CFU).
• Chase Sapphire. If you are not able to downgrade your card to the above good cards, you can downgrade it to this card and try to product change in the future.

After Applying

• Call 800-436-7927 to check Chase application status. This is an automated telephone line, and the information has the following meanings: Receive decision in 2 weeks means your application is probably approved; Receive decision in 7-10 days means your application is probably rejected; Receive decision in 30 days simply means your application requires further review and there’s nothing to tell you for now.
• Chase reconsideration backdoor number: 888-270-2127 or 888-609-7805. Call it if you didn’t get approve immediately. Your personal information will be acquired and they will then review it. You seldom answer questions, instead, just enjoy the music and then you get approved or rejected, or further information is needed to be hand in to the branch or faxed.

Historical Offers Chart

Application Link

• Chase Sapphire Preferred (CSP) 100k offer
• Chase Sapphire Preferred (CSP) 100k+first year AF waived offer: please go to a local branch

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