Chase Sapphire ultimate rewards and insurance?

[Scuba]

DH and I each got the Chase Sapphire preferred cards in 2021. I redeemed my bonus but he hasn’t yet. I got online to use some of his points to book some of our stays, rental cars, etc in Croatia. I was surprised to see that their rates were not competitive, such that their 25% premium they add to your points when you redeem for travel result in the same or higher net price rather than just going to booking.com or the hotel/rental car website directly.

Has anyone else seen this? I was surprised because this card is highly regarded as being a good value for travel. Is that just because of the insurance benefit?

Speaking of insurance, I’m not sure this card completely covers travel insurance needs. It appears it covers trip cancellation or interruption and collision damage on rental cars, but not travel medical insurance or liability insurance for rental cars. Is this accurate?

 

[Luvtoride]

Not competitive? The bonus points were free weren’t they?
I have the Chase Sapphire Reserve card (not preferred) and I use the card for my car rentals as it is comprehensive auto rental coverage. Call Chase to confirm the same for your card.

 

[foxcreek9]

For rentals, Chase is primary on collision damage. It does not cover liability, in the US your personal auto insurance will cover liability while in Europe the liability coverage is included. This alone, if something should happen to the car, could save you many years of annual fees.

The pay yourself back option is generally superior to booking through their travel portal. Right now it is for AirBnB and charities.

 

[athena53]

Not competitive? The bonus points were free weren’t they?

Not really. The way I look at it: I have a Fidelity Visa, no annual fee, 2% cash back on everything. If I were to switch over to Chase Sapphire Preferred, the first 60,000 bonus points, which they say are worth $750 on travel, will cost $95 (Annual fee) plus $80 (what I would have gotten back from Fidelity from spending the required $4,000). Beyond that point I'd get $1.25 in travel for every $100 spent, vs. $2 for whatever I want from Fidelity.

The math never worked for me and I've wondered about booking travel through the Chase portal. Are Business Class fares to Europe competitive?

 

[Letj]

DH and I each got the Chase Sapphire preferred cards in 2021. I redeemed my bonus but he hasn’t yet. I got online to use some of his points to book some of our stays, rental cars, etc in Croatia. I was surprised to see that their rates were not competitive, such that their 25% premium they add to your points when you redeem for travel result in the same or higher net price rather than just going to booking.com or the hotel/rental car website directly.

Has anyone else seen this? I was surprised because this card is highly regarded as being a good value for travel. Is that just because of the insurance benefit?

Speaking of insurance, I’m not sure this card completely covers travel insurance needs. It appears it covers trip cancellation or interruption and collision damage on rental cars, but not travel medical insurance or liability insurance for rental cars. Is this accurate?

Your observation is absolutely correct. I’ve had the Sapphire reserve for many years (since originally launched) and while I use the points to book travel, the cost of the ticket are always higher than if I bought it elsewhere. I think the same is true of capital one travel. These companies use points and other benefits to entice customers but the cost are always padded and fees are high.

 

[Luvtoride]

Not really. The way I look at it: I have a Fidelity Visa, no annual fee, 2% cash back on everything. If I were to switch over to Chase Sapphire Preferred, the first 60,000 bonus points, which they say are worth $750 on travel, will cost $95 (Annual fee) plus $80 (what I would have gotten back from Fidelity from spending the required $4,000). Beyond that point I'd get $1.25 in travel for every $100 spent, vs. $2 for whatever I want from Fidelity.

The math never worked for me and I've wondered about booking travel through the Chase portal. Are Business Class fares to Europe competitive?

I’ve never quite analyzed/valued “bonus points” as finely as you have. To me that’s still $575 of free travel rewards.

For business class on International flights if you have an AmEx premium card (I have an Amex Platinum) check out their International Travel benefit. They have special arrangements with many airlines for premium seats at fares not available through any sites. I saved over $2,000 on business class to Israel on Delta thru this program.

 

[donheff]

I use the Chase Sapphire for routine US travel and unstructured trips abroad with the hope that cancellations for sickness or death in the family will be covered. This applies to things like an upcoming condo rental in Florida and a summer beach house rental in the Outer Banks. I have never tried to use the benefit and keep my fingers crossed that it would actually work. I always assumed that it doesn't cover medical expenses but my Federal health insurance plan is good here and overseas.

I tend to get commercial insurance for major organized trips (e.g. upcoming Grand Canyon Raft trip and Croatia bike tour); An African safari where I wanted to be sure I could get emergency evacuation; an organized Galapagos tour. I want to be sure everything is picked up on those big trips. The medical coverage I get with these contracts is superfluous for me but important for most. The only time I ever used one of those contracts was when I flew off a bike in France and busted my shoulder. They upgraded my return flight to business class. But if they had known that they wouldn't have been on the hook for surgery if I had it done in France I wonder if they would have popped for the upgrade.

 

[foxcreek9]

Another benefit with the sapphire cards (i have the reserve so 50% bonus) is combine points from your other Freedom cards plus combine points from your spouses cards. So the quarterly 5% cats become 7.5% and our Unlimited cards become 2.25% everyday spending. The combing points enabled DW to get the 100k bonus for the preferred card, transfer the points to my account to receive the 50% bump.

At a min the cash back covers the cost of the card plus we get the great travel benefits for having the card.

 

[PaunchyPirate]

I didn't see the value of using the Chase travel portal to book trips. Instead, I transferred some of my bonus points to Iberia Airlines and then used them to purchase a trip directly from Iberia. I found a roundtrip business class seat from JFK to Madrid for 60,000 of my points. The cash price from Iberia was $1490 at the time. So I still have over 40,000 points sitting with Chase for another purpose.

 

[bearkeley]

We are currently in the process of booking a 90 day tour of Portugal and Spain for this spring/summer using almost entirely points for airfare and lodging. We are getting our car through a purchase/buy back program through Peugeot which works out to less then $30 a day for a brand new small diesel SUV. In the past we have found rental cars are not a good value for points we just usually pay cash.

We tried using Amex to transfer points to miles and book the tickets but the fees and taxes were $550 on a $900 flight. Then we tried the Amex travel portal and the $900 flight was $1,450 so not a good use of points. Finally we booked the flight through Case at the same fare as Kayak but got the 50% kickback making it exactly half the points as on Amex’s travel portal. YMMV.

For Hotels and Apartments (we need 20) we have found that the competitiveness of the Amex and Chase portals varies from property to property and city to city but neither are that far off from Expedia or booking except sometimes they are. The kick is that Chase Sapphire Preferred points are worth $0.015 but the Amex Platinum are only valued at $0.007 so again Chase has twice the value of the Amex points. The nice thing is that even in pretty remote places there are properties available.

Ironically Chase points crush the value of Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt points at their respective properties but we have so many hotels points that we just using them up until they are gone trying to get some value before they devalue them again. A couple of bright spots on that front are Marriott’s AC and Moxy brands and the new Marriott Homes and Villas website which do seem to provide a higher value for the points.

So in short like your momma told you you betta shop around.

 

[Chuckanut]

I have the Preferred card. I am in my first year of using it.

Like Audrey, when I calculated the costs involved to get the 60,000 points it made some sense but not enough to motivate me. However, two things happened. First, Citi Bank dropped its trip coverage from the Costco Visa card. It wasn't a lot of coverage but it was enough to make me think I did NOT need to purchase expensive travel insurance. Second, Chase raised the point bonus for new card holders to 100,000 points. That really tilted the costs in favor of getting the card. They also offered 5% on groceries for the first year.

I use my Chase Freedom Flex card mostly for the special 5% categories. Currently that's for internet and phone service. Later this year it will cover groceries for a quarter and gas in another quarter. I transfer those points to the Preferred card. I mostly use my Fidelity 2% card, but I do use the Costco Visa for gasoline (4%), dining out (3%) and some travel expenses that are easily cancelled (3%). Hard to cancel travel expenses go on the Preferred card. Also the car rentals go on the preferred card because it offers Primary collision insurance.

I have found the Chase portal to be competitive in prices but not always the lowest. Like the man said above You Gotta Shop Around. However, I do intend to use the portal to burn through my 100,000 points later this year on a road trip. I see no point in storing points as they can be devalued at the drop of a hat. Any hat.

I am not a big points person. I'd much rather get $70 in cash that is mine to keep and use as I chose, than $100 in points that can be devalued and have limited uses. But, the 100,000 point Chase offer combined with the trip cancellation insurance and the rental car coverage is worth the $95 + lost cash back from the Fidelity card.

 

[sengsational]

My limited experience with domestic hotels is the the Chase travel portal is the same price as standard booking sites which are the same as the chain's direct booking site.

 

[Sunset]

For rentals, Chase is primary on collision damage. It does not cover liability, in the US your personal auto insurance will cover liability while in Europe the liability coverage is included. This alone, if something should happen to the car, could save you many years of annual fees.

The pay yourself back option is generally superior to booking through their travel portal. Right now it is for AirBnB and charities.

I found the pay yourself back option very good as they applied it to groceries, so I was able get my bonus value from that. Avoiding the complexity of trying to book travel at a fair price.

I see the CC as mostly a great travel CC, with the travel benefits being the reason, not the reward for travel.
I'm hoping to travel again someday

 

[plsprius]

I just booked an Alaska Airlines flight through the Chase travel portal, and the price was identical to the direct purchase price from Alaska.

For me, the advantage of the Sapphire card is the 5% travel bonus (as well as the possibility of using points to pay for the flight, using the 25% additional credit, if I had any points left).

 

[Scuba]

Thanks for the responses. On the specific properties in Croatia we wanted to stay, Booking.com had lower prices and the rental car was also cheaper booking directly vs using points to pay for these items, even with a “bonus” using points. I agree that the travel benefits and lack of foreign currency fees are nice, but was disappointed to realize that the ultimate rewards travel portal didn’t seem to offer good value. YMMV

 

[BeachOrCity]

I’ve never quite analyzed/valued “bonus points” as finely as you have. To me that’s still $575 of free travel rewards.

For business class on International flights if you have an AmEx premium card (I have an Amex Platinum) check out their International Travel benefit. They have special arrangements with many airlines for premium seats at fares not available through any sites. I saved over $2,000 on business class to Israel on Delta thru this program.

I am a points junky and just looked up the Platinum benefit. Wow. With the deterioration of business class point redemptions, can you give some examples of "before and after" fares with this program?

 

[Luvtoride]

Beach, I don't recall the exact difference in fares, but I purchased Business Class seats on Delta thru the Amex program for about $3,500/ ticket. At the time the lowest fare thru Delta or any airline or website was over $5,000/ ticket.

You MUST call Amex and speak with them directly to get these fares. They are not advertised or listed on any of their sites. These fare arrangements seem a bit random by carrier and destination but there are tons of these deals. It is for premium seating on international flights only.

Every time I consider dropping my Platinum card, I get benefits like this that "pay" for me to keep this high fee card for another year.