Today we’ll hear a few more stories from SAS Millionaires, we’ll discuss the rumored increase in annual fee and couponization of yet another popular premium card, talk about where you can move abroad with your dog, and more.
They became millionaires – in frequent flyer points
Hopefully you’re not tired of hearing SAS Eurobonus Millionaire stories yet because CNN just came out with a piece that highlights two particular travelers, one who was already a frequent flyer enthusiast (and reader of Head for Points) and one who was not. I laughed when Barry (one of the featured travelers) came to the same conclusion our own Nick had about economy flying. He commented “The best tip for sleeping on a plane is simply being exhausted”. It’s nice to know that our team weren’t the only ones totally exhausted by all that economy class flying.
[Rumor] Chase Sapphire Reserve To Increase Annual Fee To $795, New Benefits
We’ve talked before about our distaste for the “couponization” of premium credit cards. (We dislike the trend enough to invent a word for it, in fact.) A lot of you have also expressed distaste for this trend too. Unfortunately (but not surprisingly), there are now rumors floating about that the Chase Sapphire Reserve card may raise the annual fee to $795 and add new coupon-ish benefits. The rumored changes listed in this post include things like StubHub credits, DoorDash credits, Lyft credits, etc. (Note that we assume when the article states “$300 Dining credit via Sapphire Reserve Tables $250/semi-annual”, we think they might have meant “$150/semi-annual”.) In a recent podcast episode about this couponization trend, we referenced the Chase Sapphire Reserve card as a possible card to go this route, though it wasn’t our top pick.
Woman Rides Rollercoaster Through Smoky Mountains, Then the Bears Appear
It’s bear season in the Smoky Mountains! One spring we had 16 bear sightings in a single camping weekend in the Smokies. Luckily all these sightings were either from a safe distance away or from our vehicle. I’m not sure whether this particular visitor’s sighting counts as either of those, as she came in very close contact with two black bears while riding a little mountain roller coaster in Gatlinburg. She had no control over the rollercoaster’s scarily slow crawl up the mountain as it passed the onlooking bears. The advised approach to black bear encounters (unlike grizzly bear encounters) is to stand your ground, make loud noises, and make yourself look big and threatening. Creeping along in a little rollercoaster car might check the “make noise” box at least. Luckily, these bears left her alone and returned to the woods.
5 visa-free paradises Americans can move to tomorrow (and bring the dog)
Ever thought about living abroad and bringing your dog along? I’ve never seriously considered living abroad in a singular location, but the two places that did pique my interest in at least a hypothetical sense were Mexico and Georgia. Both of these spots are included in this article as countries with very relaxed visas for Americans as well as fairly relaxed requirements for bringing in a dog. And folks have probably also heard me rave about Albania as well, which has also made this list.
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I don’t want to come out ahead. I just don’t want to get into it …. lol.
Amex business green never looked so appealing.
Everyone complains about the AF increases but the card companies keep doing it and apparently people keep paying. I don’t have a CSR and this certainly doesn’t encourage me to getting one, but I’d really like just once an AF increase to get enough customers to cancel that they’ve realized they’ve gone too far and start cutting back.
So this is apparently an unpopular opinion, but I think the rumored CSR changes look pretty good?
I do absolutely hate the couponization, but I live in a major city and dine out often and regularly go to sporting and music events. It should be pretty easy for me to get close to face value on the dining and StubHub credits. That alone is $600 in additional credits in exchange for an annual fee increase of $245. I haven’t looked into details of the Edit too much, but at $250/half-year I should be able to get some value from that. And then at $25/month, maybe the DoorDash benefit is high enough to worry about messing with.
So as far as I can tell, I would be looking at probably ~$1,000 in usable additional value vs the annual fee increase of $245.
The drop to 1x on other travel is disappointing though and would cause me to move all that spend somewhere else
I’m with you. I’d come out ahead if all the rumored credits are included, but I absolutely detest the trend.
I don’t eat out very much so won’t use most of these credits unless I really work at it. The question is how much effort it is worth. For the Amex Platinum I have to do a lot of couponing, but I get great lounge access as a result. For CSR I’m not sure what I really get except Priority Pass (which I get on multiple other cards), and great travel insurance, much of which I can get with the CSP.
The CSR also gives you Sapphire Lounge access (and Air Canada lounge access if you are flying on Star Alliance). Obviously it will depend on your home airport and flying patterns whether these are as/more useful than the Amex Plat lounge access. Though I will say that the two Sapphire lounges that I’ve been to recently have been better than what Centurion lounges have become.
Personally, I can’t get the Amex Plat credits to cover the annual fee. I keep the card because I travel enough that it ends up being like paying ~$8 per lounge visit. The CSR would be the opposite where I’d easily be covering the annual fee with the credits. Honestly if Chase made these changes and expanded their Sapphire lounge network a bit (including one at my home airport), it would maybe be enough to get me to cancel my Amex Plat.
Oh right, I forgot about those lounges for sure. I fly out of ATL so Delta lounges are worth a lot more to me and the Priority Pass access to Sapphire Lounge is probably enough for my needs. I could probably make the coupons work on CSR or Amex, but not on both, so I will have to pick and will go for the Delta lounges access.
I’m not quite sure why anyone would choose the CSR over the CSP. Does it really offer that much more for the price tag?
In my opinion, the only reason to have the CSR is for the 1.5 cents per points for travel, and the 10 pts per travel booked through Chase.
If I saw myself using hundreds of thousands of points at 1.5 cents per point, or I saw myself spending multiple $thousands through the chase portal, I’d consider upgrading the CSR temporarily.
Otherwise I don’t see the point.
Wouldn’t the need for 1.5 cents per point be in very specific circumstances? In most cases you’d do much better transferring the points for reward flights or maybe hotel stays.
For example I have 500,000 points so that would net me $7,500 which is nice but is that even one R/T international business class ticket? If I transfer them I should be able to get at least 2 tickets if not more.
Or am I totally wrong here?
I agree it’s only useful in specific circumstances. But if those circumstances happen it is very useful.
I’ve used the AmEx Business Plat for the 35% rebate on award flights (pretty much the same thing) when the choice was paying cash or paying a huge point cost or using a a net 130k MR pts instead of $2000.
I wouldn’t be using my last 100k points on this, and I’d always try for a points redemption first. And if I were feeling flush with cash, I would consider using cash. But the extra option is very useful.
The last of the EuroBonus Millionaire promo accounts which I helped have had their million points posted, most being within the last 5 weeks. That includes a couple of accounts with KQ flights that ended with D flight numbers and really made things slow down.
I have my own 1 million points from the promo and I will probably get a bunch of long-haul TATL business class award seats out of them.
Had almost no cash outlay for hotels due to use of hotel program points gotten from organic spend on bank cards. Minimal food expenses due to airline and hotel lounge access and free breakfast from status. My biggest additional out of pocket expenses to do this were for the flights and I got about €1700 in EC 261/2004 comp for delayed flights that were part of doing this promo and am likely looking at getting another €500 back on top of that.
My net cash outlay for this is going to end up being quite low. Not as low as those that used SAS points for mileage tickets to cover most of the 15 airlines, but lower than I initially anticipated.
The terms for the renewed CSR are so bad I can’t believe it is true. On the other hand I have been on the fence for some time about cancelling, and this would make the decision very simple.
Apparently, in the original Reddit post (which was purportedly by a Chase employee and is now deleted), the 1.5cpp portal redemption rate is being removed as a benefit and the authorized user fee will be $195 per year (a la Amex Platinum). Hmmm.
For me I think the increase fee on the CSR, if true, will have me canceling it late this year when the AF comes due.
The Amex hoops to jump through I’ve done to success (net about 200-300 above AF) but one is enough.
I need to check how long it has been since I’ve had the CSP but probably at least a few years and more than that since I’ve had the signup bonus so I’ll likely downgrade the CSR to some Freedom product and then later get the CSP.
I like my FF trips but not too often and I have about 500K pts on CSR that I need to use over the next couple of years. I can move them to the Freedom Unlimited I believe.