Nothing builds excitement quite like a juicy rumor. Look no farther than your supermarket shelves for tabloid headlines or your favorite pop star’s cryptic social media posts or your local barbershop or salon: everyone loves to speculate. So it comes as no surprise to me that rumors have built regarding a re-vamped ultra-premium credit card and a business counterpart, nor that fuel has been poured gratuitously on that fire directly from the horse’s Instagram account. We will almost certainly see big things coming in the next week.
However, I can’t help but feel a little concerned that many folks may start to become priced out on the best cards given the current direction issuers are taking. Even if the coupon benefits could outweigh the fees, I imagine there are many folks who aren’t prepared to shell out another $700 or $800 in advance, particularly as they begin to need to consider doing that on multiple cards. We’ve long said that cards like the Hilton Aspire or Ritz-Carlton card can be no-brainers for many folks, but if you have those two cards (a combined total of $1,000 in annual fees), how excited are you going to be about fronting another $800? Add a Platinum card or a Bonvoy Brilliant and most folks will really start feeling the squeeze. I don’t like that for most people.
Of course, if you have the cash reserves, the first-year value will make almost any card worthy of short-term consideration, and if you have budgeted money for vacation/travel, you’ll almost certainly get more bang for your buck by putting it into a new card welcome offer. But on an ongoing basis, I think it is going to become more important than ever to familiarize oneself with our keep or cancel spreadsheet (which will likely see new updates if rumored changes come out this week), because I just can’t see most people finding enough value in multiple $500, $600, or $800 cards. But here’s hoping for unprecedented welcome offers to come!
This week on the Frequent Miler blog…
Rumored Chase Sapphire Reserve changes
It has been widely rumored that we are just a few days from major changes to the Chase Sapphire Reserve card and the rumors have gotten more and more specific over time. If these changes do indeed come to fruition, I’ll personally be frustrated with the couponification of the card, particularly because of the time and hassle required to make sure I use the benefits. Ironically, there’s a decent chance that I would use enough of the credits that the new Sapphire Reserve might actually work out better for me than the existing Sapphire Reserve, but I couldn’t be less excited about the effort required in terms of making sure I use all of the coupon credits. Still, especially if they keep the annual travel credit, we’ll probably end up keeping the card. I can’t fault those who won’t, but be sure to keep your eye on whether and when you can use new benefits before your next annual fee comes due rather than cancelling as a knee-jerk reaction.
Chase is launching a Sapphire Business Reserve card – so many questions
An entirely new set of rumors also lit the Internet on fire this week when the Chase Sapphire Instagram account shared a teaser about a business card coming soon. Many immediately suspected the long-awaited arrival of a Sapphire Reserve business card. While much of the rest of Chase’s Ultimate Rewards card lineup sort of matches between the consumer and business sides, an ultra-premium business card has been missing for years. In this post, Stephen fires off a bunch of questions about what a new Sapphire Reserve business credit card might look like and ventures some guesses of his own.
Predicting the Sapphire Business Card | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep310 | 6-13-25
Speaking of guesses, Greg and I followed up with our own thoughts on the rumor mill during this week’s Frequent Miler on the Air. Despite all of the Sapphire Reserve Business excitement in the air, Greg and I came to the shared prediction that we would probably see the Ink Business Preferred card rebranded as a Sapphire Preferred Business. We also agreed that maybe Chase would both rebrand that card and launch a Sapphire Reserve Business card at the same time, but we thought that launching a Sapphire Reserve business card before rebranding the Ink Business Preferred might be both confusing and strange assuming that the consumer and business Sapphire Reserve cards both narrow the applicability of the travel bonus category while the current Ink Business Preferred maintains 3x on all travel. All that said, it seems like we were wrong (or at least that the Sapphire Reserve Business is indeed coming). I still think the smart money is on a simultaneous Ink Business Preferred rebrand.
Preparing for new Sapphire Reserve cards
As the dust settles from the conjecture and excitement, what does it all mean? Is there a path forward to prepare for the likely near-term launch of Sapphire Reserve consumer and business cards? In this post, Greg lays out his household strategy to get ready for the launch of a new Sapphire Reserve card and benefits, and it has me wondering how to best approach it myself. I’m over 5/24 and I have a Freedom Unlimited card that I believe probably just passed its anniversary date (I’ll have to go way back in time to verify as it is a very old account), so I could maybe upgrade that now to take advantage of new Sapphire Reserve benefits while not owing a new Sapphire Reserve fee for almost a year. Am I better off waiting to see if 5/24 rules are relaxed on either the consumer or business side at launch? This post gives me food for thought.
Why Nick chose Amex points for 100KVacay
I have long been a fan of American Express Membership Rewards points. Amex’s set of airline transfer partners is my favorite among the major transferable currencies because of numerous sweet spots for international flight awards. But can I also get good value out of the points for lodging? And will I use a unique airline partner like ANA to show why Amex points are stronger than others? In this post, I lay out some of the strategy and thinking behind my choice for Amex points.
What to do when you don’t have enough hotel miles, and more | Ask Us Anything Ep76 | 6-4-25
On the first Wednesday of every month at 9pm Eastern time, the Frequent Miler team gets together live on Youtube to answer your questions about miles and points. If you missed us live, you can catch the replay here and hear our answers to your questions.
What are Hyatt points worth?
Continuing in our series of revamped Reasonable Redemption Values, we recently updated our value for World of Hyatt points. As a reminder, values are now the result of data generously provided by Gondola that take into account the results of more than half a million searches. Interestingly, even including the data from Mr & Mrs Smith properties (which offer a semi-fixed and below-average value for Hyatt points), our Reasonable Redemption Value actually increased a bit. As you’ll see if you dig further into the results, the RRV is higher yet if you exclude Mr & Mrs Smith (which I certainly do since I will not consider redeeming Hyatt points for them).
Why my Rakuten account was shut down (and then resurrected)
Tim and I both recently ran into Rakuten account shutdowns, and both of us were equally perplexed as to why. In my case, it was fairly easily resolved — it turned out that my account was flagged for having had 10 referrals in the space of about a week and they wanted to make sure I wasn’t posting on Reddit or other public forums (which is against their terms). Then Tim ran into something far weirder: Dell had cancelled two of his orders because they ran out of stock, which reversed points on those two purchases and Rakuten shut him down for that (despite it being a Dell mistake and Dell having apologized to Tim for the cancellation!). As you’ll read, Tim eventually got this resolved and got reinstated, but there are two morals to this story: first, don’t take a shut down lying down — ask for detail and plead your case. Second, beware that Rakuten has significantly ratcheted up the sensitivity on their shutdown algorithm. As much as I’ve loved Rakuten over the years, the thought that a merchant reporting my good faith orders as ineligible could zero out my entire Rakuten account makes me far more hesitant to use Rakuten, and that’s a shame.
Grand Hyatt Athens: A mixed bag (Bottom Line Review)
Earlier this week, I spent a few nights at the Grand Hyatt Athens. I certainly got what I paid for: we were able to use a suite upgrade to book a room that accommodated four people, we used 3 of the 4 swimming pools, the cost per night was reasonable enough at 12K / 15K points, and we were well-fed both at breakfast and in the lounge. That said, the Grand Hyatt Athens doesn’t feel all that “Grand” and should probably be thought of more as a mediocre Hyatt Regency. Still, at this price point, I’d probably come back if I needed to be in Athens and didn’t have an upper level Free Night Certificate to use with Marriott or Hilton.
That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Keep an eye on this week’s last chance deals to be sure you take advantage of them before they are gone.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
This is alarming to me. As someone who is retired, having the Amex Platinum ($695) and then a Sapphire Reserve at $795, is too much. I travel a lot, but not enough to be paying $1500 in AFs. Chase is making a big mistake because I think many people will look at these fees, and then make a choice. Sapphire Reserve or Amex Platinum.
Unless I’m mistaken, none of Chase’ ads informed of a Sapphire RESERVE Business Card. Could be Sapphire Preferred business card, and perhaps built from the ink preferred (and explains why it didn’t get refreshed with other inks).
I linked to oppose showing images from the Chase Sapphire account of a Chase Sapphire Reserve business.
There are travel cards and there are premium travel cards.
What is the difference between a premium card and an ultra premium card?
$375
I think of a premium travel card as a card with an annual fee of ~$100-$400 and ultra premium cards as the super expensive top end cards that cost more than that. We’ve been using terminology like that for years. Initially, it referred to cards like the Amex Platinum, Sapphire Reserve, and Citi Prestige card, but in the years, since there have been a host of other cards that have moved into that upper price range.
Might be easier for you to think of something like Delta cards – there’s the no annual fee Delta Blue, then there’s a more premium card like the Delta gold or Delta Platinum, and then an ultra premium like the Delta Reserve.