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The Chase Ritz-Carlton Visa Infinite airfare benefit is no longer available. While it seemed the writing could be on the wall when the CNB announced that the Crystal Visa Infinite was losing this benefit, I definitely didn’t expect Chase to kill this without any notice whatsoever.
Visa Discount Airfare benefit totally dead
For those unfamiliar, the Chase Ritz-Carlton card came with an airfare benefit that enabled cardholders to get a $100 discount when booking round trip domestic economy class airfare for 2 or more people. There was no cap on how often you could use this benefit. The portal did not include low-cost carriers and eventually dropped JetBlue, but as of a few days ago you could still book flights on Alaska, American, Delta, and United and get $100 for two passengers. Since this even worked on basic economy fares, it was sometimes possible to book airfare dirt cheap for two passengers.
However, when you go to the Ritz Visa Discount Airfare website now, all you see is the following plain-text message:
Effective 1/15/20, your Ritz Carlton Visa Infinite card no longer offers the Visa Discount Air Benefit. Air itineraries booked via the Visa Discount Air Benefit prior to 1/15/20 will still be honored and valid for travel. For full Terms & Conditions and FAQs please visit www.visa.com/discountair. If you need servicing on your existing Visa Discount Air itinerary, please contact the airlines directly for assistance as Concierge will no longer have access to your itinerary. Thank you
Again, while I’m not shocked that this benefit isn’t continuing in perpetuity, I am surprised at the complete take-down of the website with no notice and no continuing service for those with existing reservations. That is disappointing.
Unfortunately, it seems that this benefit was too generous. It probably didn’t make sense to continue to offer such a valuable benefit on a credit card that they aren’t marketing and is no longer available to new applicants. Still, CNB gave cardholders notice two months in advance when they were ending the benefit. I’m disappointed that Chase didn’t give cardholders any notice at all either before or after killing this valuable benefit.
R/T: A reader via email
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I made a booking with my Ritz card in October-for travel in April to Hawaii. Now that we can no longer fly and Hawaiin is canceling the flight-Ritz card says they can’t help me because that branch is closed and they can’t access my reservation. Hawaiin airlines says they can’t help bc it was booked through a 3rd party and to contact the 3rd party! Any ideas how to go forward…?
Nick, curious your thoughts. My wife and I recently had companion pass until this year. With that gone we had used the RC card a couple of times to get a flight benefit. What would you say is the best non-point spending way at this point to reduced the overall cost of a flight. Booking with a certain credit card to get points back as a rebate?
[…] get a new Ritz-Carlton card but if you had one, you could keep it and all the benefits it provided. Nick from Frequent Miler wrote about how Chase dropped a major benefit of the card with no advance n…. I know people who were able to save hundreds of dollars per year using this perk, so losing it may […]
[…] Ritz-Carlton credit card loses its Visa Infinite airfare benefit […]
I assume full responsibility for this.. just upgraded my Marriott card to the Ritz. Happens every frikkin’ time…
Less than two weeks ago, I literally upgraded my Bonvoy Boundless to the Ritz and inquired if the visa infiniite benefit was still being offered. That is the biggest reason I upgraded my Bonvoy card. For them to confirm and not tell me I should book travel in the next two weeks before it ends, is not being honest. I’m pretty upset about this. The agent had to have known it was going to end.
[…] Bank Removes Visa Infinite From Premium Card: Sometimes banks evaluate whether their credit cards are profitable or not and in an effort to trim some expenses, they’ll take away some benefits of the card. Unfortunately they may do this without warning as they did with this popular card. […]
Well that sucks. Was about to book this weekend. This was part of the reason I kept this card, and didn’t go for some of the other high fee ones.
This was a nice benefit and its loss will be felt. Since it looks like Chase isn’t the one who killed it, I’m hoping they try to offer a replacement benefit of some sort. Fingers crossed.
Goodbye, sweet prince.
Did anyone catch this in their 2020 prediction?
Does this count towards Spephen’s Bonvoyed deval?
Is this another Bonvoyed thing?
No but yes. None of us put it in our official 2020 predictions, but we talked about it on the podcast after CNB axed it and said that we felt like it was probably only a matter of time before it died on the Ritz card (and Greg commented on that CNB post months ago saying he wondered if this would be on the chopping block from Chase). It didn’t pop into my mind when writing predictions and truthfully I wouldn’t have predicted it mostly out of hopefulness, but I’m not surprised it’s gone. Killing it overnight hurts. I was intending to use it on a couple of flights but was waiting in the hopes of a new Mile Play offer in February.
Sorry about your upcoming trip. Thank you for the clarification!
Well that’s unfortunate. As luck would have it, I just used this feature a couple days ago. This certainly diminishes the value of the RC card going forward.
RIP
[…] This was a benefit that was only offered (in the US) on very select Visa Infinite cards and we saw the CNB Crystal Visa Infinite card remove this benefit towards the end of last year…and now Chase has followed suit. [HT: Frequent Miler] […]
This was a great benefits to fly a family of 4. I would get my wife an authorized user card, then book 2 pairs of tickets one with her card and one with mine. Sad day.
Now I have to focus on making more money so we can just charter every time.
Damn it. I just booked 4 tickets to PDX on Alaska during recent flash sale last week.. just $4.21 per person round trip and just about to book another 4 tickets to Vegas this summer. I used this benefit 8-10 time every year since I got this card years ago..
actually it was $4.60 round trip per couple so just $2.30 per person final price. Original Alaska’s flash sale fare was $52.30 round trip PAE-PDX… lowest I’ve ever seen. Oh well… RIP.
Nick – thanks for covering this. I had no idea before reading this. While I largely agree with your analysis (overly generous in the first place), just cutting it without notice is unacceptable. At the very least, throw a doordash benefit or something on the card to appear to compensate.
Rob gave great opinions and I would argue most fall in that category.
The ritz card card, to my knowledge unless they canceled some of these, still offers awesome benefits to us lucky ones that have it. 300 off travel which I have often gotten cheap flights approved, free 50k night (which is getting harder to use), free auth user chase PP, and ritz lounge upgrades which to be fair I have used……exactly once in 3 years.
But unlike other cards, I do place value on the auth user PP because me and my husband have taken the kids etc to an airport restaurant largely covered outside of tip. A few times and that’s easily 100 in value which I value at face value as I would have eaten there or in the airport at least anyways. So I would be inclined to keep this card and cancel my reserve. While not nearly as much of a no brainer, I would argue most can reap value from the card. Not necessarily oversized value any longer though without this benefit which I have used at least 10 times in the past.
But with that being said, it is very sketchy to do this in the DL and do so without notice.