Chase Sapphire Reserve Card

$300 Travel Credit

Automatically earn $300 in statement credits each membership year as reimbursement for travel purchases.  For those who spend at least that much each year on travel, this effectively lowers the $550 annual fee to approximately $250.  Note though that you will not earn rewards on the $300 in spend that is reimbursed.

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Ultra-Premium Ultimate Rewards

Since this is an ultra-premium Ultimate Rewards card, the following rewards are available:

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• Redeem Points for 50% More Value: Points are worth 1.5 cents each when used to book travel through the Ultimate Rewards portal or to erase statement charges via Pay Yourself Back.
• Transfer Points to Partners: Points can be transferred one to one to a number of airline and hotel loyalty programs.

Travel Benefits

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• Priority Pass Select Lounge Membership:  Membership includes free access to lounges for yourself and up to two guests.  Unlike Priority Pass memberships issued by American Express, this version includes Priority Pass restaurants.
• Global Entry or TSA Pre✔® Fee Credit: Receive a statement credit of up to $100 every 4 years as reimbursement for the Global Entry or TSA Pre Check application fee charged to your card.
• Car rental privileges: National Car Rental Executive status is quite valuable.  Also includes discounts with Avis and Silvercar.
• The Luxury Hotel & Resort Collection: Book selected hotels and receive perks such as room upgrades, free breakfast, early check-in and late check-out, discounts and credits, and more.
• Elite Hotel Benefits at Relais & Châteaux: Receive "a VIP welcome" and complimentary breakfast daily at select properties.
• 4th night free at select sbe hotels: At select sbe hotels, get the 4th night free, free breakfast, $30 hotel credit and more.  Read our in-dept coverage of this perk here.
• Visa Infinite Concierge Service: "Access to Visa Infinite Concierge who can help you with requests, like dinner reservations, or Broadway, music and sporting event tickets. Call 1-877-660-0905 to reach the Visa Infinite Concierge.1 Traveling outside the U.S.? Call us collect at 1-312-800-4290."
• No foreign transaction fees

Travel Protections

In my opinion, the Sapphire Reserve has the best automatic travel protections of any card on the market today.  Most of the following protections kick in even if you pay with points or pay only in part with your card.  More details and a comparison to other ultra-premium cards can be found here: Ultra-Premium Credit Card Travel Insurance.

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• Auto Rental Coverage: Chase offers primary auto rental CDW (collision damage waiver). Here's the description directly from Chase: "Decline the rental company’s collision insurance and charge the entire rental cost to your card. Coverage is primary and provides reimbursement up to $75,000 for theft and collision damage for rental cars in the U.S. and abroad."
• Roadside Assistance: "If you have a roadside emergency, you can call for a tow, jumpstart, tire change, locksmith or gas. You’re covered up to $50 per incident 4 times a year."
• Trip Cancellation / Interruption Insurance: "If your trip is cancelled or cut short by sickness, severe weather and other covered situations, you can be reimbursed up to $10,000 per person and $20,000 per trip for your pre-paid, non-refundable travel expenses, including passenger fares, tours, and hotels."
• Trip Delay Reimbursement: "If your common carrier travel is delayed more than 6 hours or requires an overnight stay, you and your family are covered for unreimbursed expenses, such as meals and lodging, up to $500 per ticket."
• Lost Luggage Reimbursement:  If you or an immediate family member check or carry on luggage that is damaged or lost by the carrier, you're covered up to $3,000 per passenger."
• Baggage Delay Insurance: "Reimburses you for essential purchases like toiletries and clothing for baggage delays over 6 hours by passenger carrier up to $100 a day for 5 days."
• Travel Accident Insurance: "When you pay for your air, bus, train or cruise transportation with your card, you are eligible to receive accidental death or dismemberment coverage of up to $1,000,000."
• Emergency Evacuation & Transportation: "If you or a member of your immediate family are injured or become sick during a trip far from home that results in an emergency evacuation, you can be covered for medical services and transportation up to $100,000."
• Emergency Medical and Dental Benefit: "If you’re 100 miles or more from home on a trip, you can be reimbursed up to $2,500 for medical expenses if you or your immediate family member become sick or injured."

Purchase Protection

• Extended Warranty: "Extends the time period of the U.S. manufacturer's warranty by an additional year, on eligible warranties of three years or less."
• Damage and Theft Protection: "Covers your new purchases for 120 days against damage or theft up to $10,000 per claim and $50,000 per year."
• Return Protection: "You can be reimbursed for eligible items that the store won’t take back within 90 days of purchase, up to $500 per item, $1,000 per year."

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DoorDash Food Delivery Benefits

$60 Credit Per Year:  Get up to $60 in automatic statement credits in 2020 and up to $60 more in 2021 by using your Sapphire Reserve card for DoorDash purchases.

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DashPass Free Delivery:  Activate your free DashPass membership by 12/31/2020 in order to get 12 months of free delivery for DoorDash orders over $12.

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Lyft Rideshare Benefits

10X Rewards: Use your Sapphire Reserve card with Lyft in order to earn 10 points per dollar.

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Lyft Pink: Get a one year membership of Lyft Pink for free.  Lyft Pink offers the following benefits:

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• 15% savings on all rides in the United States
• Get 3 free 30 minute bike or scooter rides per month
• Waived lost item fee
• Priority dispatch at airports
• Cancellation fee protection (cancel within 15 minutes in order to get the cancellation fee back up to 3 times per month)
• Special member offers.

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Referring friends is often a good way to earn extra points with Chase products, but referral offers come and go over time.  When referral offers are available, Chase sends emails to eligible cardholders with the offer details.  Cardholders can also look for Chase friend referral offers here.

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Details about booking travel through Chase

You can use the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal to book airfare, hotels, cruises, activities, and car rentals. Airfare purchased through the portal still earns airline miles and elite qualifying miles.  Hotels booked this way do not earn hotel rewards.  Worse, hotels booked through the portal often won't offer you elite benefits even if you have status. Unfortunately, Chase switched to an Expedia-backed portal and removed some ultra low cost carriers. For example, you can no longer book Spirit Airlines or Southwest through Chase Ultimate Rewards.  There is a work-around for some carriers though.  Please see this post for details: How to book the cheapest flights with Chase Ultimate Rewards.

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Travel protections apply

When you pay with points for travel, Chase's automatic travel protections do apply.  So, you can be covered for things like car rentals, trip delays, trip cancellation & interruption, lost luggage, etc.  The coverage you receive will be based on which card's rewards were used to book the trip. For example, if you have both a Chase Sapphire Preferred and a Sapphire Reserve, you would want to move your Ultimate Rewards points from the Preferred to the Reserve and then use the Reserve points to book your trip. You will get both better value (1.5 cents per point) and better travel protections.  See: Sapphire Reserve Travel Insurance.

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The best use of Ultimate Rewards points, in my opinion, is to transfer points to airline and hotel partners in order to book high value awards.  Your best bet is usually to wait until you find a great flight or night award before transferring points. Points transfer at a ratio of 1:1 as shown in the list of transfer partners below. Keep in mind that while transfers are instantly posted to most loyalty programs, transfers to Singapore Krisflyer and Marriott Bonvoy are not instant.

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Move points to premium or ultra-premium card first

You cannot transfer points directly from a no-fee Chase Ultimate Rewards card to airline and hotel partners, but you can move points first to a premium card (Sapphire Preferred or Ink Business Preferred, for example) or ultra-premium card (Sapphire Reserve) and then transfer the points to airline or hotel partners.  Points can be transferred to the loyalty accounts of the primary cardholder or any authorized user on the account. Points can also be transferred to the loyalty account of a joint business owner, but they do need to be an authorized user on the associated business account.

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Through the Ultimate Rewards portal you can redeem points for cash back, gift cards, merchandise, or experiences.  With this approach you'll usually get 1 cent per point value.  One exception is that Chase occasionally offers gift cards at a discount so you may be able to get better than 1 cent per point value during a gift card sale.

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You can also use points to pay some merchants directly (Amazon.com, for example or via Chase Pay).  Don't do this.  These options offer very poor value. Further, they may compromise the security of your account (i.e. if someone hacks into your Amazon account, they might spend your Ultimate Rewards points - causing you a headache in getting your points reinstated).

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If you are the primary account holder with multiple cards, you can freely combine Ultimate Rewards back and forth between your accounts.  Your points can then be redeemed according to the card to which you move them.  For example, if you have the no-fee Ink Business Cash card and the ultra-premium Sapphire Reserve card, you can earn 5X points per dollar on office supply purchases (or on gift cards purchased at office supply stores) with the Ink Card and then move those points to your Sapphire Reserve account to redeem them for 1.5 cents per point towards travel.

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If you intend to cancel a Chase Ultimate Rewards card, you should first combine your points with a card you intend to keep active. Once you cancel, you will forfeit any unused points in that account (See: My 90,000 Ultimate Rewards Points mistake). A product change should not affect your balance, but some people prefer moving points before a product change as well just to be safe.

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Chase allows customers to transfer Ultimate Rewards points to any other account in that customer's name or to one additional household member or joint business owner (for free).

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Why this is valuable:

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• You earn points with the card offering the best return on purchases and then use points with the card offering the best redemption rate.
• Only one member of your household needs to maintain a premium card for transferring to partners or booking travel (though note that the primary cardholder can only transfer points to partner loyalty programs in the name of the primary cardholder or authorized users).

Transfer difficulties? Create a loop

If you have trouble transferring between accounts, some users have been able to combine points between their own accounts — like from Bob’s Ink Business Cash to Bob’s Sapphire Reserve — via secure message.

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However, you may run into an issue if you try to connect more than one of your cards to a single card that belongs to someone else. Chase allows you to combine/transfer to someone else who lives in your household (or a co-owner of your business for business cards), but I’ve had complications with this from time to time.

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For example, let’s say that Joe and Suzy live in the same household and are joint owners of a business and have the following accounts:

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• Chase Freedom Unlimited (Joe)
• Chase Ink Business Cash (Joe)
• Chase Sapphire Reserve (Suzy)

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Joe first combines points from his Freedom Unlimited to Suzy’s Sapphire Reserve. Later, he logs into his Ink Business Cash account and tries to combine points with Suzy’s Sapphire Reserve. Joe may run into an error adding Suzy’s Sapphire Reserve card to combine points. This has happened in our household several times. In that case, Joe should log into his Freedom Unlimited account and remove Suzy as a household member (click “remove saved card). About 24 hours later, he should be able to add Suzy to his Ink Business Cash in order to combine his points to her account.

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The easy solution I’ve found is to create a loop. In the example scenario they should transfer like this:

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Joe’s Freedom Unlimited —> Joe’s Ink Business Cash —> Suzy’s Sapphire Reserve —> Joe’s Freedom Unlimited

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Creating a loop chain has solved that problem in my household. As noted, it took 24 hours after removing accounts to re-add them to other cards, so be aware of that limitation.

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Thankfully, it is very easy to keep Chase Ultimate Rewards points alive: simply keep the points in an open Ultimate Rewards account and they will not expire. Note that if you close an Ultimate Rewards card, you will lose any points associated with that card. You should first combine points to move points away from the card you intend to close and to another card that will remain open as per the sharing section above before canceling. See: My 90,000 point Ultimate Rewards mistake. See also: A checklist for cancelling credit cards.

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• Annual fee: $75 per authorized user
• $300 travel credit? Authorized users do not get their own travel credits.  Travel purchases made on authorized user cards do get reimbursed but the reimbursement comes out of the same $300 per year bucket as the primary card.
• Airport Lounge Access? Authorized users get Priority Pass Select membership like the primary user.
• Primary car rental collision damage waiver? Yes
• Global Entry or TSA Pre Fee Credit? Authorized users do not get their own Global Entry or TSA Pre reimbursements.  Enrollment fees charged to authorized user cards do get reimbursed but it comes out of the same single reimbursement every 4 years as the primary card.
• Why consider paying for authorized user cards? Many will find that it is not worth adding authorized users.  However, it can be worth it to earn 3X for travel & dining for authorized user spend, and to give Priority Pass to your authorized users.  See also: The Sapphire Reserve Couple Conundrum.

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Once you are approved for a Chase card, you have three months to meet the required spend in order to get the signup bonus. If your usual spend isn’t enough, consider using the Plastiq bill pay service to use your card to pay bills that can’t usually be paid by credit card (rent, mortgage, contractors, etc.). Click here to find many more options for increasing credit card spend.

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