US Bank has announced a couple of enhancements to its Altitude Reserve card, both of which relate to dining purchases.
First up, the card’s $325 travel credit can be used towards dining purchases through December 31, 2020, similar to how the Hilton Aspire’s resort credit can temporarily be used towards dining purchases (although that’s only valid from June to August this year).
This is a great deal if you’re not likely to have any travel-related expenses before the end of the year and hadn’t already used up the travel credit. In fact, it could be even better than that because as Doctor of Credit notes, the $325 travel credit benefit is processed on a cardmember year basis rather than calendar year. If your Altitude Reserve is due to renew between June 1 and December 31, that should mean that you can get $650 back on dining purchases.
The second card enhancement is that you’ll earn 3x on dining purchases. While the Altitude Reserve earns 3x on mobile wallet purchases (and travel), that’s not always a viable option when paying for meals, so it’s great having this additional bonus category. I’m not sure if you’ll earn 3x on dining spend which is subsequently credited back from the travel credit change mentioned above though.
Doctor of Credit advises that these benefits went live on June 1, although there’s currently no mention of them on the landing page for the Altitude Reserve card. It might therefore be best to test out the credit with a small dining purchase (or wait for other data points) before dropping $325+ of dining purchases on the card, only to find out that the benefit doesn’t actually start until July 1 or something like that.
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[…] According to Frequent Miler, US Bank is allowing customers to redeem $325 travel credit towards dining through the end of this year. I wasn’t aware of this when I applied, but this makes the deal even sweeter. […]
I had this card from its’ inception but canceled it a couple of months ago when I learned that the primary rental car insurance was changed to secondary with no notice.
When was this change made? I still don’t see any articles or even any changes made in the terms.
I learned of it in January of this year. There wasn’t any information on any US Bank webpage identifying the coverage either way. So I called US Bank to confirm that it was primary coverage and they referred me to VISA who confirmed it is secondary.
Useful for me, I like to use it as a backup option when I forget my wallet. Ultimately I think you just end up choose whether you use the three extra mobile payments versus other cards for gas spend grocery store spend.outside of Costco spend I think it overlaps with so many other cards. I think Costco is the best use of the card. That said, I’m going to sign up for it after we use up p2s credit when it renews in September and then we’ll cancel. I’m probably just going to keep it for the one year and the great sign up bonus as my state that I live in literally doesn’t have a Costco so I don’t use it there. Also, the one point five RTR is super easy to use. Check flyertalk for details but all you do is buy a ticket redeem points for it and then cancel the ticket and you get a statement credit. I don’t know how long this trick works so my plan once I get the card is to immediately use up the travel credits buy a dining and then as soon as the bonus points post, cash those out for statement credit via a airline ticket cancellation in case they take disability away in the future.
does it make this card a buy right now? What is your guys’ analysis?
For me personally, it doesn’t move the needle. It’s obviously a great development for people who’d have struggled to use the travel credit due to current circumstances, but I’d personally still have been able to use the travel credit if I had this card as we live in hotels and Airbnbs.
As for the 3x on dining, my wife has a Chase Sapphire Reserve card and we both have an Amex Gold card, so we can earn 3x UR or 4x MR on dining purchases already, so I’d prefer either of those over 3x on the Altitude Reserve.
For people that don’t have a good card to put dining spend on, the addition of 3x on dining might make this card more worthwhile. The $325 that can be used on dining isn’t a new benefit though as it’s just an existing benefit made more flexible. That $325 comes out of the annual fee, so you’re effectively just getting money back that you’ve already spent. It’s often possible to get discounts of 10-20% off restaurant gift cards, so that’s a better option in most cases than applying for this card simply because you can now use the travel credit towards dining.