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How Chase Sapphire retained customers

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Re: How Chase Sapphire retained customers

#11

Post by ghaff »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #7
kube-system wrote: post #4

I really don't see why people find it worth it to spend $550/year to get the Reserve. Sure, you get a lot of benefits, but I don't really see how they add up to $550 more in benefits over cards with $0 fee. If I want to buy $550 of airline points, I can do that without this card.

With $300 in travel refund it’s more like $250. It is worth $250 over other cards? It definitely was for me pre-2019. The points add up fast if you travel for work. It’s no longer a “great” card. But there isn’t a good competitor.

Yep. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to hit my $300 from travel this year. I did travel early-on but I put all that on another card for various reasons. And I normally spend 10s of Ks on travel :-/

Re: How Chase Sapphire retained customers

#13

Post by leetcrew »

kube-system wrote: post #4

I really don't see why people find it worth it to spend $550/year to get the Reserve. Sure, you get a lot of benefits, but I don't really see how they add up to $550 more in benefits over cards with $0 fee. If I want to buy $550 of airline points, I can do that without this card.

the card is intended for upper-middle income and above people who dine out and/or travel a lot. if you take advantage of the annual travel credit of $300, the effective fee is more like $250/year. if you redeem the rewards for airfare, it take a little over $4000 of dining + travel spending to break even versus a no-fee 2% cashback card. that's certainly more than I spend in a year (and I rarely fly, so I wouldn't make the most of the points), but it's not hard to imagine this being a great card for someone else.

https://thepointsguy.com/guide/break-even-point-chase-sapphi...

Re: How Chase Sapphire retained customers

#14

Post by x87678r »

neom wrote: post #3

I was living in Manhattan when the fancy Chase Sapphire came out. It was genuinely shocking to me how many people I knew switched to Chase just to get the new card design. To be fair, it did look and feel exponentially better than any other cards around at the time.

I'm too practical, to me a fancy expensive looking card is just a fraud magnet.

Re: How Chase Sapphire retained customers

#15

Post by leetcrew »

300bps wrote: post #6
leetcrew wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I chose amex cash magnet out of a sea of otherwise equivalent 1.5% cashback cards for pretty much the same reason. kinda makes me wonder why most credit cards have such boring and even ugly designs. a conservative design can still be appealing, and it's not like graphic designers are prohibitively expensive to employ.

Citi Double Cashback is 2%

I know, but it had lower approval odds for me at the time. I've also heard a lot of bad things about that specific card, mainly stories of overly aggressive fraud protection.

Re: How Chase Sapphire retained customers

#16

Post by celim307 »

300bps wrote: post #6
leetcrew wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I chose amex cash magnet out of a sea of otherwise equivalent 1.5% cashback cards for pretty much the same reason. kinda makes me wonder why most credit cards have such boring and even ugly designs. a conservative design can still be appealing, and it's not like graphic designers are prohibitively expensive to employ.

Citi Double Cashback is 2%

They demolished a lot of the benefits though a few years ago.

Re: How Chase Sapphire retained customers

#17

Post by babaganoosh89 »

For those of you with 100k in stocks sitting around, I'd recommend the BofA Premium rewards card. You need to transfer 100k in stocks to BofA's brokerage but that'll give you a card which gives 3.5% back on dining/travel and 2.65% on everything else. It saves you way more time than juggling points, and I'm much happier after switching to a one card system.

Re: How Chase Sapphire retained customers

#18

Post by jhfdbkofdcho »

ghaff wrote: post #11
forrestthewoods wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With $300 in travel refund it’s more like $250. It is worth $250 over other cards? It definitely was for me pre-2019. The points add up fast if you travel for work. It’s no longer a “great” card. But there isn’t a good competitor.

Yep. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to hit my $300 from travel this year. I did travel early-on but I put all that on another card for various reasons. And I normally spend 10s of Ks on travel :-/

Through June 2021 they’re treating groceries and gas the same as travel towards the $300.

Also, the rewards points can be redeemed for statement credit with the same 50% travel bonus on this “pay you back” thing against grocery and restaurant purchases

Re: How Chase Sapphire retained customers

#19

Post by supernova87a »

Here's what I remember:

Basically they bribed people with the biggest frequent flier miles offer up to that point in history, lost more money Fedexing cards to customers, got worked by the credit card churning crowd for all the bonuses possible, incentivized people to visit 4 airport lounges per trip and now are struggling to keep customers as travel has fallen off the face of the Earth.

So, exactly what you get when some exec says, "I just want to see a huge growth in customers, I don't care how you get it!"

Re: How Chase Sapphire retained customers

#20

Post by [deleted] »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #7
kube-system wrote: post #4

I really don't see why people find it worth it to spend $550/year to get the Reserve. Sure, you get a lot of benefits, but I don't really see how they add up to $550 more in benefits over cards with $0 fee. If I want to buy $550 of airline points, I can do that without this card.

With $300 in travel refund it’s more like $250. It is worth $250 over other cards? It definitely was for me pre-2019. The points add up fast if you travel for work. It’s no longer a “great” card. But there isn’t a good competitor.

[deleted]
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