Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Chase Sapphire retained customers

hbswk.hbs.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 71 posts

Re: How Chase Sapphire retained customers

#51

Post by ghaff »

neilv wrote: post #43
babaganoosh89 wrote: post #17

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.

If you do a lot of Amazon, you might still want to have their 5% card as the default in your Amazon account, for about double the rewards. The Amazon card rewards redemption is pretty much automatic, so I think the only additional hassle of this particular second card is that there's an additional monhtly bill to make sure gets paid on time.

Or you just have paid automatically. Some people may not like that but IMO the Amazon card makes a lot of sense to use for Amazon properties (and nothing else).

Re: How Chase Sapphire retained customers

#52

Post by vthommeret »

One benefit I've taken more advantage of, that I've found a lot of people aren't familiar with is the concierge service. You can call or email them (which is now my preference).

In addition to some obvious things like finding a hotel or calling a car rental agency on my behalf (being able to send a quick email is significantly more convenient than waiting on hold for an hour) they've...

1. Helped me find an air conditioner along my driving route in CA when they were mostly all sold out. This took place over 48 hours. They would give me updates every 6 hours either via email, phone, or both.

2. Called several bike repair shops with information that was important to me — turnaround time, walking distance, price, etc...

3. Researched comparative information on model years of a car I was thinking about buying. E.g. 2017 adds these features, 2018 has these changes from 2017, etc...

4. I've called them to see if there are any road closures or issues with my route while driving.

As mentioned below, the card is really $250 a year or roughly $20/month and is it worth it for this benefit alone. I've used Magic ($35/hr...) and Fancy Hands and I've actually found the service to be superior. And I don't have to worry about the amount of time they spend.

From what I can tell they have what seems to be employed professionals who answer the phone (and maybe the initial emails) who are very personable and knowledgeable and then farm out a lot of the actual grunt work to different researchers. While the quality I've gotten from Fancy Hands / Magic has been much lower in terms of actually understanding what I'm asking for. Seems to be more college students / gig workers.

That's separate from the very good car rental insurance... DashPass (no delivery fees, reduced fees), 10X Lyft points. And things like extended purchase and warranty protection which I haven't used yet.

Re: How Chase Sapphire retained customers

#53

Post by whycombagator »

babaganoosh89 wrote: post #17

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.

One potential combo for those without 100k of stocks, or without willingness to move them:

Alliant Visa Signature (3% cash back first year, no fee. $99 fee per year and 2.5% afterwards) for all purchases. Edit: It looks like now they have removed that 1st year 3% rate

Amazon's card is 5% back on Amazon purchases

Apple's card is 3% back for Apple purchases

I still find that American Express have some of the best perks/service as far as disputing charges & insurance (rental car insurance for example is better than Visa - or was last year)

Re: How Chase Sapphire retained customers

#54

Post by ghaff »

bobthepanda wrote: post #39
ericpauley wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This year is a no brainier. 100 dollar statement credit and 300 travel/grocery puts the fee at 150. The effective cash back on dining is currently 4.5 percent when using the statement credit feature. There was also a doordash credit.

IIRC uber eats and rideshare also count for the travel credit, so even doing no traveling this year it wasn't very hard to get that full reimbursment.

A lot of people who normally travel a lot don't do those though.

Re: How Chase Sapphire retained customers

#55

Post by tom-_- »

For each Sapphire Reserve card, Chase gets a $550 annual fee + 3.0% of every swipe.

Each cardholder gets $300 in travel credit + $120 in DoorDash credits and from 1% to 4.5% of every dollar spent refunded depending on how you spend your points. Plus purchase protection, Lyft Pink and a bunch of other travel benefits.

For the cardholder, it's easily break even if you spend ~$10k+/year on your credit card. For Chase, they only lose when users spend less than $10k and leave after the first year.

Re: How Chase Sapphire retained customers

#56

Post by e1g »

vmception wrote: post #45
supernova87a wrote: post #19

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…

The churning crowd is all posers, I don't know why it bothers me that much, I think its because if they put that energy onto something actually entrepreneurial that gave them real cash or assets, they could afford to do all the things they brag about subsidizing with points, and still have the points, cards and various status'. Like, they can still subsidize flights and hotels with points, but actually have some fina…

I read somewhere "Chasing points is coupon clipping for middle class", and that resonated deeply for me across all three stages of that behavior.

Re: How Chase Sapphire retained customers

#57

Post by babaganoosh89 »

013a wrote: post #46
babaganoosh89 wrote: post #17

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.

I really haven't seen any card that has better net reward generation than Discover, if you want a "one card for maximum rewards". You can definitely earn more if you juggle cards, but the base discover card is really quite good as a one-card system, and I think would beat any "2%-3% on everything" card. It does operate on 5% categories each quarter, but those categories tend to be really common and broad, and their s…

5% rotating category cards aren't that great IMO, it's a waste of your time tracking what the categories are. And if you add up the overall cashback percentage you're getting, it's likely going to be less than 2.65% unless you're spending more than 40% of your spending in those categories.

Re: How Chase Sapphire retained customers

#58

Post by babaganoosh89 »

driverdan wrote: post #42
xnx wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just did this. Now waiting 4 months to withdraw and close.

4 months for a 0.8% return isn't very good. Better than CDs but your expected return in the market is higher.

You don't need to transfer cash, it can be stocks from your current brokerage.

Re: How Chase Sapphire retained customers

#59

Post by barrabas »

supernova87a wrote: post #19

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…

That's how they got customers in the first place. Isn't the article supposed to be about how they retained them?
Post reply on HN