7% Annual Bonus Is No Longer Offered.

One of the things that makes points less valuable than cash is that you can earn a return (interest, investment gain) on cash but points have a tendency to lose value over time (award chart inflation).

Chase’s solution to that, with its Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, is the 7% annual bonus on all the points you earned in the previous year.

• The card has a great signup bonus — 40,000 points after $3000 spend within 3 months plus 5000 more points for adding an authorized user and making a purchase within that same period.
  
• It earns double points on all travel and dining, so earning especially for travelers is really fast.
  
• Points transfer to a wide variety of airlines (United, British Airways, Korean, Singapore, Southwest, Virgin Atlantic) and hotels (Hyatt, Ritz-Carlton, Marriott, IHG Rewards), plus Amtrak.

Add an EMV chip for worldwide acceptance plus no foreign transaction fees and it’s a great all-around product, probably the best for most readers.

I love the 7% annual bonus. It’s why I talk about travel and dining earning 2.14 points per dollar, rather than just 2 points. Earning points and keeping the card has increasing value.

But @20002ist tweets me that the 7% bonus has disappeared from the Chase website.

As it happens I noticed this myself about a month ago, and reached out to Chase. At the time a Chase spokesperson replied,

We frequently optimize our marketing messages to focus on what is most relevant for new customers. The 7% dividend benefit remains a part of our current offer as we continue to evaluate the optimal suite of benefits for our customers. Hope this helps!

A benefit that didn’t go away didn’t seem newsworthy at the time, and it was reassuring to know we can still receive our 7% bonus (and that the bonus will apply even for new cardholders who apply now).

Of course, as we learned when American Express took access to American Airlines lounges off of its website for new applications long before they announced they’d be losing that benefit, when a card company no longer promotes a benefit it could mean that the benefit will go away at least for new cardmembers in the future. A card company needs to be careful not to promise something that they won’t deliver on, or else they’ll face a deluge of federal complaints and potential fines.

We know that for now at least this benefit still exists, however! And since it’s something people are starting to wonder/worry about I wanted to pass along what I learned about this a few weeks ago.

(Products referenced here offer credit to me if you’re approved using my links. The opinions, analyses, and evaluations here are mine and not provided or commissioned by American Express, by Chase, by Citibank, US Bank, Bank of America, Barclays or any other company. They have not reviewed, approved or endorsed what I have to say. Comments made in response to this post are not provided or commissioned nor have they been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any bank. It is not the responsibility of any advertiser to ensure that questions are answered. Disclaimers are needed because haters gonna hate, and that’s why we can’t have nice things.)

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