I receive compensation for content and many links on this blog. Be aware that websites may earn compensation when a customer clicks on a link, when an application is approved, or when an account is opened. Citibank is an advertising partner of this site, as is American Express, Chase, and Capital One. Any opinions expressed in this post are my own, and have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by my advertising partners. I do not write about all credit cards that are available -- instead focusing on miles, points, and cash back (and currencies that can be converted into the same). Terms apply to the offers and benefits listed on this page.
Changes to the Chase Sapphire Reserve® card (See rates and fees) are actually great for me. I know they’re controversial to some of you. And in some ways I wasn’t sure at first how to balance the changes between new benefits and what’s lost.
However, now that we’re past October 26th when my exiting card converted to have all of the new benefits I am glad that it did. In fact, I was tempted several times to call Chase and have them convert me sooner, even though that meant paying the higher annual fee up front instead of my seeing it next year.
- I rarely used the 1.5 cent per point redemptions. I would have if my primary points use were domestic coach travel, but it’s not. I aim to get a lot more value than 1.5 cents per point, so really considered redeeming at 1.5 cents to be a waste. It just wasn’t in my redemption path, so losing this doesn’t actually cost me anything.
- Meanwhile, Points Boost is huge. There are times I’d consider 2 cent per point business class redemptions against inexpensive premium fares. And I do transfer points to Hyatt, where I might at times only get 2 cents apiece. Being able to pair Points Boost redemptions with Chase’s The Edit extra benefits like an on-property credit, and not just with Hyatt hotels but others too, is great. And this is far better than transferring points to Marriott or IHG!
- 4x on air and hotel is huge, plus 8x on air through Chase travel. I lose 3x on non-air and hotel direct travel spend, like Airbnb and cruises, but I don’t book through Airbnb much and I don’t take cruises. I will gain more on the points side than I lose and will probably book a bunch of my air through the Chase portal for the extra points-earning, even compared to Amex Platinum.
- The Edit and Dining credits, for me, will not just cover the $200 increase in annual fee, but will cover basically cover the annual fee itself for me – since I’ll use these for stays I’d take anyway and for restaurant meals I’d otherwise pay for. A bunch of my favorite local restaurants are on the Exclusive Tables list. I already eat at Clark’s Oyster Bar, Este, Kemuri Tatsu-Ya, and Emmer & Rye.
I guess I’m losing 3 points per dollar on dining for the restaurant visits I get credited back to my card, so it’s not literally as good as cash (there’s still a tradeoff). But it’s close. And that’s without even the card’s $300 annual travel credit. And it’s without the StubHub credit for tickets I would have purchased anyway. The card was marginal, and not a money-maker, before. It is one after the refresh.
- I’ve already spent over $75,000 on my card this year, and that means I’ll get credits that amount to an additional 1% rebate on card spend plus two new statuses:
- Southwest A-List Status: which means free preferred seat at time of booking, and extra legroom seats within 48 hours; priority boarding; free checked bag; priority check-in.
- IHG One Rewards Diamond Status: (I rarely stay there as Hyatt is my primary focus, but this will be nice when I have to stay at an IHG property)
- $500 Southwest credit: for bookings through Chase’s portal. Southwest is 41% of the seats from my home airport in Austin so I’m going to fly them. A $500 credit is real money to me.
- $250 Shops at Chase credit: worst case I buy Aesop products there and save real money I’d otherwise be spending.
- Southwest A-List Status: which means free preferred seat at time of booking, and extra legroom seats within 48 hours; priority boarding; free checked bag; priority check-in.
I’ve booked Southwest trips without the A-List status and that’s probably dumb. I should’ve just called Chase and upgraded early. I haven’t done it, but then I go to dinner at a place like Kemuri Tatsu-Ya and I smack myself on the forehead, “could’ve had a V-8!”
Bottom line for me is that the card was somewhat marginal before, but it’s a no-brainer now. It has great credits and benefits, and unlike Amex Platinum it’s a card I actually use for spending. Which makes it great for me and for Chase I guess. I realize that not everyone loves the card’s changes but for me they’re a huge win.
I spend much more when on the this Chase card when traveling internationally for business and leisure so the Edit and Dining credit as currently implemented is useless to me.
When traveling places like Europe the decline in points for travel spend like trains and even things like toll roads is a downgrade as well. I’m going to keep the card around but my Capital One X is getting more spend because of these changes.
This almost makes me miss Bill O’Reilly’s “No Spin Zone”.
Here’s just a quick price comparison for the Austin Proper Hotel for December 5-7, king bed, refundable-
The Edit – $1,734 (or 86,718 pts with PointsBoost!)
Direct – $1,328.90
Amex FHR – $1,245.76 (5x miles)
AA Hotels – $1,236.66 (10x miles on AA Exec plus 12,600 miles/LPs for AA status/cc holders)
Agoda – $1,068.48 (9x on Rakuten today)
Not every time, but many times, Chase is simply playing tricks. Pretending you are getting 2.0cpp with PointsBoost! But if you used 86k points at the FHR rate, it’s 1.43cpp. Which is lower than the prior guaranteed 1.5cpp. This is a website that I’m supposed to trust with my travel needs? I’d like to think the readers of this site are slightly more sophisticated than that.
Look, the whole card revamp is about getting people to spend money with Chase Travel. It has ambitions of one day competing with Booking.com and Expedia – okay, fine. The problem is, Chase Travel and the Edit are sorely lacking. You know what else is sorely lacking? The CSR revamp.
If this was some mid-tier BS card, fine. But it’s Chase’s flagship card. For some reason they decided to associate their prestige card with Southwest Airlines and Holiday Inn’s. What on earth were they thinking?
Glad you are getting more incremental value out of it, and yes the lounges are great, but for most people this card has gone from an obvious keeper over the last decade (and a card that made people feel excited about their association with Chase!) to one that many people will be exploring retention offers for at a minimum.
You are in a small group of people who feel this way. Chase botched their refresh and scored and Own goal
Southwest… it’s really premium to fly those coach seats lol. Chase really need to up their partner games, this card is a ghetto version of amex platinum currently that’s for sure
CSR is no longer a travel card. This was my absolute go to for restaurants and travel. And I travel internationally every other month. Sure I’ll still keep it and I still break even with the lounges and garbage coupons, but chase has uterly destroyed their flagship product. People will be fired because of this in a year.
Yeah, celebrating the changes to CSR seems a bit tone deaf to many long-timers, but, to those who live in ‘big cities’ with actual restaurants that’r on the new Reserve Tables, it’s fine. However, I can see if you live in Omaha or Tulsa, you may wanna downgrade to Freedom at this point.
I feel the opposite. The CSR was my primary card and I felt it was easily worth it’s value even at the increased $550 fee. These new changes would cause me to jump through hoops to make sure the increased fee was worth it each year, and some of those new categories don’t apply to me. The old way was simple and the changes are terrible. After 9 years of using the CSR I’ve switched cards.
With the next recession we’ll see how these high fee cards do on spend and issuance . Ditto the airlines that always declare themselves marketing geniuses at the top of a long up cycle (Delta , United). How much was added to the national debt in the last three months ? Another trillion.
The Edit and all the ancillary benefits of it (points boost, etc) are useless to those of us that are barely making enough nights/stays to earn or keep their status.
What’s the calculus for the rest of us, Ben?
-David
JP Morgan Chase is the most dishonest bank in America. This card is nothing but smoke and mirrors.
Peter, thx for that very useful analysis.
Gary, I appreciate the points you make in your post. But even as a dedicated points/miles hound, I’m finding that too many of these premium cards require too many hoops to jump through. For me, the Amex Plat with its Resy and other credits is worth the hassle. Adding other juggling acts just doesn’t seem worth it.
Of course, YMMV.
I so disagree – something you know I rarely do. It was an easy card to use with no hoops to go through. You can speak of the 4x for flgihts but I know that neither you nor I use it – we use the AMEX Platinum for 5x. And I do take cruises and the combination of 3x and travel insurance made it a no-brainer. I will use my wife’s CSP for the 2x and insurance.
I’m retired. I no longer manufacture points and miles like I did when I used cards to pay for dental supplies and lab fees! Maybe I should appreciate,the advantages now that I have to pay for more vacations. I guess it didn’t work for Chase but it certainly worked for me!
This card makes it a job to get your money back out of the annual fee. We’re prepaying $795 and working hard just to break even. We don’t need a low paying job. Chase Edit is a joke.
I think, but am still not sure, that I can make the card work at the increased price and the loss of 3x on travel, but previous posters who have noted that Chase marks things up are totally correct, I’ve found that Edit hotel prices are invariably higher, by meaningful amounts than Amex FHr prices and that the quoted prices in Shop by Chase are dramatically higher than the same item on Amazon (and, not that it’s terribly important but Amazon usually delivers the next day while the Chase system seems to involve a least a week before delivery). I suppose that it’s the attempt to deceive (we’ll give you a credit after charging you an above market price) that bothers me as much as the pure arithmetic.
@Jerry 329 – I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. “It’s the attempt to deceive (we’ll give you a credit after charging you an above market price) that bothers me as much as the pure arithmetic.”
Dynamic pricing feels wrong enough most times, but Chase has gone well beyond that here – it’s flagrant. It’s dynamic pricing multiplied by some factor so that they can pretend that you are getting 2x points value when they are really offering something less than that (whether below the prior 1.5cpp or not).
They used to have an excellent keep it simple stupid card, and now they just have an “are you stupid” travel website. Just appalling and sad.
100% with everyone else. A downgrade in almost every way. Thinking of stepping down from reserve to preferred.
It is my first post on this site as I rarely choose to go to the length to write something. But this article just upsets me as it attempts to make a very bad refresh to be appealing. I had CSR since its inception, and it was THE favorite card of my choice. I recommended this card to many friends. It was very easy to justify its annual fee and I saved THOUSANDS of $$$ from it. I used this card for all my travel needs, in and out of country, plane tickets, parking, trains, public transit and hotels, getting 3X points everywhere, and used Trip Interruptions, Trip Cancellation insurances multiple times for emergencies. I used the 1.5X multipliers all the time, and found it quite valuable and easy to use. I also managed to find ways to use Doordash credit every month, although the additional work is a little bit of annoying, but I bear with it as the travel benefit making the hassle worth it. But this year’s refresh SUCKS: 1/ I find it hard to use EDIT Hotels because of its outrageously high nightly rate, and 2 nights minimal stay requirements. 2/ There is no Chase Reserved Table in my city. 3/ I care less about the stubhub benefit, in particular, the semi-annual split making it almost valueless for me 4/ I have to think twice for my travel booking, and the devaluation of 1.5X to 1X for UR points, with the 2X point boost being a very gimmicky marketing for Chase to exhaust my UR faster with little added value. On the contrary, I have applied AMEX platinum at the end of September and already saved over $1000+ from it. Yes, I also have to go through some hoops to get those benefit, but the value I got out of that effort far exceeds my time spent. I just can’t say the same thing for CSR. Chase, just admit that you have failed this refresh and if you are smart, you should do more to keep your established customer base. I am keeping this card for 1 more year as I was lucky to get my annual fee renewed on 10/1 for the previous rate. After that I plan to downgrade or cancel if no meaningful improvement on CSR.
This is a shockingly misleading article as it does not acknowledge that 1) points boost is only available for a very low percentage of flights 2) almost all the points Boost is for United and 3) for hotels, the point boost prices are limited and the prices are often more expensive (in cash or points) than competitors or buying direct.
There’s no way a credit card rewards expert wouldn’t know that, it’s odd you wouldn’t mention that. Now it may STILL hold some value for you and to each their own, but as a guide for readers it is not the full picture at all.