Tag Archives for chase.
Later this month Chase will be adding a new card to the Ink family, that seems more the equivalent of the Freedom Unlimited, offering 1.5 points per dollar on all spend.
I don’t believe that Chase will ever make money on its Sapphire Reserve product. They’re effectively spending all of the interchange on rewards and benefits, and any margin must be coming from customers paying an APR — but with the high income, high credit, and high assets Chase reports about Sapphire Reserve cardmembers you’d expect even that to be a smaller group of customers than usual.
So it’s not surprising that we see the bank looking for cost savings.
Shortly before Starwood announced a deal to be acquired by Marriott it agreed to spin off its timeshare business into a separate company, Vistana, which it sold to Interactive Leisure Group or ILG. ILG now holds the vacation ownership businesses of Hyatt, Sheraton and Westin.
Marriott Vacations is now buying Interactive Leisure Group for $4.7 billion. So an affiliate of Marriott will wind up owning the Starwood timeshare business Marriott itself was believed not to want two and a half years ago as well as Hyatt’s timeshare business.
Singapore Airlines offers very good award availability to its own members, but not very good availability to partners. I’ve written about excellent first class award space Los Angeles – Tokyo and great business class space Houston – Manchester.
If you want to fly long haul premium cabin awards with Singapore, you need to use Singapore’s own miles. Chase, American Express, and Citi points all transfer to Singapore Airlines Krisflyer.
That’s literally a 114% increase for business class and 167% increase for first class.
Search Air China award space on the United, Aeroplan, or LifeMiles sites and then ring up Virgin to book. Have them set up the award over the phone and then transfer points online while you wait with the agent to issue tickets. I’ve only ever booked roundtrip but reportedly one ways are now possible.
Back in the fall Chase added Iberia and Aer Lingus as transfer partners for the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, the Chase Sapphire Reserve, and Ink Business Preferred Credit Card.
Chase also introduced an Iberia card last month and we learned that there would be an Aer Lingus card coming, too.
As a short hand expectation many people figured that would mean that applications for the Starwood Amex product – the one I’ve had for 17 years – would cease August 1. American Express, though, says “the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express Consumer card will continue to welcome new Card Members now through August 2018, and beyond.”
Many people believe that means the card will continue to be offered indefinitely. I’m quite certain this is not the case.
Last year Chase offered 100,000 points for a home mortgage. That offer was stackable with a fee rebate that required signing up for automatic monthly payments, and Chase Private Client customer discounts also.
One thing we learn about the Chase Sapphire Reserve cardmember population — in addition to average credit scores (785) and annual income ($180,000) Chase has shared before — is that “[t]he average Reserve customer has … more than $800,000 in deposits and investments.” So they figure a down payment shouldn’t be a problem.
Air France KLM Flying Blue is a transfer partner of all the major bank transferrable points currencies.
Air France KLM gives members of their program access to far more business class award seats on Air France than partners like Delta and Alaska have access to.
When you use your Chase card to buy travel directly — instead of transferring points to miles — you have the Ultimate Rewards online portal and you have phone reps. There are some things you cannot do online, like book Southwest Airlines flights. However there’s a new thing you can do online…
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
