The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is a card that all traveler’s should consider even with the $95 annual fee due to the 50,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening — that’s $625 towards airfare or hotels when you redeem through Chase Ultimate Rewards. Travelers should have the freedom to use their hard earned reward points as they please through their travels and not be confined to a specific airline or hotel. Therefore the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card allows all cardholders the ability to redeem their rewards how they want for a statement credit which can then be used to book travel plans through Chase Ultimate Rewards®. Through Chase Ultimate Rewards® the redeemer automatically has a 20% discount on travel redemption or if they prefer that can also transfer the points to a participating airline or hotel transfer partner on at 1 to 1 ratio. In other words, this card has no limits as to the airline or hotel redemption for rewards!
Traveler’s Point of View:
The pros:
- The item to highlight first and foremost is the sign up bonus. It’s big. With this card you can earn up to 50,000 bonus points with the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card when you spend at least $4,000 on any purchases within the first 3 months of opening the account. In other words that is already $625 bucks in travel when the points are redeemed through Chase Ultimate Rewards®.
- Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card allow users to get double rewards points on travel and dining! This reward is pretty easy to rack up considering how necessary food is to everyone and traveling for work is so common. Just keep this card handy for those purchases.
- Another great feature of this card is the ease of transferring the points earned. Chase Sapphire Preferred® allows users to transfer points to participating travel programs with no fees and at the full value! The participating partners with the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card:
- British Airways
- United Airlines
- Southwest Airlines
- Virgin Atlantic
- Korean Air
- This card provides reward points with travel discounts. To reiterate, when the points are redeemed online through the Chase Ultimate Rewards the users automatically receive 20% off travel which of course includes hotels, car rentals, cruises and duh airfare. This is quite a bit of savings for a traveler to consider.
Traveler’s Remorse:
The cons:
This card isn’t perfect but in life nothing is perfect so here are some of the flaws that causes a traveler to have traveler’s remorse with this credit card.
- Annual fee. The annual fee is not terrible compared to other cards out there. The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card users will have to dish out $95 annually. See? Not too bad but not great.
- This card is pretty hard to get approved for and many who has not yet applied is afraid of being rejected. Rejection is pretty common since the rewards are pretty outstanding so if you don’t have an excellent credit background then keep at it and come back when you do. You know, to avoid all the hurt and pain of being rejected.
- The last flaw with this card is that there is no introductory APR. So if you do get this card, remember to pay off the balance in full each month. Do not carry a balance forward since the APR variable is 16.24% – 23.24%.
Author’s Verdict
As an avid traveler, I definitely recommend this card. The rewards continues to pay for itself through the 20% discount on travels booked through Chase Ultimate Rewards and the amazing 50,000 points through sign up bonus. In addition the credit card has a smartchip technology that allows users the added security for international travel. There is less stress since this card does not charge the typical 3% foreign transaction fee that other credit cards do. I understand how great this card is but also keep in mind that all of this would render pointless if the merchant themselves do not accept this card. In order to learn even more about the Sapphire Preferred Card, click below.