The Chase Sapphire Preferred card is easily one of the best credit cards out there.
- It has one of the very best signup bonuses in the market — 40,000 points after $3000 spending within 3 months. Annual fee is waived the first year.
- Double points on travel and dining.
- Points transfer quickly into your choice of United Airlines, Korean Airlines, British Airways, Southwest, Amtrak, Hyatt, Ritz-Carlton, Marriott, and Priority Club. And points transfer into anyone’s account you wish.
- The card has no foreign currency transaction fees.
- You get access to the Chase Ultimate Rewards mall, a mileage-earning shopping portal that often has the most lucrative opportunities to earn extra points for the online purchases you’d make anyway. I love the 2 extra points per dollar on Travelocity purchases, extra point per dollar at Expedia, and I love it when Drugstore.com gets up to 10 points per dollar spent.
And the offer on this card will be changing. We don’t know what it will be changing to.
All of my links to the card are supposed to stop working 10am Eastern time on Monday morning.
There are several possibilities:
- A higher or lower signup bonus. If I get to guess, the signup bonus won’t go up, they’ve done higher bonuses in the past but have been pushing down the bonus on this card.
- A higher or lower spending requirement to earn the bonus. On the whole card companies have been looking for higher spending requirements before they hand out a bunch of bonus points. Chase upped the requirement for spending on the business version of this card, all the way to $10,000 before getting its full bonus. But I have no inside information on what will happen next week with this.
- New or changed benefits. The card already has no foreign currency transaction fees. They could add lounge passes or make it chip and signature for greater ease of use in Europe.
Or something else entirely.
I already have the card. It’s top of wallet, I use it most days. So I’m not facing a decision of whether to get it right away.
But if I was, I would get the card now. Because even if the signup bonus were to go up, Chase has been pretty good in the past about matching new cardmembers to better bonuses that come along in the first 90 days after getting the card. So if the bonus goes up, you can ask them to match to the higher bonus (it’s as simple as sending a ‘secure message’ through their website). If the bonus goes down, you’ve locked in your 40,000 points by getting the card before Monday. Meanwhile, I don’t see a likely benefit to waiting.
This is the card I use for most of my travel spending and all of my dining, for all of my spending outside the United States, and at every place that doesn’t take American Express. It’s one of the best cards on the market. I don’t know what changes will come next week, but in terms of a bonus the best strategy is probably to act now.
(Note that I do receive referral credit if you use my link for the card — whether you use it this week or next week doesn’t matter in that regard. And the link is to the best offer I’m aware of. I very much appreciate if you choose to use my link when you apply.)
I signed up for the Sapphire Visa, got the bonus and had it for a year, then switched it to a MC. With this news I’m thinking about going for the current 40k offer, then seeing if I can get the “new” card when it switches next week. I figure worst case it is still considered the same product after next week. Anyone see an issue with this?
When you say “switched it to a MC”, does that mean you reapplied or can Chase just change a Visa to a MC? I am assuming you reapplied to get another sign up bonus.
Yes switched from Visa to MC. If you’ve had the card for over a year, they’ll let you change to MC and then you can theoretically get a new Visa version to get the bonus again. I haven’t done it myself but there are many folks reporting success.
Do you know when the 7% bonus points comes through? Is it AFTER the annual fee? I’m hard pressed to pay the annual fee for 7% bonus…. Thanks!
(I used your link, fyi.)
@Sonya – in my experience it comes at the beginning of the calendar year, rather than after your cardmember year
When they revamped the Ink Bold at the end of last year, the folks like me who applied right before it changed were not allowed to convert to the new 5/2/1 earning scheme. That ended up working out OK because several months later, I applied and got the new Ink Bold. However, I mention this only because applicants for the Sapphire today might not get all the terms of the new Sapphire next week. If it’s a change like the Bold, then you might have to reapply. That’s good in that you can get two bonuses but it’s bad in that you have to use up two Chase inquiries.
. . . and also you have to go without the new card terms for 3 months (or however long you usually wait between apps). It doesn’t seem like a long time, except when you are missing out on months of 5x spend at office stores!
One thing that is often overlooked about this card is the benefit of being able to book hotels through the chase luxury hotel and resort collection. Its the poor mans Amex FHR program. I had a recent booking and am returning next week again to the La Quinta resort and Spa, booked thought chase LHRC, room is 98 plus tax(same as AAA discount) includes 100 dining or retail credir plus includes breakfast. this was not a continetal breakfast, they said just bill breakfast to the room and it will be taken off at check out. we got breakfast plates, coffee, bloddy mary’s extra sides, total came to 85 at check out they credtied full 85. best part i still earned hilton points for the stay including pts for the 100 credti and the 85 credit i did not even pay for.
i am continually learning new benefits of this card and now am happy to pay 95 for the great beenfits
left out of above comment:
this is not the visa signature luxury hotel collections, the chase one has much better benefits like 100 FB credit rather than 25.
I wonder if this language on chasesapphire.com is any indication of what is to come, or whether it is just some generic marketing language someone came up with:
First it says “Seize the weeknight. Make eating out an enjoyment opportunity any night of the week.” That makes sense as all dining gets double points.
But then it says “Reclaim the weekend. Enjoy Saturday and Sunday. Because what you do this weekend could be very rewarding”
The language is oddly specific yet also vague at the same time. I guess we shall see next week.