Originally Posted by
thepla
This is very interesting. I did use Amex travel for last cruise and he was great. Did get $200 OBC and some soda package for kid. I was planning on applying for Ultimate Rewards card that gove $300 credit and $750 worth of points for new card. It even seems I can pay deposit in 2019 and balance in 2020 for a total of $1350 for new card.
What you've written here says I can have UR person call Amex and apply code to get $200 OBC for balcony, which I did last time. Soda package would not be included but if $200 OBC does would be great. If connections loyalty (I think that is Chase TA) is a member of AMex Travel group.
Not follow your $300 credit and $750 worth of points - are you talking about the CSR's Travel Credit which essentially is an offsetting of the $450 Annual Fee? Also the 50K UR pts "could" worth $750 in travel booking? If so, it is not a good enough incentive to get that card because you are not getting the $300 credit "free" - you have to pay $450 AF, this just reduces the AF down to $150. The 1.5x worth is only in theory. In reality, you would be lucky to achieve 1.3x, plus the restrictions / inflated pricing / incompetent system, etc etc - A lot of annoyance to deal with. Suggest you spend some time to read the dedicated thread in Chase forum before you go apply the CSR. BTW, CSP has only $95 annual fee, no Priority Pass, and travel booking is 1.25x, in theory. Actually might be a better card.
I am not optimistic on how competitent Chase Ultimate Reward Travel booking agents are - last DP from several months ago, they are not booking any 2020 cruise. Nobody knows why but the speculation was, the cruise portion was still handled by Connexions while everything has been moved to Expedia which Chase chose to take the outsource contract to but the cruise portion apparently was still under contract with Connexions.
I did book a Celebrity TPAC cruise using my UR pts in Feb for a sailing in Apr because the pricing they had, was the same as our cruise agent's as well as vacationtogo. The agent did not even tell me Celebrity had a $50 OBC on that particular cruise - I found this out when I logged in our Celebrity loyalty accounts and the site told me there was $50 OBC I could use to pay pre-cruise purchases (internet, drink packages etc etc)
However, this is a constant discrepancy for a long time - the UR Travel's prices on both Princess and Holland America were A LOT higher than what you can see on Vacationtogo, and of course compared to what our cruise agent's quotes as well. They also do not see the returning passenger's lower pricing that both Princess and Holland America often offer. Given that I dont believe they could correctly apply the "Future Cruise Deposit" that would qualify the incentive OBC. On that Princess cruise (it was a back to back - Princess to Celebrity on the same day), there were also AMEX Offer of $100/$500 on 2 AMEX cards. After all said and done the NET saving from booking with our cruise agent versus using UR pts to pay, was only $150 or so. Hardly worthwhile to deal with Chase UR, especially given the later Celebrity's confusion (changing embarkation time / pier among other thing).
On top of that, cruise booking with UR never shows up in My Trips on Chase UR site. The ONLY trace of such was a line entry of how many pts deducted - no details, like other travel bookings except airlines and hotels bookings would show up in My Trips, and you would get an email confirmation of such. With cruise booking? There is absolutely NOTHING to show. Good thing is, if you have a loyalty account with the cruiseline, your cruise booking shows up in your account almost immediately after the UR rep gave you the booking reference from the cruise line.