Originally Posted by whipwhitaker

Hello fellow flyers,

I think I’ve been in some sort of Cinderella sleep for the past years, since I didn’t exactly look into all these travel cards and just sailed on with my Chase United Club card, which earns me 2 United miles on United ticket purchases and 1.5 miles on everything else. Needless to say, I almost exclusively fly United (I’m 1K), and personally don’t view the Club membership as worth $450 a year anymore.

I’ve been looking into either the Amex Platinum or the Chase Sapphire Reserve. It looks like both sport the $100 TSA/Global Entry credit and the Priority Pass Select, with the Amex not paying for non-lounge locations anymore. It looks like the Chase has a $300 airline credit which can be applied to ticket purchases and Incidentals, the Amex only has $200 limited to incidental fees — which are pretty tough to accumulate when you get bags, drinks, Economy Plus etc. for free. The Amex also has the Uber credits and Saks credits, which are nice, but frankly I don’t know if I’m accumulating $15 every month (or $35 in December) on Uber, and I’ve never shopped at Saks, which isn’t to say I never will. Lastly, the Centurion Lounges are super nice, but the one at my home base in DEN just had its opening date pushed into 2020, which pretty much leaves me with only IAH as the one that I could actually visit. Besides that, none of the Amex benefits would really make a difference for me.

I guess what it all boils down to for me are the rewards programs. I understand that Chase gives me 3 points per $1 for everything travel, which would translate 1:1 into United miles. Amex points, as far as I understand, cannot be transferred over to Mileage Plus, which is a bummer, but Amex appears to have a travel booking site similar to the one Chase has.

My questions to you are:

1.) Are the point redemption options on Amex worth a serious consideration of the Platinum card vs. Sapphire?

2.) I received the targeted offer for the 100K points welcome bonus on Amex, vs. the 50K on Chase. Does that change the answer to 1.) dramatically? (I suppose it only does if redemption options on Amex are at least similar to Chase’s)

3.) To those who have the Chase card, is it possible to have 2 CCs with them? I understand you cannot (and wouldn’t want to) upgrade from a United branded card to the Sapphire card. Which means that I would apply for Sapphire, move my existing credit line from the United card over to the Sapphire card and then close the United one.

4.) Did I leave anything substantial out of my analysis that would be a game changer? Other United FFs who went with the Amex card, what made you pick that one over the Chase one?

Apologies for this novel, and I hope I posted into the right forum. Thank you in advance for your responses.

Whip