aviators99

Right.

leonard016

I just completed my first airfare purchase (Delta) from UR. Always used Amex PR Gold but would like to re-evaluate my cc strategy for the next year and want to find out if there are some limits of UR. One biggest limit for me is that Southwest is not available through any 3rd party agencies.

Surprisingly, I found the booking is easy. Seconds after I finished booking, the itinerary showed up in my Delta account. The only things you need to do differently is to set UR points to be redeemed to zero so it will all be charged to the credit card and enter your FF account #. What surprised me the most is that it actually gave me a preferred seat! These seat are reserved for elite members. Does this mean that UR travel portal can actually see your airline status???

Happy

I did a test purchase at Ultimate Reward Mall with Lands End - I went there from my Chase Online after logged in, clicked the Sapphire UR link and when I was at UR site, I clicked the Earn Points then Shopping. At the time of purchase Lands End offered 4 bonus pt per $1 spent. It still does.

The order was confirmed by Lands End in same day, shipped in 3 days - that was mid August.

My Sapphire statement closed yesterday - there is no bonus posted for this purchase.

I could not find anywhere on the UR Mall website where to track purchases, or to file claim against non-tracking purchases like other eShopping sites have.

So I sent a SM to Chase asking what was going on.

Please see the reply I got.

In short, you need to directly log in Ultimate Reward Mall instead of going from Chase Online and clicked the link under Sapphire Card. I dont know how to shop in the same window because when you click the earn points it brings you to a SEPARATE window - using Firefox - saying now you are leaving UR and to the shopping site...

From my PM exchanges with another FTer who also was missing points from UR Mall, she called after 30 days on a purchase that should earn her nearly 1,500 pts. From her conversations with Chase reps, apparently they had no way to keep track the purchase as hers was also not found whatsoever. However Chase eventually gave her an additional 1K pts to compensate her trouble - instead of giving her 14xx pts, they just issued 2500 pts flat.

It is good to know Chase would do the right thing eventually but it is still discomforting that there is no tracking information displayed on UR site, nor there is a place to file claim after 30 - 40 days lapse from the purchase.
.................................................. .................................................. ..
Date: 09-07-2011 11:17:24
From: Credit Card Support
Subject: Re: Rewards Inquiry
Message:

Dear Happy,

I have received your inquiry about non receipt of bonus
rewards for making purchase through Ultimate Rewards Mall.

Upon review, I found that the Land's End purchase was not
made at Ultimate Rewards Mall. Hence, you did not receive
bonus rewards. However, as a gesture, I have added 100
reward points to your account. Your current rewards
balance is xxxxxx points.

I request you to please follow the steps below if you wish
to make a purchase via the rewards mall web site:

1. Log on to www.ultimaterewards.com
2. Click on 'Shop online and earn faster' link under 'Easy
Earning'.
3. Select 'Shop and Earn at the Ultimate Rewards Mall'
link on the left hand side of the page.

Please note that after the transaction is successfully
processed, you'll receive an e-mail confirming your
accelerated earnings purchase through Ultimate Rewards
website within 4 days of the purchase.

(Note: Never receive that - so the transaction failed tracking)

Having explained that, the following are the possibilities
that prevents you from earning the bonus points.

1. The purchase could have been made directly from the
merchants website.

(my note: not the case)

2. Please note that using Microsoft Windows 7 may not
receive bonus rewards for purchases made via the Ultimate
Rewards Mall website.

(my note: not the case but it is good to learn about this!)

?Microsoft Windows 7 provides the ability to launch
multiple windows in Internet Explorer during the same
session.
?You may encounter this situation when shopping on highly
utilized websites.
?If you opens the Shopping mall tab in the first window
and completes the ?checkout" process in a new window,
then the bonus points earned will not transfer from
current window to new window.
?You should use the same window/session while completing
the checkout process in order to receive the bonus
points.

It has been a pleasure assisting you. If you have any
further questions, please reply using the Secure Message
Center.

Thank you,

Kxxxxx Rxxxi
Email Customer Service Representative

Happy

I think it directly links to the airline's own site to finish your booking. Since your FF number is there, your status is recognized.

Now the next task is to make sure your purchase does earn the UR bonus points.

My eShopping does NOT. So as another FTer I talked to. We both had to manually request that to post. In the other FTer's case, her purchase was big (should earn 14xx points), Chase gave her an additional 1K to compensate her trouble. In my case the purchase was small (as a test for me on how UR would work), Chase just gave me the full correct earning that was 4 bonus pt per $1 spent, and I spent $25 so 100 pts awarded.

sargenet

Interesting...they never told me why my missing transactions did not show up....as all my other transactions did show up. They just gave me the courtesy credit. Even right now I have one from Drugstore.com pending.

And for those that I did get credit for normally .. I never received anything in writing about them. That being said, I could see them listed when I was in my Ultimate Rewards mall account as being pending....

I do use Windows 7. And all my orders are placed the same way each time with them. So why do most show up and not others? I find it very interesting that it seems to be the very same vendors I have issues with on the United/AA and Capital One shopping malls....

leonard016

I will see if they post automatically. E-shopping is always a problem no matter what site you use. It is so hard to stay on top of all these little things.

leonard016

Just made another one thru UR - this time is on AA where I don't have status. Before I went to the payment page, I was allowed to choose the seat. I chose a preferred seat to see what would happen. Then on the payment page, I entered my AA account #. After submission, I was bumped to a non-preferred seat automatically.

This confirms the UR portal will verify your status with airlines. It may be like what Happy suggested - it connects to airline's website in the booking process.

robyng

FWIW - I have had no problems with the 2x travel bonus. Robyn

Happy

Do you mind to give some answers for the following? Thanks a lot in advance!

Did you got to UR Mall from your Chase Online Sapphire account, or you directly log in UR Mall as suggested?

Where can I see the transaction activities? I search the UR Mall site up and down and could not find the tab for My Account / My Activities / My whatever!

And so the Window 7 browser not working well per the Chase (Indian) rep is baloney as you are using Window 7 all along.

So as the Email confirmation from UR Mall on your purchases is also baloney because you have never received any!

Next time when I make a purchase I am going to take screenshot of each step and then attach the files to SM in case I have to chase them!

Oh, did you tell me Chase UR Mall is also run by Cartera? for that if it is true.

Happy

Unrelated topic.

We are not talking about the regular earning - Travel activities whether book thru UR or not, earns 2x - in case you miss that - this has already discussed several pages ago whether it is worth it to earn the extra 1 bonus point by using UR Travel site which is run by Travelocity, or forgo the extra 1 bonus point (3x instead of 2x) by going thru the cash rebate sites which has 3 to 4% rebate for sites like Expedia, which does not participate UR Mall anyway!

bzcat

I was in France for 10 days in August and just got my statement. Just wanted to confirm a couple of things that people had raised earlier in the thread:

1. Exchange rate used was the US market closing rate. I compared the US$ amount for each transaction with amount I calculated using historical rates I pulled from xe.com and they are only very minor difference after 1 decimal point (basically rounding).

2. 2x points posted on charges for Avis and TGV/SNCF. Paris Metro/RER charges did not earn double points for some reason (probably did not recognize the vendor... I should send them a note about this...)

3. 2x points posted on hotels based on total charge so other fees charged to your room (e.g. gym, wifi, etc) also earn 2x points.

4. 2x points posted on meals only on selected foreign charges. I think this is the same problem as #2 above... Chase doesn't recognize all the restaurants - it depends on who process the charge on the other end and whether it include the business type in the transaction data.

sunrider101

I am current on 3 months long business trip across southeast asia. I have been charging most of my purchases to the Chase Saph. Preferred.

I like earning rewards, and since this card doesn't charge FOREX, i was willing to pay a bit more on bad exchange rate from credit card company.

However, while i was reviewing my statement, i noticed that lord and behold, chase actually gave me better exchange rate than my crisp $100 USD would!!

as an example, in the city of bangkok my crisp $100 USD on aug 20 of 2011 would land me

28.91 baht/1$ if i went to street dealer
28.70 baht/1$ if i went to official bank.


chase gave me

29.86 baht/1$

holy cow!


thanks chase. Since i basically churned most of good Cc deals these days, until new offer comes out, THIS will be my go-to card.

(asian nations hate american express, so my amex plat and amex *wood is useless here)

Happy

You generally get BETTER exchange rate on ATM or Card transactions because they use the Mean Multi-Million Inter-Bank Rate while your crispy USD100 use the rip-off counter transaction rate.

As long as there is 0 forex fee, using plastic always beats using cold hard cash unless you can exchange the cash at the "street" rate where there are plenty of exchangers that do business without even a license... You can find plenty of those in many parts of Asia... I even see old women squatting on the street corners of local food markets in Seoul changing USD to Won to USD all day long - always better than what you can get at a bank... It is good for small bills in case you need some. With the street dealer of course you would have to negotiate hard and be careful not to get back fake money in some locations...

ATM and CC with 0 forex fee is the way to go.

robyng

We were in LAX this last week - and Chase SP contacted us immediately when a big credit draw from our hotel showed up on my card. With AMEX - I always tell them when we are going to be out of the US. Since our Chase card is pretty new - I don't mind this kind of inquiry - even if it's domestic. Robyn

sargenet

Yes...I think it is run by Cartera. Seems like I have problems with the same vendors when it is run by Cartera. I haven't used Chase mall lately because I am focusing on United Months of Miles...