Nervous about high Ultimate Rewards balance?
 

Hi guys, I'm just wondering how many people are nervous about high ultimate rewards points balances, and what people do about it?

I think many of us are on the "aggresive" side with chase credit cards, and we have heard a few stories about accounts being closed. I use chase credit cards for all my purchaes, but I also have taken advantage of around 4 or 5 sign up bonsus in the past 12 months.

I would be upset if my accounts got closed, but even more upset about losing 200k ultimate rewards points. It seems safer to start transferring these rewards to either united, southwest, or hyatt, but of course once we transfer, we lose the flexibility of having them in UR. Also, maybe I am waiting for UR to offer transfer bonuses as Amex MR does.

Anyone have thoughts on this or developed a thought out strategy?

For me, I'm thinking southwest is the safest place to store points because of the certainty of value (and beacuse I have the companion pass through 2013). But I already have 150K southwest points and 600K united points, and I don't want to pad those accounts unless there was a high probabilty of me getting shut down by chase. I have never had any hyatt points. I have heard people say thats a good value redemption.

Any thoughts on this?

Judging by your account balances, you need to start using you points/miles PERIOD. You know your points aren't worth anything unless you use them, right?

Dude, I took my wife and 4 kids to Europe and Hawaii last year. I gained 410K united miles through the "months of mile" promo. I do use the miles when I can, and when I do use them I have to buy 6 tickets. (So, this many points isn't that much travel for me).

But the question is, do others feel nervous about high UR balances? And what should they do about it?

Choose an airline or two and redeem ur points to achieve status, if you don't have any. I got to aa exp this way. In essence you are laundering miles legally. Others may disagree. You get 25% more value. Not as good as Ty premier card which you get 33% more value if you have that card.

I posted this elsewhere on FT but I will post it here as well...

I think a lot of us who chase CC bonuses have some guilt in the back of our heads, which makes us wonder if we would become 'suspects'. Before I got into this game, my thinking used to be... "They better be happy I'm giving them $60,000+ worth of business annually!" Now, usually that thinking is "I hope my high spending doesn't raise any red flags (because I'm earning points)"

I guess it just comes with the territory.

But really, is there any (valid) reason to live in fear unless you know you are doing something potentially wrong? What do you guys think?

I suppose one option, if you have a spouse/partner who is less aggressive about grinding through Chase signups, is to park your UR points in his/her UR account. (I can only think of a few reasons, applicable in a relatively narrow set of circumstances, why anybody wouldn't have a Chase Freedom card.) Yes, if Chase shuts you down suddenly, they could unwind the transfer & forfeit those points as well, but I don't recall seeing any indication that they've ever taken things that far.

I wonder if airlines feel the same guilt when they Change cards/banks on us. Especially when it might cost us more fees or services?

The only airline that counted every mile earned for lifetime status was AA, and as of Dec 2011 only BIS miles count. AMEX MR sometimes has bonus offers into DL miles where you earn some MQMs for the current year, but UR so far hasn't had any such offers.

So far there have only been a few anecdotes of Chase suddenly closing all of someone's accounts. Of course we rarely know all of the details beyond whatever the poster or email provides. The only sort of common thread may be folks who sign up for a lot of Chase cards, mostly cease using them after the minimum spend is achieved, and especially if they then cancel after a year.

If you're not doing the above, and are spending large amounts on your Chase cards, then you're the exact opposite of those who have anything to worry about, would be my guess. Chase loves continuing to get the swipe fees and the annual fee from your spending.

Again, just my best guess from the stories that have popped up. I can only think of having read 2 or 3 actual anecdotes here or on the blogs (not counting people posting about having "heard about" it). All were people who hadn't spent much past the minimum with Chase cards.

One on FTG's blog also involved someone who had recently refinanced their mortgage from Chase to another bank. Was that a factor? Possibly. So there might be other factors such as how long you've had a banking relationship with Chase, if you have other products besides cards...with all the incidents I've read about, Chase universally refused to disclose their reasons to the posters, so we'll never know 100% for sure.

There have been reports that people who tried parking points in another persons account have resulted in both of them suffering at the hands of Chase. If one goes down, the other goes down as well.

Link?

I suppose the larger point is that you can run, but there's no way to hide from Chase, since they can always reach into your non-Chase air/hotel account & claw back points/miles, right? (Unless you've actually consumed the points/miles by taking the award flight/using the hotel stay -- and even then I wouldn't put it past the program's ability to put your air/hotel account into a negative balance.) So perhaps the best approach is to avoid being super-aggressive with Chase apps/bonus churning, and beyond that, don't worry about it any more than you might worry about the sun unexpectedly going supernova.

I'm in a similar boat, I have to redeem 4 award tix everytime we go on vacation. So it's easy to use 400k miles per vacation. We only have 120k UR points but we'll probably just transfer them to United.

I think bilah1 is talking about redeeming them in the UR travel portal for an extra 25% value to purchase revenue tickets, not transferring miles and have them count as EQMs :-:

UR points are PQM/EQM? Since when?

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...inquiries.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...nts-story.html
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/1182490/
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...0090300AANidyh
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/1157621/
http://www.planetfeedback.com/chase+...ication/306574
http://www.complaintsboard.com/compl...a-c342077.html
http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Cred...s/td-p/1337595

To answer your original question... no, no one is nervous, and 200k points?! Give me a break, that's not a high balance.

Stop being so paranoid. You applied for the cards use them and earned those points legally... why on earth would you be nervous?