Purely for my own curiosity and future bookings, is there any reason why you are drawing a line in the sand against the 5% portal bookings? 5% for anything is return I generally at least look into. When coupled with CSR, we can call that return roughly 7.5%. I doubt I will book all of my travel that way. However, this appears to open up avenues of a 7.5% return that may have not previously existed. If it's the best offer, I'm taking it.

One reason would be the abject failure of Chase/Expedia Travel to obtain and process refunds due to the pandemic (link below). This is not unique to Chase, nor even to Expedia, but for many people the amount of effort required to obtain refunds offset any monetary benefit to using these services. All of the dominant Online Travel Agencies (OTA) are owned by Expedia or Priceline. and the lack of competition means there is little likelihood they will invest in better systems. It's easier to throw people a 5% discount, which is probably less because they can pad the price of some services.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/chas...solidated.html

There are many reasons. Mia hit on one of them in his reply. There are also some pre-covid nightmare stories about lost hotel room bookings. In addition, hotel chains will typically not offer any status benefits when you book through OTAs. There's also the better travel insurance on the CSR. Simply put, unless I'm redeeming points, I'd rather just book direct. I'm willing to lose the extra 2 UR per $1 over CSR by doing so.

While many people cite bad experiences with the portal in question, I don't. Instead, I abstain from using any portals (or agencies for that matter), preferring to do business directly with the travel supplier.

I would consider using the portal for certain situations:

1) Independent or boutique hotels where loyalty points or status don’t mean anything

2) Certain flights where I know I will take the flight and where status doesn’t matter much (JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit if I ever decide to try them, etc)

3) Maybe car rentals

The beauty of PYB makes all of this irrelevant. Just cash out the points at the same 1.5x rate and then book direct :D

Not necessarily - if I want to book an independent or boutique hotel, 5x UR points via the Chase portal and the Freedom cards is I believe the best return available on any credit card (I have Marriott and Hilton cards for those hotels). Other cards give you 3x max for general “hotel” bookings (including the Chase Sapphire Reserve). Same with a car rental. In contrast, PYB is not available for travel at the moment.

Again, this gets to kind of the confusion between earning and burning. When it comes to earning new UR points, the Freedom cards have become as powerful as the Chase Sapphire Reserve for many. However, you need to have at least one Sapphire Card to redeem optimally.

You can use other cards to book those hotels using expedia via a shopping portal (e.g., ebates). You earn 5 membership reward points from ebates + 3-5 credit card points from travel purchase.
You earn more points, plus the benefit to deal with Expedia directly (more inventory and choices) or any other OTA you like.

There are many ways to skin a cat, and UR points certainly worth less than Membership Reward points based on the usefulness to our household. Of course this varies.
The bad thing about UR portal is you are NOT dealing with the Expedia consumer side - there is huge difference between the Expedia the general public sees it and the Expedia Chase contracted with to do the UR booking. The former is almost like another big OTAs because Expedia owns most of them just under different names, the latter is more or less like a corporate contract with lots of hidden restrictions that we the users have no clue until we run into issues, that includes the independent hotels do not confirm the reservations but you have NO WAY to contact them, among other perils we have encountered.

PYB let's you keep the 1.5x so you just use the cash to book whatever you need / want, thru better channels and earn more points in the process without losing the 1.5x benefit!

I'm in the same boat here. I never had a plan on booking all of my travel through the portal, but I haven't ruled it out yet. I do prefer to book direct in many instances, as I do almost always with hotels. However, anyone looking to book through the LHRC, again not something I would completely write-off. I've done mostly flights through the portal, which you usually aren't getting much extra cashback options elsewhere. I really haven't had a problem either. Definitely would want to keep the travel insurance though.

A nice thing about the portal that rarely goes mentioned is "things to do". I've redeemed points for various activities and events. A few times, I even got a small discount for whatever reason. If I can get 7.5% for any purchase I make, it is going to be an option I at least explore.

1) For hotel bookings, I would argue that UR are worth more than MR (Hyatt). I like and accumulate both though

2) I don’t get why you and others are saying PYB conflicts with booking via the Expedia portal at a 5x UR return. When you book through the portal with a Freedom Flex to earn 5x back, you are booking with cash - so you are not burning UR points, you are earning them. PYB actually complements booking through Expedia - If I book a $1,000 stay at a Mandarin Oriental via the Chase Portal on my Freedom Unlimited, I earn 5,000 UR points, which can then either be transferred to Hyatt or redeemed for $75 in value with PYB through a Chase Sapphire Reserve. If I booked the same stay on a Chase Sapphire Reserve directly on the Mandarin Oriental website, I earn 3,000 UR points, which can then be transferred to Hyatt or redeemed for $45 in value with PYB through a Chase Sapphire Reserve. In this situation, booking with a Freedom Flex rather than a Sapphire Reserve gives you at least $30 more value.

Besides the fact that I don’t want to deal with an OTA unless necessary, here’s a question I haven’t seen asked or answered. In the Chase portal, if you’re booking a hotel that is not in the US, how is it charged? Is it charged in local currency or USD? Because remember the Freedom cards have a 3% FTF which negates any earnings. Now I don’t know the answer because I rarely use the portal.

Like pallhedge I’m happy to forgo 2 pts per dollar to not have to deal with the portal and Expedia hell in the event that things go sideways. I’ve only use it a handful of times, thankfully all went well since most were airfare.

USD, without any idea what the local currency rare is - just USD price corresponding to the UR pts needed based on which card used. It is Chase UR portal that charges you, NOT Expedia which has not a shred of appearance on the whole process of making travel booking.

Indeed, the headache dealing with UR/Expedia hell when things go wrong, even at normal time, does not worth the extra 2 pts difference.

There are enough DPs in the Sticky thread of Booking Travel with UR pts, to demonstrate all sorts of potential issues that anyone intends to use UR portal to book travel should read thru, therefore to have a better understanding on the advantage and perils going thru this portal for your travel needs.

Therefore the PYB at the same value as booking travel, is a godsend to many of us who have large balances to use.

For the few independent hotel bookings, only those in Japan seemed to be glitch free in our about a doz or so bookings between 2017 and 2019. The European properties and one time a South Africa property, turned out to be VERY PROBLEMATIC. I have documented the near disaster experience on the South Africa booking in the Sticky thread - and that was when it was handled by Connexion and you had the ability to talk to the higher up reps at Connexions who could do things on the spot...

A booking at Southern Italy last fall, the property was available on both Booking.com and on UR portal - after UR "confirmed" my reservation, said property (a 3-bedrooms house) was still available on Booking.com for over 12 hours - that was a scary thing because we did not know if our UR would be really confirmed, and if someone booked the same property thru Booking.com during the time - whose booking would be honored?! I finally found the owner's contact info on booking.com and contacted him thru booking.com feature called "Know your host" that if the property owner participates, you can ask questions BEFORE making a reservation. It took a few back and forth thru Booking.com feature to sort things out, while the ressie was made thru UR/Expedia!

In any case for any of the independent properties if I used UR pts, I made sure there were ways to contact the property directly - preferably they have a website, and an email address - so you could make sure your bookings are in their systems.

For those who use UR portal to book hotel, you should KNOW that the properties may NOT receive your reservation until a few days before check in - this is described in the T&Cs - I would bet a good part of the users have no idea about such conditions!

For four years, I religiously used my CSR for 3x on dining and travel, almost nothing else. Now, my CFU takes care of the former while I can switch to my CIP for the latter. Why is Chase bending over backwards to convince me to dump my CSR? Is there method to their madness?

Rumor is that Chase is going to announce new changes to CSR card Oct 5. Who knows maybe they'll make the CSR more juicy

CSR still offers a few nice benefits. The priority pass benefit is better than the one with Am Ex since you can still get the restaurant credit in some cities. Global Entry, if you don't have another credit card that gives this benefit. The rental car insurance and not foreign transaction fees are also nice.

A few ideas:

Many people aren't eligible for Chase small business cards, and they need to maintain a Sapphire card to make UR points worth more than 1 cent each. (And Chase is probably actually indifferent, or close to it, on CSP vs CSR, given the small net difference in annual fee and the costs of the added benefits of the CSR.)

And outside of FT-land, I see tons of people in the wild using the Freedom (not even the CFU) for not-that-quarter's-bonus spending, presumably with the end game of using it as a cash back card, even though almost certainly they would be better off with the Citi Double Cash (or other things). So it may well be worth it to Chase to lose a few annual fees from people in a position like yours, in exchange fo being more attractive to customers who actually aren't optimizing their credit card portfolio, and are thus much more lucrative for Chase overall.

Or, they could not know what they're doing.

Indeed, I have seen exceeding number of people using the Freedom card at check out, the Blue color can be recognized by feet away... Very few people use the Citi double cash, again the Green color also easy to identify.

The success of shrewd marketing to market the Freedom as a Cash Back card but in all reality it earns pt which then cash back is just one of the options.

Most people in the general public have very simple minds, lazy to use their brains to analyze even the very basic straight forward stuff - just the nature of how the majority of consumers is.

At the same time, we should not judge them too harshly, since their inefficiency is what makes it profitable for Chase to offer cards that some of us can extract much more value from. If everyone perfectly optimized their bonus spending categories, 3-4-5x year-round bonus categories wouldn't be financially feasible for the credit card companies to offer.

FYI - if you have the 5x groceries on a recent freedom and/or a flex (which incudes the 5x groceries for 1 year), online groceries + paypal stack this quarter for 9x
Check put Paypal Key (PPK) to use a virtual mastercard number to use with online sites that don't have direct paypal support. The PPK can be used for non-paypal online shopping sites for 5x as well.
Utility bills for example are a good option this way for 5x UR points..

1) We can criticize people for spending on a Freedom card for non-bonus categories. Should we also criticize the millions of people who use Amex Platinum cards to pay for restaurant spend or Chase Sapphire Reserve cards to pay for online and merchandise shopping? Very few people maximize every cent of spending they do. The vast majority of people don’t maximize at all.

2) Bank relationships matter here. Chase I believe is a much larger bank in terms of credit cards and branches, so naturally more people will have a Chase Freedom card versus a Double Cash. I have both - right now I am using Chase Freedom Unlimited a bit more than Double Cash for unbonused spend because I am trying to increase my Hyatt balance. Citi’s transfer partners aren’t all that unique IMO

And most consumers aren't like the typical FTer who is worried about maximizing return and hold multiple cards.

I was in college in the 80's and remember when the discover card came out what a big deal people were making that you could earn cash back on a fee free card and it was only 1 percent at the max.

Citi Double used to be my go to card until Citi shut me down and now my PNC card that gives 1.75% cash back is my go to card for most every day purchases. Since Citi shut down my double cash card and I lost some money on it (thank God I cashed out after my last statement closed), at least with PNC I can cash out every day if I want (I think I have at least $50 accumulated in rewards) and don't have to wait for the statement to close.

Funny you mention Discover—I've cut down the number of cards I have, but still try to maximize a bit (a few 5% heavy hitters, dining, etc.). My dad has no interest in better rewards whatsoever (he does PIF, which is good at least). His go-to is a Discover It with an account that dates back to the late '80s/early '90s. If I remember, the other cards he carries are an Amex EveryDay (picked up when he was thinking about a Costco membership) and some sort of PNC Visa (I think this might have been auto-PC'd from a National City card, the rewards are terrible). I've tried to tell him about good Amex Offers and he's sort of set in his ways. Based on his spend, a 1.5% or 2% card could add up quick (Freedom Unlimited seems like a good fit with the dining addition), but I've long let it go. I think we can sit around here all day and figure out the best cards for ourselves and others and some people just don't care and that's fine.

On the other hand, it seems that a lot of people in Chase's footprint carry Freedom cards and use them for everything (no official statistics to back it up, just anecdotal evidence). I also know a lot of random Chase cards were converted to Freedoms back in 2010/2011 (Marathon and the first go-around with Starbucks), so that may have added to it, too. A friend of mine works at a business that is never a 5% category and when it comes to credit cards, she overwhelmingly sees those, followed by other Chase cards, and some Amexes. Even when I'm in line at places like the grocery store or Target, I sometimes try to see what people are using and it's a lot of the regular Freedom (obviously a lot of debit, too). I'll be curious to see if Chase now suggests the Freedom Flex or Freedom Unlimited more as their card for most people who want to add a credit card.

If your dad can take advantage of the 5% categories, Discover is not so bad.
Discover is our oldest card and we only use for the 5% and other occasional bonuses.

Since retiring, we have closed most of our travel cards and focused solely on cash back, as we have more than enough miles/points. One last HH card will go soon,prior to the fee being charged.

Besides Discover, we have Freedoms, which get used only for the 5% categories. Also have FU, but it is rarely used, but is still under the initial 15 month no finance charge offer.That will be paid off soon.
We keep the CSP so we can transfer to partners as needed. It is being used for Pay Yourself Back currently, using our abundance of points to pay off charges.

Groceries go on BCE, unless Discover or Freedom has a grocery bonus.

Dining(3%) and gas(4%) go on Costco Visa

Everything else goes on Citi Double Cash for a simple 2%. Maybe this one could be a good card for your dad, if he only wants to use a single no fee card.

Yeah, I know Discover and the rotating Freedoms (regular and now Flex) sometimes get knocked by some of the credit card review sites because they're more "basic" cards and sometimes have categories that aren't always for everyone, but they're good for the extra little boost here or there. Chase seems to take a narrower definition of categories, so I'm glad to see the 3% additions on the Freedom Flex (I don't go to Walmart much, so it's going to probably be mostly dining for me this quarter).

I do think it's kind of easy to fall into the "if I get one more card for this specific category, I can get a bit more cash back/points/etc." mindset (which is fine for some). I've sort of settled on 4-5 cards and either PC or close/combine if I have one that really isn't working anymore (with a few "foundation" cards). Hanging out here and a few other places, I've got a few ideas if he ever wanted to maximize things a bit more, but I also know it's all a very personal decision and there may be intangibles at play.

For me, it's kind of funny how the Square Cash App Cash Card (I think that's what it's officially called) has been the MVP this year on rewards. Between the once-a-week 10% grocery Boost and the various 10-15% dining boosts, it's sort of stolen some spend from my Freedom (Q2 grocery) and Discover (Q3 dining). I know that probably won't last and Square might be lighting money on fire to cover those Boosts, but it has changed the dynamic quite a bit.

Circling back to the main discussion, I think that may be why there's so many Freedom cards getting used for unbonused spend, someone feels that having a credit card + a debit card may be enough and I'm sure that subsidizes the higher % categories (along with interest from some folks). Nonetheless, I'm glad there's so many options, and the Freedom Flex has become a very valuable card for me.

I've taken a similar approach as you. Back 5-10 years ago, I used to chase sign-up bonuses and did get a fair amount of points from doing so (back when banks were more generous). Nowadays there are so many restrictions, threats of account cancellation, and general tightening of the belt straps from lenders than I've settled on a few "foundation" cards for my spending and only apply for a new card if it fits in my long-term portfolio. I no longer apply for and cancel cards within a year as it's getting ever more risky to do so and banks are starting to punish those who are solely chasing account sign-up bonuses. I'd rather now focus on extracting the most value from the cards I currently hold and keep a good relationship with banks that I feel offer a very lucrative system of earning and redeeming. My current foster of foundation cards are:

Amex Platinum (little spend but benefits are outstanding and worth the AF)
Chase Sapphire Reserve (however I may downgrade to CSP before January as the earnings/benefits no longer make sense to hold vs the CSP)
Chase Freedom (utilize the 5X rotating categories but little spend otherwise)
Chase Freedom Unlimited (majority of non-category, non-travel spend goes on here)
Chase Hyatt Visa (little spend but worth it for the free annual night certificate)
Chase Marriott Visa (again little spend but worth it for the free annual night certificate)
Chase United Gateway (little spend but no AF and I utilize the extra award availability for United)

The only other card I may add is the Chase Freedom Flex as it has no AF plus a 20,000 point bonus and 5% on groceries for a year.

What does everyone else have in their wallet?

Just a note for anyone else who may be in the same group ... you can potentially still take advantage of this quarter's categories via Walmart.com, which is attempting to be an Amazon competitor including selling a bunch of stuff from third-party sellers that you would likely never find in a physical Walmart store, and free shipping is offered at relatively low order sizes.

And of course PayPal is also pretty useful as many online merchants accept it as a form of payment.

There was a refresh of the CSR that was rumored to be announced today - looks like that isn’t happening. The past couple of weeks, Freedom Unlimited and Freedom Flex have definitely gained more of my spending. Freedom Unlimited in particular is one of the best carry around cards due to 3% on dining/drugstore (common expenses here in NYC) and 1.5% back everywhere else. I’m also maxing out PayPal on the Freedom Flex and have shifted Lyft spending to the Flex card too.

Heard a Freedom Flex read out ad on a podcast I listen to. Interesting that Chase is splashing out the marketing dollars on this product at this time.

Consider the possibility that MasterCard is subsidizing the roll out expenses. It's a way to take market share from VISA.

Need help with Flex denial
 

I am a Chase Private Client with lots of Chase (& other) cards, including Freedom and Freedom Unlimited (downgrade from CSP). I applied for Flex and was denied; letter says I already have the Freedom card and gave last 4 digits of my Freedom Unlimited. I called reconsideration and was told that Flex is in the same family and I can only product change an existing Freedom card, not get a new Flex. Any data points or advice on this situation? I was hoping for the SUB of 20,000 UR plus the 5% grocery bonus. Do I have to give up either Freedom or Unlimited to get Flex (without SUB)? What should I do? Thanks to this wonderful community, Judy

Sounds like you accidentally applied for the Freedom Unlimited instead of the Flex (can't apply for legacy freedom any more), which is why denial would list your freedom unlimited card number. Recon probably didn't realize you intended to apply for flex instead of unlimited - but they are wrong since it (flex) is a separate product and many have signed up for it with existing freedom and freedom unlimited cards.

If I upgrade my Chase Freedom to the Chase Freedom Flex, will I get the $200 sign up bonus? Or do I have to sign up for the Flex to get the bonus and then cancel my Freedom?

Sign Up bonuses always require a new application. Product change does not give any sign up bonus. Consider keeping the freedom to have another $1500 of 5% quarterly categories - this quarter Paypal is especually lucrative for online use - especially with Paypal Key that lets you use a virtual mastercard with online sites that don't directly allow Paypal payments.

Got the 3% for this.

Anyone have issues with 5X on Chase UR travel portal using CFU? Booked AA flight for $600 using my CFU for the 5% on travel via UR portal. After transaction posted I saw it earned 900 points at 1.5X. And merchant was American Airlines. Called Chase and the rather incompetent CS supervisor was practically accusing me of booking directly with AA and says that will make it ineligible for a bonus. Even after I gave her my UR itinerary number as proof.

Looks like a flawed system. I charged the airfare as a cash purchase (did not use UR points). Now she had to submit an incident report for further follow up and said it will take 8 to 10 days. Exactly how does Chase UR know or not know it's a Chase UR portal purchase if it's shows merchant as American Airlines? I have another airfare purchase coming up soon and will probably just book direct with the airline using my CSR this time.

I expect the bonus points will post separately when the statement is generated. Read here: https://ultimaterewardspoints.chase....nd-regulations

Transaction closed Oct 9th. Statement closed and generated Oct 15th. No extra 3.5% posted anywhere.

In fact my Chase dashboard shows "+3.5% on Ultimate Rewards travel 0 pts $0" and also "You don't have any recent Ultimate Rewards travel activity at this time."

Is the general consensus that the Freedom Flex and CFU offers with 5x at grocery up to $12,000 will give a 30 day reminder when the offer is up or could it just happen one day? I recall Chase usually gives a deadline well in advance.

In any case, it's simple to create a calendar reminder.