I initially ordered the iPhone 12 Pro Max on 11/8 and it said it would ship in 4-6 weeks. I decided to cancel that order and instead bought $1200 of apple gift cards at Ralphs since Chase allows you to redeem your points for 1.5x via Pay Yourself Back for Groceries. You also get 3x bonus points up to $1000 per month for groceries until April 2021. This saved me 35% off market price on the iPhone Pro Max and is probably the best double dip I had with the CSR this year.

Unless a person only has a Freedom card there is no reason to go through the portal. As the above example shows. VGCs would allow buying at Costco as another example.

To each their own: I'd always buy electronics with CSR (vs GCs) to get the extended warranty.

Sorry, I don't follow the reasoning. UR points are worth $0.015 when redeemed in ways designated by Chase. You made an eligible redemption. This means that you redeemed the points at full value, but you didn't "save" anything.

good point. i haven't read the terms and conditions for the CSR extended warranty benefit, but my girlfriend has an iPhone 7 and it was out of warranty but the logic board failed for some reason. Apple decided to replace the phone for her instead with no charge and even gave her a temporary phone to use while they were investigating the issue.

Warranty covers hardware/software issues that from my experience tend to not happen frequently and if they do, Apple will cover it even if you are out of warranty which is quite surprising. So extended warranty can arguably not be needed. Instead I would focus more on having phone insurance to handle screen cracks or stolen/lost device which tend to happen more frequently than faulty hardware. Freedom Flex has phone insurance which is what I will be using in the event something happens to my phone that is not a hardware/software issue.

we can agree to disagree here. Fact is I either spend $1200 or $780 for a phone. Because I spent $780 for a phone irrespective of the value of the points, I consider that a savings of 35%. I know Chase by default gives you the 50% increase in value on points for the CSR but I consider that a benefit/saving within itself and I did save $. Whether I used it on Travel or a phone, it is still a perk/benefit that helps you save money. Even for travel, the UR portal prices and market price for a hotel is similar. So by going through Chase, you save $ which cannot be ignored otherwise you would be paying the market price.

If I redeem 900 Pounds Sterling from my UK bank account to pay for a $1200 phone, how much have I saved?

That is not an apples to apples comparison. Lets not complicate things. If something is worth $1200 and you only spent $780. You save money. Period. If you still believe it is not the case, lets agree to disagree. I don't want to go off topic any further on this thread as that is not what this thread is about.

It's not at all complicated. If you truly spent $780 for the phone, then you only needed to redeem 52,000 UR for the purchase. If that is the case, your logic is sound and you did indeed achieve some unexplained discount. If you redeemed 78,000 points, you spent ~$1200 worth of points for a ~$1200 phone.

Does anyone know how to track the status of an order for the iPhone through Chase? I can't find any link on the Chase, UR, or Experiences websites to find my order status since receiving the email confirmation. The original estimate was 4-6 weeks for an Iphone 12 Pro Max, but at least I would like to monitor the order progress.

On my orders they sent an email acknowledging they received it. On the two I received they sent an email when it shipped with a tracking number. They shipped via UPS. I have two outstanding orders with 4-6 weeks. The MagSafe wallet and the HomePod Mini. Those were not a priority to me so I don’t mind the general 4-6 weeks. I know of no way to track them until they ship. But if I had ordered direct from Apple they would just say being processed until they shipped.

You can't. as It turns out, this offer is horribly useless. You get the same 50% bonus on the Pay Yourself Back feature. Order from Apple directly and getr the phone in 1-2 days and then use the Pay yourself back feature to pay for it.

I think this was only an option for Sapphire cards, and I have the Ink Business Plus which wouldn't give me the same 25% bonus on the redemption.

Great, good to see my approach is not crazy. Can I expect any shopping portals to beat Chase's 1 point / dollar for Black Friday or Cyber Monday?

1) You can count 4-6 weeks from the date of your order.

2) There is a phone number in the 1st email you got, you can call them and cancel and use one of the methods mentioned in this thread to achieve the same discount if you're holding a Sapphire card.