Ramonmv

When does your first cert expire? I assume before 2/28?
Otherwise, save that one, and use the 2/28 cert for Thanksgiving.

Ramonmv

BTW, I think I was told the certs would be issued in October.

lkar

Oh boy -- I'm so confused. Sorry in advance.

My wife has the Fairmont card and about 16,000 points. Her annual fee posted a few days ago, and is due to be paid on 9/1. She already has a Sapphire Reserve and a Freedom Unlimited. I believe that she is over 5/24, but probably will be Chase eligible again in a couple of months and might want the Sapphire Preferred.

What should she do? Assuming she gets product changed next week, that would be great for her existing Fairmont Rewards point balance, which should turn into UR points. But what should she do with her new chase sapphire card? If she product changes it to a regular freedom, that should be good, right? She'll now be eligible for the 5x categories each quarter. And, assuming chase doesn't change its terms, this shouldn't significantly affect her ability to get a Chase Sapphire Preferred card bonus when she drops under 5/24, right? As I read it, she won't have the CSP at the time of applying (once the product change is complete) and she won't have received a bonus in the last 24 months.

Does that make sense?

The only monkey wrench would be if it takes some time for the fairmont points to be converted into UR points, such that she can't do the product change before her annual fee is due.

moretimeoffguy

They'd both expire on 2/28. Sorry for not mentioning, but both me and my wife have the card. We applied the same day, so we're in the same situation. We'll get one free cert each for the 6K spend (already met).

If the certs are issued in Oct and expire on 2/28/18, that's a cert lifetime of just under 5 months. Seems like this allows Chase / Fairmont to offer a benefit many won't be able to redeem.

nmenaker

I'm trying to figure out what to do with 90K points? I could get about 900$ in fairmont gift cards, seems a pretty decent deal actually. Or some hotel certificates, although the pricing for points for the category of hotels seems higher than rates, other than things like suites - which I'm hoping we'll still be getting suite upgrades to not worth a days coupon when I can upgrade a whole stay at a lower rate.

As I already have a CSR, I'm going to decline the free CSP card, will they transfer credit balance to a different chase card?

nock

I think the general consensus is to let the Fairmont points convert to Sapphire points as those are worth 1.25 or 1.5 cents with travel. Plus they are more versatile in that they can be transferred directly to partners for things like aireline seat upgrades.

Spent_All_My_Miles

The only reason to use Fairmont points as Fairmont points, now that the Chase conversion option exists, would be for:

- Booking suites /Fairmont gold rooms, particularly at higher-category hotels. They cost only a few points more than regular rooms, much smaller percentage difference than when booking with cash

- Booking at a place where there is a huge variation, either day of week (Fairmont Sonoma will sell out, or else become very expensive, on weekends, but is reasonably priced on weekedays), or time of year. The pricing of the base room categories seems calculated so that, on a weighted-average basis, to be about the same value as gift cards.

trubador

My anniversary was on 8/9 and yesterday (8/10) I put $6059 on the card. Hope to see two free night certs in my account in October plus another 6000 chase points.

bmvaughn

That is some strong work

curl

so, I wanted to get the CSP bonus and tried to open the card now before they transfer for me. got the "we need more time" message so now I assume they will separately go ahead and transfer and i might end up with 2??? I will cancel one but I'm more interested in the 50K bonus offer and fear I won't get it now.

lkar

Typically, you get the bonus based on the terms at the time you applied. So, like if the bonus is 50k and you apply, and it goes down to 25k before you end up have a reconsideration call, etc., you get the 50k. By analogy, I'd like to think that whether you had the card or not at the time you got approved should turn on when you applied. But it's not like there are a lot of datapoints.

Maybe what you should do is as soon as your Fairmont card shows up as a Sapphire card in your account, call to product change it. Wait until you've done that to call reconsideration, or to offer to move credit lines, or whatever. That way, you can say that at the time you applied and at the time you were accepted, you didn't have the card.

Brendan

Only hours until D-Day! I'm happy, because I want to use my 14K points for something better than $140 of (gasoline) gift cards!
And I have my 2 +1 more soon free nights to enjoy + 2 (B2G1) certs.

Balances usually update nightly around 10:40--11:00 PM EST/EDT. My statement closing date is the 14th of each month. So it's official!! I have ~14K Chase points available to transfer starting tomorrow !

mhdena

Yep, many of us predicted when the Accor purchase was announced that this was a backdoor way to get another Chase UR card. While at the same time enjoying the Fairmant benefits! Win Win Win!

moretimeoffguy

I'm so looking forward to PCing the CSP to a Chase Freedom (CF).
1) Since I already have a CSP and...
2) So I can sock-drawer the CSP and work the quarterly bonus categories with the CF

Wouldn't be able to get the CF otherwise (not the CFU... not even sure what the differentiator there is) since I'm so far over 5/24 that it's, well, quite funny.

Going for the gold until nearly all the banks crack down. Then I'll go into mile and points portfolio maintenance mode. Sure would be nice to get the United, Southwest, and Marriott cards again.

zzrayzz

best move ever and was >5/24. Sad thing is... I actually really enjoyed this card and wish it stayed T_T