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When Chase introduced its Sapphire Reserve card, it created a lot of buzz. The card had a 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points sign-up bonus and a simple earning structure. While that earning structure still exists, we have seen the sign-up bonus hover at the 50,000 mark for some time now.
In contrast, American Express has been on a constant spree of making changes and refreshing many of its products. They’ve refreshed the Gold and Platinum cards over the years. Most recently, Amex made changes and relaunched the Amex Green Card. If you’re looking to get this card, please ensure that you use the incognito mode in order to get the highest available public bonus of 45,000 Membership rewards points.
Chase Sapphire Reserve Rumor
Doctor of Credit reports that Chase is currently in the process of making changes to the Sapphire Reserve card. While this post by Doctor of Credit clarifies that this is still a rumor, it states that it comes from a credible source.
A couple of rumored changes have been reported.
- Chase will increase the annual fee on the Chase Sapphire Reserve to $550. This would put the price tag on par with the Amex Platinum card.
- Chase plans to add a dining credit to this card. I’m guessing that it might be split into monthly increments just like on the Amex Gold card. I’m hoping however that this is a simple dining credit instead of one with a partner like Uber Eats, Grubhub, PostMates or Doordash. I wrote recently about how I don’t like to jump through hoops to use credits in order to recover the annual fee on premium credit cards.
The Pundit’s Mantra
While it’s interesting to know that some changes may be in the works, I’m a bit unhappy at the path that Chase may be taking. If they were to implement this change, this would pretty much be similar to what Amex did with the Gold card, by adopting a breakage strategy.
As the credit card market matures, the race for premium cards keeps heating up. It will be interesting to see how Chase goes about making changes to one of its most popular credit cards. If they do end up increasing the annual fee, I hope Chase also offers an elevated sign-up bonus.
If you’re looking to sign-up for a lucrative sign-up bonus, you can currently sign-up for the Chase Ink Preferred card. It has a sign-up bonus of 80,000 Ultimate Rewards points, which is currently the highest sign-up bonus amongst Chase’s Ultimate Rewards points earning cards. Please note that this card is subject to Chase’s 5/24 rule.
What do you think about these rumored changed to the Chase Sapphire Reserve? Would they sway your decision as a current cardholder and make you cancel? Let us know in the comments section.
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Do not like the sound of a fee increase. Dining credits don’t interest me, I’d prefer they boost the earning structure, go to 4x or 5x on dining. This used to be my go to card for restaurants but it has been eclipsed by the Amex gold.
The CSR is still a pretty good option when you dine abroad, since a lot of restaurants don’t accept Amex.
We’ll probably downgrade or cancel my wife’s and my cards if the fee goes up this much.
I’m sure many customers will react by either downgrading or canceling if this were to happen.
What I think is that I will downgrade my CSR if the annual fee is raised. I am tired of all the fee increases to premium cards with devaluations or new benefits I don’t want or need. I will exit to the premium card market if Chase increases the CSR fee.
It will be a sad trend if this were to happen, where premium cards continue to increase fees, without compensating customers with benefits that are easy to use.
If the annual fee does go up, that in itself won’t be a dealbreaker, but for me it would be what that extra $100 will bring with it. A simple $100 dining credit I’d just take at face value since I dine out fairly often and moving $100 of dining spend from my Amex Gold to CSR isn’t much of an issue… and not earning UR points on that $100 might be just something I’d have to write off each year like I do with the travel credit. My main reason for the CSR is for the travel bonus category… Read more »
Makes sense. A simple dining credit without any hoops to jump thru should be ideal.
If they increase the fee to match that of AMEX I need access to Centurion Lounges (plus an increased travel credit for the years I don’t need to re-apply for global entry)! Priority Pass lounges are hit or miss at best.
Hi Lauren,
It seems like that the increase in annual fee may be imminent. The new benefits also don’t seem to be very appealing.
They’re raising it to $550 on January 12. Just got off the phone with them. Adding Doordash and Lyft benefits only. Not worth it IMO.
Thanks for the valuable data point! I called in to confirm as well but didn’t get a definitive answer.
With DoorDash just being added as a benefit this leads me to believe the fee will increase soon. I don’t use delivery so in my case this is worthless.
Same here! I find these dining programs to be overpriced and not very useful.
I already hardly use this card anymore. What they need to do is start matching AMEX on the earning rates. I get 5x on flights and 4x on dining for an effective $80 a year. I got the Green card for the signup bonus, but I’m finding that Clear is actually very much worth the $20 I spent on it after using my Delta Skymiles# and the $100 credit from the green. The $100 credit at Loungebuddy isn’t as good, but I am still finding ways of using it. At this point, all the perks I get from the AMEX… Read more »
One part where CSR does really well is while dining internationally. While I love the 4x on the Amex Gold for dining, a lot of restaurants around the world simply don’t accept Amex as much as they do Visa.
In the last two months I tried to use Priority Pass, turned down 4 out of 4 times. That benefit is useless. Thinking of going to the Premium Delta Card that allows lounge stays.
One of the biggest problems with PP has been overcrowding. If you live in an airport that has Delta or Centurion lounges, the Platinum card may always be a better option.
Meh.
🙂
I don’t like this at all.
We’ll , unfortunately, it’s a direction that a lot of the premium credit cards are heading in.
Doctor of Credit specifically said that “The $550 annual fee source isn’t one of our normal sources, so I’m unsure how reliable this information is but think it’s credible enough to post.” Your post implies that all the info that follows is from a credible source.
Not that I don’t believe it.
The track record suggests that this may well happen. I don’t mind if the card remains the way it is, but we’ll see.
Killing the golden goose it seems.
I’m guessing that they’re reaching a point where they’ve lost so much money on the card that they have to make changes to boost revenue.
If CSR goes to $550 then it won’t be long before CSP moves to $250. I wonder how much business those changes would push away. Based on Chase’s history to this point I’m not sure I see them making these changes, they’ve invested in member retention for this long and I think they’d ride this a little longer. If they do increase annual fees on the cards then they’d better add value. And we see that those values are typically ones that people will probably not use.
My hope that even if they increase the annual fee, they’ll add a benefit that’s easy to use, like their travel credit it.
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