I have a Bilt Mastercard with no annual fee, and it pays basically the same elevated multipliers as my Chase Sapphire Preferred purchases, including Lyft, restaurants, and off-portal travel. To my mind, the array of transfer partners is about the same, which is to say good and far superior to say, Capital One's.
I already have these cards, so the distinction between their welcome offers isn't relevant.
I do pay an annual fee to Chase, but if I buy a perhaps overpriced hotel room through their portal I'll get a $50 credit that brings my effective annual fee down to $45. It's not a given that I'll use that credit, though.
In the past, the Sapphire Preferred card had an advantage in that accumulated points could be spent on the Chase travel portal at an elevated 125% value. That seemed to justify the annual fee. But now that's gone, and it's been replaced with a credit that only applies to a high caliber of high-end travel that has never been a part of my lifestyle.
Am I missing something big, or for someone who has the Bilt card and who is a budget rather than luxury traveler, is the Sapphire Preferred a superfluous and unnecessary expense if you already have the Bilt Mastercard? [Obviously, a big question mark remains in that both these cards can be thought of as on the precipice of refresh/fee introduction & increase/bene's nerf, but I guess for now we have to make assessments on the two cards' present iterations. Could be that come next year the no fee Bilt 2.0 will offer worse multipliers and that will be the justification to hang onto Sapphire Preferred.]
Thank you.
What's the argument for Sapphire Preferred in a no 25% boost on the portal world?
byu/Well_I_Say_This inCreditCards
Posted by Well_I_Say_This
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It’s the only card that I can transfer points to World of Hyatt and with $50 hotel credit per year, it’s essentially a $45 card for me (I use it every year). To me, that makes it worth it.
What I see in the portal is pretty consistent points boosts on United/Southwest flights of 1.25x. hotels are higher when available, though admittedly not as many hotels are boosted.
Enables transfer partners if you can’t get approved for a business preferred.
Rumor is annual fee will be going up. Once that happens, it kills the card for the most part, even with the $50 hotel credit. I’m downgrading my CSP in two weeks once my $50 credit renews which falls within 30 days of my annual fee posting, meaning I’ll get a full refund on this year’s fee.
There’s two strong arguments for it:
1. Hyatt transfer with much lower annual fee than CSR
2. Extremely generous welcome bonus for $95 AF
it comes with $10/m DoorDash pickup credit, which I will consider $75/y real value. $50 portal credit is totally useless to me, because their portal prices hotels too inflated and disqualifies hotel benefit. So CSP is effectively $20 a year for transferring partners.
I agree this card is mediocre. For transferring partners, Chase Ink Preferred is a much better option.
I only use it for transfer partners anyways so i couldnt care less about the portal
The argument is you can use it with the freedom cards. So more multipliers (although Chase multipliers are crap [comparatively]).
I read Bilt got or is getting nerfed as far as the perks/benefits? If not, Bilt is great.
>I already have these cards, so the distinction between their welcome offers isn’t relevant.
It’s still relevant because the UR earning cards have bonuses that you can get more than once over time, and for a lot of people churning SUBs is a significant amount of their points earning. Bilt does not function the same in this case. Churning SUBs generally will always out earn normal multipliers without SUBs
And as other people have mentioned you need one of the AF cards to gain access to transfer partners, and the CSP is tied for the lowest AF with the CIP but has the $50 hotel credit for a lower effective AF
Still has points boost but not sure how that compares to the 25%. Bilt also only useful if you rent
Well based on the survey and info on bilt, the current iteration and multipliers suggests it’s going to be the mid tier $95 AF version. So it’ll go head to head against the CSP if true.
The CSP is really a $45 AF card if you just do the $50 refundable hotel, and cancel since Chase doesn’t claw back the credit.
The true edge is earning capabilities – namely, the other UR earning cards