September 1st, 2009
Chase Sapphire Card Review: A Credit Card For The High Roller In You
Designed for consumers in the top-earning 15 percent of American households, Chase’s Sapphire Credit Card is definitely a cut above the usual plastic with its indulgent Ultimate Rewards program of unrestricted travel packages and generous shopping rewards. Rivaling American Express for a spot in the wallets of affluent cardholders, Chase’s Sapphire Card has a low 12.24% APR on purchases, no annual fee, no limit on the number of points you can earn, and offers ultimate possibilities—maybe a vacation swimming with dolphins or even a personal meal prepared by a private chef if that’s more your style.
The Ultimate Rewards program of the Sapphire Card has the flash and pizzaz that only the richest of rewards credit cards can offer. 10,000 bonus points come along with your first purchase on the Chase Sapphire card, and from there you earn one point for each dollar you spend and absolutely no limit on how many points you can earn. Accumulate points and trade them in for travel bonuses, exclusive vacation experiences, shopping, dining and entertainment packages, or credit/cash back.
The Ultimate Rewards travel bonuses are some of the most generous as far as reward credit cards go, with no expiration dates and no black-out dates. If you can dream it and want to spend it, then Chase Sapphire can redeem your points for virtually any rewarding vacation you may desire, just choose your airline (will that be first class or coach?), hotel, and special accommodations for your high class taste like rental cars, and that dream vacation is yours.
Ever wanted to go on a hot air balloon ride, score VIP passes to American Idol, or go to your favorite sporting event? Chase Sapphire points gives you access to extraordinary travel opportunities and events offered exclusively through Ultimate Rewards. Sapphire cardholders can also book top cruises or themed vacation packages, like golf or culinary experience, for one-of-a-kind packages waiting to be unlocked every time you spend.
With Chase Sapphire points, you can really cash it in by spending points at Chase’s online mall featuring over 300 merchants or through gift cards at your favorite retailers like Macy’s and Best Buy, or you can exchange your points for a rewards check you can deposit directly into your bank or even Pay Yourself Back by redeeming your points for credits on your Sapphire card statement.
In addition to these Ultimate Rewards, the Sapphire card has many of the bells and whistles you would expect to service a high roller, including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver, Trip Delay, Price Protection, Zero Liability, 24/7 access to a concierge, and 24/7 access to a dedicated customer service person – yes, a live person on the other end of the line with no more robotic voice asking you to, “Press 4 now if….”.
While only a select few of us will be enjoying the luxuries, cruises, and new toys offered through the Chase Sapphire Ultimate Rewards program, it is a great opportunity for those who qualify to earn more, access more, and make dreams become a reality. As for the rest of us, it’s a great opportunity to window-shop.
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So are there any negatives to this card? Why does this post sound suspiciously like paid advertising? Just curious….
The card is too new to know the specifics of custom service, how they will reprice you, and their approval criteria. As for paid advertising, it is not. We just thought it was an interesting product aimed at the high end market. If you have some negatives, please share.
Seems like a cheap black card, although far more attainable to Joe Blow which is cool. Thanks for the info.
You have to have a tier-1 credit rating (anything above 744 or something like that) to get approved. EVEN IF your credit score is 737, your mortgage is with Chase, and you’ve never missed or were late on a payment, have $0 credit card debt, and make $65K per year – you’re not going to get this card.
TOO BAD I really wanted it – the actual card looks freaking awesome, it’s soo thin and sexy
The international transaction fee is 3%. This looks like the card for high rollers without a passport.
i just called chase customer service and converted an unused $25k chase/wamu (providian) credit card line to this product. you can pick sapphire visa or mc. i picked visa since my other chase card is an mc. there was no charge to do this and my credit line was maintained at $25k. the card will arrive in 5 days. i wanted to review the card details and try it along with my amex platinum for a year.
Does this card work anywhere Mastercard / Visa are accepted? Where can you use it?
Chase has arguably the worst relationship with its cardholders of any of the major credit card issuers–particularly with their A list customers.
There’s a class action lawsuit going on right now because Chase decided late last year that anyone who they had offered a low interest rate in perpetuity balance transfer (which they apparently offered to 600,000 customers with FICO scores over 750) would need to increase their minimum monthly payment from 2 to 5 percent, plus pay a new monthly fee of $10–and that includes customers which had lived up to all the terms of the transfer offer and had never had a late payment. Of course if any customer were concerned about coming up with triple the monthly payment, Chase would allow them to maintain the minimum 2 percent payment–but that would require a tripling of the customer’s interest rate.
Those terms have been considered widely as a form of extortion. Citi, BofA and the other major issuers didn’t follow Chase on this deal–and of course American Express customer service is superb. For me, it seems amazing that Chase is trying to enter the high end credit card market right after a major attempt at sticking it to a large percentage of their most credit worthy customers. Personally, I’ll pass on this new card–and on ANY new business with Chase.
I recently upgraded to the sapphire from my standard chase card. Line was maintained; interest rate dropped to 6.74%. Pretty solid if you ask me. Experienced some fraud due to online use in the first week of having the card, and customer service was OUTSTANDING. They took care of everything. Very professional. The other amazing things is that if you call the secret number on the card, you speak to a person on ring number 2. no machine answering; no annoying prompts; no ridiculous CSR rep from India; no hastle. I highly recommend this card, if you can qualify for it.
I just got this card the other day, I must admit that the commercials did pique my interest. However, the customer service has been great, and I haven’t had any issues so far. I do have great credit, so I was able to get approved for this card.
I’ve had the Chase Sapphire for about 2 months. Good customer service, decent rates. I can’t complain.
We were just converted from a Chase Freedom Visa to this card without being given a choice. We used to have 1% cash rewards on any purchase and 3% on the top 3 spending categories (groceries, gas, utilities, etc.). The first has been converted to 1 point per dollar, the second is gone. We have excellent credit history and we do travel a lot, but their perk of 2 pts. per dollar when using their rewards reservation website is useless if the best fares reported by kayak.com are not there. Between our Discover and Cash Rebate AmEx cards that offer frequently 5% bonus opportunities without having to go through their website to shop, we will probably not use Chase Sapphire Visa as much. So from us, two thumbs down… We’ll keep it just because some vendors don’t accept Discover or AmEx yet…
I think the card is a good concept if it stays the same. The problem is I don’t know if it will with these uncertain times we’re living in.
I was just converted from my Chase Freedom card to the Saphire. I logged in to my account to check out the rewards and saw that my normal reward of a $200 check (Chase writes me $250 check so $50 is free) was not available. I called them and had them convert me back. I’d rather get 3% back in the top three categories, then cash out $200 in rewards for a $250 check and then shop for my own deals then have to purchase anything through a rewards program. I carry the Chase rewards card too just for gas purchases because it gives 3% back on these transactions.
Got the card recently and I am not sure it is as good as the hype. My previous Chase card got automatically upgraded to this one. The previous one provided 3% cash back on gas and 1% on other purchases. The cash back was directly credited in the next billing cycle. The point system is equivalent to about 1% cash back for normal purchases. You have to keep track of promotions, online merchants through chase website, etc. to get higher points, which is a big hassle for me. The cash does not automatically credit to your account and you have to remember to ask a check. For redemption of points to purchase items through the chase shopping website, I noticed the prices were substantially higher than the best ones I can find within couple of minutes of websurfing. I may cancel or just minimize use. Like my American Express card much better, if only it was universally accepted.
Is anybody willing to state how much travel accident insurance is given with this card?
Chase automatically upgraded my existing Chase Visa August 2009 with the new Sapphire Card @ 6.99% interest which still holds. I called customer service to ask Chase why I recieved this card and what the catch was and was told there was no catch. Was a very pleasent customer service call! I have used the card for six months now, keep it paid off and my interest rate has remained the same. I love this card!!
I got the preapproved letter for this card with a little less than 1 year of credit history in US, 1 secured card before that, low utilization.
I guess they consider income mainly, and less the credit score.
The card is great, except maybe one thing:
It does not report the credit limit. I got hit hard in the CreditKarma credit score the first month I used the card, because I assumed that its credit limit (it has one on the statement, they claim no penalty for going over) will be reported.
So be aware.
I received the sapphire card in the mail yesterday and after reading through the literature, I too decided, like Powers who blogged earlier, that it is not as good as the Freedom card which awards $250 for each $200 cash-back earned. So I called customer service and guess what? THE ACCOUNT MANAGER SAID I WAS NOT ALLOWED TO CONVERT BACK! I HAD TO TAKE IT because apparently Chase had sent me a notice in the mail and given me until 3/15 to decline, and since I did not decline, now I can’t do anything about it! That’s totally ridiculous. First, I don’t remember getting such a letter. Secondly, even if I had gotten it, it should have been an automatic non-acceptance unless responded to. This is Chase’s ugly way of trying to get out of paying the $50 cash bonus on big-spending accounts!
Has anyone else experienced this? What was done? I’m steaming! I would rather cancel the card than to be treated this way — and we’re supposed to be their treasured customers??!! Chase’s inflexibility will cost it my business, how does that make sense for a CC business?
I fell for a promise of 20,000 points because I had an upcoming vacation. Signed up in January and still hadn’t receive the points in April. Called/wrote and was told different stories by different people. Finally someone who sounded like she knew what she was talking about said that they points would transfer after the billing cycle on April 6. No points. Called today and a very nice gentleman told me that the points transferred “6 to 8 weeks after the promotion ended, which was in late March.” I asked why nowhere on the promotion did it explain this. “It should have,” he said. He apologized and said he was sorry he couldn’t help me. I told that that he could, by letting Chase Visa know that honestly about this policy would have resulted in customer satisfaction. Now I plan to get the points (someday), use them, and cut up my card in tiny pieces (PS vacation is on Wednesday).
I had a similar experience to Suing. For years, my primary card has been the Chase Rewards card where I would get 5 points for gas, grocery, and drugstore purchases and 1 point for other purchases. Last fall, I was “upgraded” to Sapphire. However, when I read the fine print, I found that the “upgrade” only gave me 1 point for every purchase (although the points wouldn’t expire). I called them up and declined the “upgrade” saying that I would prefer the card I had. However, about a week ago, I got the Sapphire card in the mail. I called customer service and they told me that they had sent me a notice in February (even though I had called them last fall and specifically declined the Sapphire card) where I would be automatically upgraded to Sapphire if I didn’t cancel it by March 15. Since I hadn’t done it, there was nothing I could do about it. I read all of my mail and I did not get this letter telling me about the upgrade. I told them that I never got the second letter telling me about the upgrade but they told me that they sent it and I couldn’t decline it now. I was quite upset about the way it had been done. I had specifically declined the upgrade last fall and then they claimed that they had sent me a letter where, if I do nothing, I lose the card I had. The letter should require me to upgrade rather than to opt out. I asked Chase to send me a copy of the letter that I never got and they said that they would. I just got a letter from Chase saying that “unfortunately, we are unable send (sic) you copy of the letter sent on February 17, 2010.” They don’t explain why they can’t send it. Perhaps their xerox machine is broken. After being a loyal customer to Chase for more than ten years (and apparently having a stellar credit rating), I am quite upset at the way I was treated. “Even kids know its wrong to give people the run-around.” Anyway, Chase has lost a lot of my business since I just applied for an American Express card last night. The Amex card has better features than the Sapphire Card and will be my primary card in the future.
Wow…afer reviewing all the comments about the Sapphire upgrade and the way customers were treated, I think I’ll go with the AMEX.
Thanks for the input!
I agree with A.C. – I’m looking to find a new credit card (two actually) for my husband and I after being fed up for the last time with BOA Alaska Airlines Visa cancelling our cards WITH ZERO NOTICE yet again due to info being “compromised.” I was ready to go with the Sapphire but am glad I saw these recent reviews. I suppose I should get us AMEXs and keep my Chase Visa Slate for emergencies (which by the way I was “automatically upgraded” to a few months ago when Chase decided I didn’t need my Starbucks Visa and its perks anymore, which really irked me).
I find it strange that a card aimed at high-end consumers, and offering easy travel as one of its benefits, would charge so much for international transactions (3%!!). This was probably well thought out, to make some profit from that… but it will cost them many customers. I’m passing on my pre-approved offer for that reason…