Chase Sapphire Preferred Complete Guide

Travel Benefits

• No foreign transaction fees
• Hotel statement credit of up to $50 each account anniversary year for hotel stays purchased through Chase Travel℠

Travel Protections

• Auto Rental Coverage: Chase offers primary auto rental CDW (collision damage waiver). Here’s the description directly from Chase: “Decline the rental company’s collision insurance and charge the entire rental cost to your card. Coverage is primary and provides reimbursement up to the actual cash value of the vehicle for theft and collision damage for most rental cars in the U.S. and abroad.”
• Trip Cancellation / Interruption Insurance: “If your trip is canceled or cut short by sickness, severe weather and other covered situations, you can be reimbursed up to $10,000 per person and $20,000 per trip for your pre-paid, non-refundable travel expenses, including passenger fares, tours, and hotels.”
• Trip Delay Reimbursement: “If your common carrier travel is delayed more than 12 hours or requires an overnight stay, you and your family are covered for unreimbursed expenses, such as meals and lodging, up to $500 per ticket.”
• Lost Luggage: Reimburses for costs incurred to repair or replace checked or carry-on bags and property within if loss or damage occurs during a covered trip.  Coverage is up to $3,000 per person per trip (or up to $500 for jewelry, watches, cameras, video recorders, and other electronic equipment).
• Baggage Delay Insurance: “Reimburses you for essential purchases like toiletries and clothing for baggage delays over 6 hours by passenger carrier up to $100 a day for 5 days.
• Travel Accident Insurance: When you pay for your air, bus, train or cruise transportation with your card, you are eligible to receive accidental death or dismemberment coverage of up to $500,000

Purchase Protection

• Extended Warranty: “Extends the time period of U.S. manufacturer’s warranty by an additional year, on eligible warranties of three years or less.”
• Damage and Theft Protection: “Covers your new purchases for 120 days against damage or theft up to $500 per claim and $50,000 per account.”

DoorDash Food Delivery Benefits

DashPass Free Delivery: Activate your free DashPass membership by 12/31/24 in order to get 12 months of free delivery for DoorDash orders over $12.

Lyft Rideshare Benefits

5X Rewards: Use your Sapphire Preferred card with Lyft in order to earn 5 points total per dollar spent, which is worth the same as 5% cash back. That’s 3X points (3%) in addition to the 2X points (2%) you already earn on travel purchases.

10% Anniversary Points Boost

Each account anniversary, you’ll earn bonus points equal to 10% of your total purchases made the previous year. That means if you spend $25,000 on purchases, you’ll get 2,500 bonus points.

Through the Ultimate Rewards portal, you can redeem points for gift cards, merchandise, or experiences.  With this approach, you’ll usually get 1 cent per point value.  One exception is that Chase occasionally offers gift cards at a discount so you may be able to get better than 1 cent per point value during a gift card sale.

 

You can also use points to pay some merchants directly (Amazon.com, for example, or via Chase Pay).  Don’t do this.  These options offer very poor value. Further, they may compromise the security of your account (i.e. if someone hacks into your Amazon account, they might spend your Ultimate Rewards points — causing you a headache in getting your points reinstated).

Thankfully, it is very easy to keep Chase Ultimate Rewards points alive: simply keep the points in an open Ultimate Rewards account and they will not expire. Note that if you close an Ultimate Rewards card, you will lose any points associated with that card. You should first combine points to move points away from the card you intend to close and to another card that will remain open as per the sharing section above before canceling.

Once you are approved for a Chase card, you have three months to meet the required spend in order to get the signup bonus. Here are several ways to hit your minimum spending required.