Chase United mileage plus to Sapphire - worth it?
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Anonymous
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I've been using united mileage plus for years and have earned & burned quite some miles over the years.
Recently heard about Chase sapphire which a lot of people say is one of the best card for travel. I am not a credit card enthusiast and I just did a brief comparison, it looks like that sapphire offers more flexibility, versus confined to United with the mileage plus card. I currently have about ~70k miles on my mileage plus but I think it can be transferred to sapphire, if I open one. If you have used both or the sapphire card, what do you think? |
Anonymous
You can't transfer United miles to Chase Ultimate Rewards points. It's the other way around- Chase UR transfers to a number of partners, including United. But it's a one way only transfer, and irreversible. That's why having a nice stash of those flexible points is nice- it gives you options for a trip depending on which partner has the best award options. But that of course involves more work/learning about how to maximize points values, search available flight awards, etc. It's a good amount of work and learning. But yes in general cards like the Sapphire Preferred/Reserve are a better value from a points EARNING perspective because they have bigger bonus categories, and since you can transfer them 1:1 to United and others, that's better. You can also pair with a Freedom Unlimited card, which earns 1.5x on everything, and those points can be pooled into your Sapphire pot, so in that case you can really start to maximize for each purchase by using the Freedom Unlimited for most purchases, and the Sapphire for the things like travel/dining which get bonuses (2x on Preferred, 3x on Reserve). If you don't check bags much, you probably aren't getting a ton of value out of the annual fee on your United card- you can always downgrade it to the no annual fee version and hold on to it. But if you check bags on United more than 3 times a year, you should hold onto the current Explorer card as that perk will be worth the $95 annual fee. |
Anonymous
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I got the Chase Sapphire to replace my Amx Platinum for an international trip. Sapphire has better international medical travel benefits.
Amx I moved down to a free card. It was so not worth the money for the Platinum AMX. Now after researching Cap One Venture X for us is a way better card. We travel a lot and used to use airport lounges they are so crowded now no reason to keep these cards with such high upfront costs. And we fly United alot. Hate Delta with a passion LOL Go to Nerd Wallet they have great comparrisons for all cards supper informative. |
Anonymous
The Sapphire card is generally better than the United Mileage card. I have both but really only got the Mileage card for the sign up bonus. Sapphire definitely is more flexible. Even just in relation to the United Mileage plan, it is better. The Chase Mileage card mostly just gives you 1 point for each $ spent. Sapphire Preferred gives you 2 points for each $ spent on travel and restaurants. So, $10,000 spent on those two categories would give you 10,000 United points through the Mileage card or 20,000 Sapphire points which can then be converted to 20,000 United points. |
Anonymous
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We've had the Sapphire for five years and love it. I'll see which travel portal - Chase Travel or United - is offering the better redemption value and pull the trigger accordingly. We have like 400,000 Chase points and it's awesome for moving into different portals, depending on who is offering the best rewards. We mostly use them on United and Hyatt hotels, occasionally on rental cars through the Chase travel portal. You can also transfer into a bunch of foreign airlines too - lots of people do this for good business class fares on transcontinental flights.
It's the ultimate flexibility. |
Anonymous
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I have used Chase Preferred for a long time and I like it because they got what I call the trifecta: Amazon Prime is Chase (Whole Foods is 5% back as well on it), Freedom (quarterly % rewards as well) and Reserve (travel). I like you can transfer points between cards for the latter 2.
Note that if you don't convert to the United (any airline) miles, if you book straight through Chase, you may miss important messages on your trip as I did once when I booked Preferred Econ unfortunately to CR last year - the planes changed so my original reservation seats changed so I ultimately lost my seats and couldn't rebook because seats sold out. I did see a junk mail email about it but after the fact. So if you can use your specific air miles I'd do the transfer but again, as PP said, you can only transfer one way so make sure you're ready to get the tix! Also, depending on the airline, sometimes the miles will be more 1:1 ratio. For us, because we hold a stack of UA air miles, we like to use the Chase points on our hotel stays. Barclays is another travel card that works really well FYI. You need to do a lot of travelling but if you do, it's pretty good. |