topic Re: Amex and Chase Travel Portals in Credit Cards

Amex and Chase Travel Portals

8Hunnid — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 21:40:37 GMT

I'm looking to get the Gold card and/or CSP. I checked both of their portals for a flight coming up. The only airlines shown on either was AA, United and Delta. Do they really only show those, or is that all I'm shown since I don't have any of their travel cards yet?

Re: Amex and Chase Travel Portals

K-in-Boston — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 21:47:32 GMT

It will depend on where you are flying from and to. The travel portals are essentially all the same, and most use Expedia as their back-end. Some low cost airlines, most notably Southwest, do not allow their prices to be aggregated on OTAs (online travel agencies) - so you will not find those fares in any searches.

Re: Amex and Chase Travel Portals

K-in-Boston — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 21:52:31 GMT

Here's an example. I just threw random dates for BOS-LAX-BOS in and fares for Delta, Alaska, American, JetBlue, and United show in Amex.

Re: Amex and Chase Travel Portals

8Hunnid — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 21:58:08 GMT

I was looking for Southwest. That explains it. Thanx. The Gold is worth it without the travel bonus, the CSP I'm not sure.

Re: Amex and Chase Travel Portals

CaptJOB — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 22:10:40 GMT

My friend and I just booked identical tickets to Japan for March next year. His CSP ticket was 65,000 points through the Chase Portal and mine was 80,000 through the AmEx portal. Depending on your patience and flexibility I would say the cards can be equally valuable(especially if the Gold credits are difficult for you to use).

Re: Amex and Chase Travel Portals

K-in-Boston — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 22:13:20 GMT

@8Hunnid wrote:
I was looking for Southwest. That explains it. Thanx. The Gold is worth it without the travel bonus, the CSP I'm not sure.

You can still book Southwest, you just need to call Amex or Chase to do so but note that they sometimes won't be able to see all Wanna Get Away fares. For Chase, you will likely be better off actually transferring your points to Southwest to book an award flight unless you have the CSR and are chasing status and/or companion pass with Southwest.

With the very generous SUB, there aren't really any cases where CSP isn't "worth it," though. CSR is usually a better option for those that are considering it if they can get past the annual fee sticker shock.

Re: Amex and Chase Travel Portals

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 22:13:57 GMT

@8Hunnid wrote:
I was looking for Southwest. That explains it. Thanx. The Gold is worth it without the travel bonus, the CSP I'm not sure.

With Chase SW won't show up in the portal, but you can call Chase travel about booking SW as it is one of the Chase card partners.

Re: Amex and Chase Travel Portals

K-in-Boston — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 22:16:13 GMT

@CaptJOB wrote:
My friend and I just booked identical tickets to Japan for March next year. His CSP ticket was 65,000 points through the Chase Portal and mine was 80,000 through the AmEx portal. Depending on your patience and flexibility I would say the cards can be equally valuable(especially if the Gold credits are difficult for you to use).

Congrats on your trip to Japan! One thing always important to note for comparisons is that CSP has a 25% bonus in the travel portal and CSR has a 50% bonus. The cash price of both tickets would have been identical between Chase and Amex in this case.

Re: Amex and Chase Travel Portals

CaptJOB — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 22:36:49 GMT

Thank you! I just personally upgraded my CSP when it passed a year and am looking forward to redeeming for United flights for likely cheaper than with MileagePlus now that they switched to dynamic pricing.

Re: Amex and Chase Travel Portals

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 23:43:47 GMT

@CaptJOB wrote:
My friend and I just booked identical tickets to Japan for March next year. His CSP ticket was 65,000 points through the Chase Portal and mine was 80,000 through the AmEx portal. Depending on your patience and flexibility I would say the cards can be equally valuable(especially if the Gold credits are difficult for you to use).

It may be worth checking, in the future, if transfering points will be cheaper. Delta runs decent asian award flight for 53-60k miles.

For OP, check to see if transferring UR points to SW and book award flight on southwest.com would be cheaper than booking through UR portal. 1.25cpp is not a really great value for those points.

Re: Amex and Chase Travel Portals

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 23:52:39 GMT

@CaptJOB wrote:
My friend and I just booked identical tickets to Japan for March next year. His CSP ticket was 65,000 points through the Chase Portal and mine was 80,000 through the AmEx portal. Depending on your patience and flexibility I would say the cards can be equally valuable(especially if the Gold credits are difficult for you to use).

Was this economy?

Re: Amex and Chase Travel Portals

CaptJOB — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 00:01:22 GMT

Yeah it was economy but the dates were not flexible as these two tickets were actually for him and his girlfriend(I'm flying out of LAX on the same day but on ANA F with my girlfriend). Since I was dealing with three other people it wasn't worth it to try and explain that we should look at a bunch of FF programs to try and find cheaper tickets. One of the biggest benefits of transferable currency is that DW isn't always interested in watching me search for award availability on different partners for hours on end. This makes it simple.