CSR Upgrade?

[Bizambish]

Hey all, any current CSR members that want to share their experience and satisfaction? Also any thoughts on the rumored upcoming changes to the CSP and CSR. 

When I opened the CSP originally it was my intention to upgrade to the CSR some time after the first year but I'm hearing some mixed reviews of the CSR vs CSP for the respective annual fees vs benefits, especially if they do make some upgrades to the CSP as rumored next month. 

would love to hear any first hand experience. Thanks! 

[Citylights18]

You are free to upgrade CSP to CSR once you have it for a year, then you can upgrade and downgrade any time.

CSR is moving toward becoming a one-stop shop travel card with the changes. The 10x on hotels are supposed to be an alternative to using third party booking sites like Hotels.com or Priceline. Priority Pass of course is on the card and so is a AAA like towing service. 

If you are primarily buying hotels with a hotel loyalty card you won't really take advantage of the 10x on the CSR too often. If you are mainly transferring your points to a travel partner you won't get very much out of the 1.5 redemptions. If you are only flying but 1 time a year you won't get a lot out of priority pass. 

I guess a CFF/CSR combo could be viable for many people. You could use the CFF for dining, drugstores, 5x rotator and bills (which you can get at least 2x out of with paypal key) then place non-category spend onto the CSR plus all travel and transit.  Then you won't earn much in the way of hotel status if you do it that way. The towing service of the CSR is also not as good as a AAA membership. In fact if you have a AAA membership it qualifies you for discounts at many hotel brands.

I decided at some point to just keep the CSP and have a AAA membership over going with the CSR which is about the same price after the $300 dollar travel credit is factored in. I have yet to use the 1.25 point redemption feature of the CSP. I've done an airline transfer bonus to Southwest where point redemptions are higher (maybe 1.39 but haven't checked). 

[Bizambish]

Good perspective thank you. I do have Hilton gold status and priority pass through other cards and primarily book delta flights directly because of my miles and benefits there. I use the UR points to transfer to Hyatt or potentially S-W or international airlines, so I’m thinking that the upgrade right now isn’t going to be very beneficial for me.

[longtimelurker]

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@Bizambish wrote:
Good perspective thank you. I do have Hilton gold status and priority pass through other cards and primarily book delta flights directly because of my miles and benefits there. I use the UR points to transfer to Hyatt or potentially S-W or international airlines, so I’m thinking that the upgrade right now isn’t going to be very beneficial for me.

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Yes, I have often thought that there could be a case for issuers to increase the transfer rate on their highest level cards, e.g. so CSP transfers 1:1 whereas CSR does (say) 1:1.1  This would provide an additional motivation for those that transfer to upgrade the card.

   I guess Citi does/did this with transfers from free cards to a very restricted partner set getting less value than from the AF cards but that's more of a special case.