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CSR updates coming 10/5?

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TSlop
Valued Contributor

Re: CSR updates coming 10/5?


@addicted_to_credit wrote:

@coreysw12 wrote:

There's another thread going on where someone pointed out that Chase just slashed a lot of people's cash advance limits from 20% down to 5%. So there's definitely some risk management stuff going on internally right now, as @OmarGB9 suggested in that thread.


Huh, I had to check mine is still at 20%, I wouldn't care either way really that's something I just don't do nowadays. Honestly chase could take it to zero and I wouldn't be upset.


I don't know if mine changed, but my CFU is 20%, and my CSP and CF are both 5%.

Message 61 of 135
Loquat
Moderator Emeritus

Re: CSR updates coming 10/5?

If the CSR is to play in the same sandbox as the Amex Platinum then Chase is going to have to do better than DoorDash and Lyft especially since they increased the annual fee to $550.

 

Folks can justify the Amex Platinum even without big multiplier by way of lounge access, customer service, a much better array of card offerings, willingness to retain a customer by way of incentives to stay, Amex Offers, etc.

 

Chase brings very little to the table outside the card itself. Travel protection meant something until Amex started to offer it. There's little to no outsized value to be had with the Sapphire product. The multipliers are lagging even behind the likes of Citi and even the CapOne Venture offers 5x when booking through their portal.

 

In my opinion, since there's no outsized value to be had unless transferring to partners and even their selection of transfer partners aren't all that exciting.   There's an argument that could be made that one would do better with the Wells Fargo Propel over the CSP and possibly the CSR.  The Propel has no AF, cell phone protection, access to Amex Offers, and the Earn More Mall usually has 400+ offers on any given day.

 

The CSP/CSR is stale and if Chase thinks that customers are going to continue to hold the CSR just for the 50% uplift via their travel portal (which is usually more expensive than booking direct due to the inflated cost) they may be in for a rude awakening.  Shy of any sort of substantial change, my CSR is gone; it's not worth $550 to me in its current form. 

Message 62 of 135
Citylights18
Valued Contributor

Re: CSR updates coming 10/5?


@Loquat wrote:

If the CSR is to play in the same sandbox as the Amex Platinum then Chase is going to have to do better than DoorDash and Lyft especially since they increased the annual fee to $550.

 

Folks can justify the Amex Platinum even without big multiplier by way of lounge access, customer service, a much better array of card offerings, willingness to retain a customer by way of incentives to stay, Amex Offers, etc.

 

Chase brings very little to the table outside the card itself. Travel protection meant something until Amex started to offer it. There's little to no outsized value to be had with the Sapphire product. The multipliers are lagging even behind the likes of Citi and even the CapOne Venture offers 5x when booking through their portal.

 

In my opinion, since there's no outsized value to be had unless transferring to partners and even their selection of transfer partners aren't all that exciting.   There's an argument that could be made that one would do better with the Wells Fargo Propel over the CSP and possibly the CSR.  The Propel has no AF, cell phone protection, access to Amex Offers, and the Earn More Mall usually has 400+ offers on any given day.

 

The CSP/CSR is stale and if Chase thinks that customers are going to continue to hold the CSR just for the 50% uplift via their travel portal (which is usually more expensive than booking direct due to the inflated cost) they may be in for a rude awakening.  Shy of any sort of substantial change, my CSR is gone; it's not worth $550 to me in its current form. 


That is what I've said about the CSR for a long time, $550 is a big chunk of change. Yes you get most of that back with the travel credit but for some card holders that is half their monthly housing cost.

 

I do think SWA is a good travel partner mainly because you do not have to pay for bags with SWA and the flights are always discounted when you use points. Right now they have the 20% transfer bonus going on from Chase to SWA. Move 50,000, get 10,000 bonus which might pay for $150 dollars of flight.

 

I would be skeptical about moving points to United. My brother does nothing but collect miles on United and I'm trying to convince him to get a CSP at least where he'd have the option of paying himself back. Why would you want to run up a bunch of United miles when you can't fly I don't know.

 

I picked up the AMEX Green at the begining of the summer and scored the 45k welcome bonus. With my spend I've picked up another 15k MRs with reasonably light usage (cat spend only). In the same period of time I had the 50k WoH bonus and my spend earned another 31k. Got both cards a day apart. Kept my bills on the CFU, my door dash on CSP, my 5x cat spend on CFU the whole time. All my Chase cards combined I think I picked up 10k points over the summer compared to 15k on my AMEX Green where I didn't spend as much.

 

I'd get more value out of my AMEX Green if I also had a Delta card to go with it. I can also move points over to BA when they have the transfer bonuses and then put the flight on my Citi AA card. BA is a place where you can combine both your Chase and AMEX points into one big pool so to me the split ecosystem is justified.

Official travel point totals as of 12/26/23 (1,382,693 Total Points)
Chase Ultimate Rewards 661,525 | IHG One Rewards 144,443 | Hilton Honors 143,801 | AMEX Membership Rewards 102,729 | World of Hyatt 90,413 | Marriott Bonvoy 65,343 | Citi Thank You 62,712 | Wells Fargo Rewards 33,652 | Southwest Rapid Rewards 28,105 | United MileagePlus 13,316 | British Airways Avios 12,333 | Jet Blue TrueBlue 11,661 | NASA Platinum Rewards 1,883 | AA Advantage 1,744 | Navy Federal Rewards 792 | Delta Sky Miles 175 | Virgin Atlantic Virgin Points 100 | Lowes Business Rewards 6,992 ($69.92) | Amazon Rewards 475 ($4.75) | Discover CB 499 ($4.99)
Message 63 of 135
longtimelurker
Epic Contributor

Re: CSR updates coming 10/5?


@Loquat wrote:

  Shy of any sort of substantial change, my CSR is gone; it's not worth $550 to me in its current form. 


The Pay-yourself-back feature has made cancelling easier for me (probably not the intention).   I had about 200,000 UR, and my big concern about cancelling was that this would "lose" about $1000 in value (redeeming for cash at 1cpp vs 1.5cpp through portal if travel was actually happening!).  With PYB, I've managed to redeem all the points at 1.5cpp so now it's much easier to decide $550 isn't worth it.

I will use AR for any travel redemptions that I eventually need!

Message 64 of 135
ccquest
Established Contributor

Re: CSR updates coming 10/5?


@coreysw12 wrote:

There's another thread going on where someone pointed out that Chase just slashed a lot of people's cash advance limits from 20% down to 5%. So there's definitely some risk management stuff going on internally right now, as @OmarGB9 suggested in that thread.


My new (approved 9/24) CSP is at 5% for cash advance limit as well.

as of 1/1/23
Current Cards:
Message 65 of 135
iced
Valued Contributor

Re: CSR updates coming 10/5?


@TSlop wrote:

@addicted_to_credit wrote:

@coreysw12 wrote:

There's another thread going on where someone pointed out that Chase just slashed a lot of people's cash advance limits from 20% down to 5%. So there's definitely some risk management stuff going on internally right now, as @OmarGB9 suggested in that thread.


Huh, I had to check mine is still at 20%, I wouldn't care either way really that's something I just don't do nowadays. Honestly chase could take it to zero and I wouldn't be upset.


I don't know if mine changed, but my CFU is 20%, and my CSP and CF are both 5%.


Looks like everything across the board for me is 5% (CSR, CFU, MP), but I also never use it and had to dig around to find what my CA limit even was.

Message 66 of 135
iced
Valued Contributor

Re: CSR updates coming 10/5?


@Loquat wrote:

If the CSR is to play in the same sandbox as the Amex Platinum then Chase is going to have to do better than DoorDash and Lyft especially since they increased the annual fee to $550.

 

Folks can justify the Amex Platinum even without big multiplier by way of lounge access, customer service, a much better array of card offerings, willingness to retain a customer by way of incentives to stay, Amex Offers, etc.

 

Chase brings very little to the table outside the card itself. Travel protection meant something until Amex started to offer it. There's little to no outsized value to be had with the Sapphire product. The multipliers are lagging even behind the likes of Citi and even the CapOne Venture offers 5x when booking through their portal.

 

In my opinion, since there's no outsized value to be had unless transferring to partners and even their selection of transfer partners aren't all that exciting.   There's an argument that could be made that one would do better with the Wells Fargo Propel over the CSP and possibly the CSR.  The Propel has no AF, cell phone protection, access to Amex Offers, and the Earn More Mall usually has 400+ offers on any given day.

 

The CSP/CSR is stale and if Chase thinks that customers are going to continue to hold the CSR just for the 50% uplift via their travel portal (which is usually more expensive than booking direct due to the inflated cost) they may be in for a rude awakening.  Shy of any sort of substantial change, my CSR is gone; it's not worth $550 to me in its current form. 


I find it vastly easier to justify CSR's fee than I do the Platinum's because it's about the point accrual. Outside of airfare and the poor amextravel portal, earning more than 1x point is difficult on the Platinum and requires some effort/luck timing promotions with offers. Those of us who love the CSR don't see it as stale -- it's still the unequivocally best way to accrue boatloads of URs and thus miles. As long as it maintains that and a robust travel partner network, it will always be valuable.

 

PP is effectively the same between the two. Centurion lounge access is on the edge of requiring them to pay me to use. The SkyClub lounge access is a nice perk unique to the Platinum, but I don't know if it makes up the gap in point accrual.

 

If I could choose between 120,000 UR and no SkyClub or 80,000 MR with SkyClub each year for $550, I'm going to take the 120,000 UR. Yes, I hear the gold card crew chiming in to say to use it for dining, but then my fees go up, plus I can counter that with a CFU and now push my total UR spend even higher while still holding at $550.

 

 

Message 67 of 135
wasCB14
Super Contributor

Re: CSR updates coming 10/5?


@iced wrote:

@TSlop wrote:

@addicted_to_credit wrote:

@coreysw12 wrote:

There's another thread going on where someone pointed out that Chase just slashed a lot of people's cash advance limits from 20% down to 5%. So there's definitely some risk management stuff going on internally right now, as @OmarGB9 suggested in that thread.


Huh, I had to check mine is still at 20%, I wouldn't care either way really that's something I just don't do nowadays. Honestly chase could take it to zero and I wouldn't be upset.


I don't know if mine changed, but my CFU is 20%, and my CSP and CF are both 5%.


Looks like everything across the board for me is 5% (CSR, CFU, MP), but I also never use it and had to dig around to find what my CA limit even was.


Same, 5% across the board (CF, CFF, CFU, IHG49, Hyatt75). Never checked before now so can't say exactly when it changed.

Personal spend: Amex Gold, Amex Schwab Plat., BofA PR+CCR(x2), Costco
Business use: Amex Bus. Plat., BBP, Lowes Amex AU, CFU AU
Perks: Delta Plat., United Explorer, IHG49, Hyatt, "Old SPG"
Mostly SD: Freedom Flex, Freedom, Arrival
Upgrade/Downgrade games: ED, BCE
SUB chasing: AA Platinum Select
Message 68 of 135
coreysw12
Valued Contributor

Re: CSR updates coming 10/5?



@Citylights18 wrote:

I do think SWA is a good travel partner mainly because you do not have to pay for bags with SWA and the flights are always discounted when you use points. Right now they have the 20% transfer bonus going on from Chase to SWA. Move 50,000, get 10,000 bonus which might pay for $150 dollars of flight.

 

I would be skeptical about moving points to United. My brother does nothing but collect miles on United and I'm trying to convince him to get a CSP at least where he'd have the option of paying himself back. Why would you want to run up a bunch of United miles when you can't fly I don't know.

 



I agree with those points. Southwest is probably what I spend half of my UR points on, so it's a very valuable transfer partner to me, especially after I just moved 100k points over and got the 20% bonus. I almost never fly revenue flights with them, so I don't earn many SW points organically. I fly award flights on SW a few times a year, so it's great to have the transfer capability there.

 

United transfer is worthless to me, even as a dedicated United flier (I'm 67% of the way to million-miler status!). I simply don't need my credit cards to inflate my mileage plus balance, I get more than enough miles for that just from flying. So whatever UR points I don't send to SW, I spend in the travel portal.

 

I might be in the minority here, but I still get value from CSR and plan to keep it. $250 AF (I'm discounting the $300 travel reimbursement because I'll easily hit that every year within just a few days) is a small price to pay for the perks I receive and use. But I can certainly understand how that isn't the case for others.

 

I'm also in the minority in that I'm actually still traveling some (albeit far less than usual), having already done 2 round trips to Europe and 2 domestic trips since the covid lockdowns.

    Total Loan Balance: $43k / $65k


    Total SL: $78k

United 1K - 725,000 lifetime flight miles    |    Chase Status: 4/24
Message 69 of 135
iced
Valued Contributor

Re: CSR updates coming 10/5?


@coreysw12 wrote:




I agree with those points. Southwest is probably what I spend half of my UR points on, so it's a very valuable transfer partner to me, especially after I just moved 100k points over and got the 20% bonus. I almost never fly revenue flights with them, so I don't earn many SW points organically. I fly award flights on SW a few times a year, so it's great to have the transfer capability there.

 

United transfer is worthless to me, even as a dedicated United flier (I'm 67% of the way to million-miler status!). I simply don't need my credit cards to inflate my mileage plus balance, I get more than enough miles for that just from flying. So whatever UR points I don't send to SW, I spend in the travel portal.

 

I might be in the minority here, but I still get value from CSR and plan to keep it. $250 AF is a small price to pay for the perks I receive and use. But I can certainly understand how that isn't the case for others.

 

I'm also in the minority in that I'm actually still traveling some (albeit far less than usual), having already done 2 round trips to Europe and 2 domestic trips since the covid lockdowns.


United isn't doing itself any favors to compete with Delta, but it's still doing better than lolAmerican and SW isn't even in the discussion. The question I'm walking away with here is why would someone who's flying with enough frequency to almost certainly be at least MP Gold (and well on their way to lifetime Gold) ever choose to board a SW aircraft unless the routing necessitates it? I'd be stuffing those extra UR points back into UA and/or throwing them at *A partners long before I'd ever waste them on domestic Mod cut - not here.  tickets with SW.

Message 70 of 135
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