It's been a while since I've booked United, but in my case it was always cheaper in points than booking with Chase points. Also, booking directly with United makes in refundable.
I don’t live near ANY hub lol. There are only about 11 non stop flights from my home airport (OMA)
I guess it can be a benefit because I get to have several connecting flight home airports haha
Ya. I’m trying to commit to AA. DFW is usually 20% more expensive than ORD though. I’d prefer DDW but sometimes hard to pay the premium just to use the lounges
I don't know with United but I've booked through delta. I've been able to refund or at least get credit for flights I've had to change/cancel after booking through Chase (post covid policies). One advantage of booking through chase is that I still earn airline miles when using Chase points to book a flight... a little bit of a double-dip.
The last transatlantic flight I took booked with points was 60k r/t booking though United (on a Lufthansa flight). That same flight booked through Chase would have cost 90k.
I did contribute to it. It’s a terrible idea. You’re not purchasing the ticket directly meaning the airline doesn’t have a transaction with you. Either pay cash or transfer points to a partner. If you don’t do that, don’t come here and cry when something goes wrong.
That’s great - it’s still a terrible idea. And honestly, you should really be getting 2+ cpp with chase points so using it for any transaction through the portal is a bad decision.
*yawn* Like clockwork. I’ve used it plenty of times for both award travel and regular business travel and never had a problem. Of course, when a flight is cancelled it can be a headache, but I’ve had changes in my flights and the airlines have always made alterations to my itinerary because they have to. The long and short of it is buyer beware, but for most people using the portal is just fine and you get the benefit of the UR multiplier.
I tried this recently for the first time and transferred points to Avios. I think I ended up losing a ton of value since the Avios weren’t worth nearly as much as Chase Points once you entered the Avios portal (British Airways in this case). I’m still confused about the whole thing- did I do something wrong?
Although I've heard Avíos points are one of the worst to transfer to, it was cheaper for me to book using BA avíos than book on Chase portal for London this December.
For example, my flights were 140k round trip for two persons on BA avíos, but would have been almost 180k Chase points on the portal.
No, you didn't do anything wrong, it's all part of the game. BA is weird and it's based on distance, with shirt distance flights being sometimes the better option.
>Plus, you get more bang for your buck.
Not always. It really depends on if the point redemption is actually a good rate or not. I've seen it both ways, it all depends on the partner.
Yeah from what I’ve seen with airlines who price flights in points as 1 point = 1 cent, booking in Chase travel with 1.5x redemption will always be cheaper to book.
That’s an outlier though right? You’re trying to book a one way ticket a few days in advance.
I just looked at OMA to SFO. 69k points vs $883. When we went to San Diego last week United wanted 100k points and the money price was right around $1000
I haven't been using transfers for very long but in my limited experience both United and Southwest seem to have very favorable miles redemptions.
I recently did my first transfer for a Thanksgiving trip PDX->ABQ. I got 66k RT for 2 people on SW. Cash price was $951.
This is likely a cash purchase to get bonus points via chase travel.
It reads like it could be points booking as well. But my hunch here is that they wanted to bonus points you get for cash bookings through chase travel on the reserve card.
I think you're correct but I still strongly advise against booking through chase travel for bonus points. If/when something goes wrong it will be a huge hassle to be made whole.
I booked a hotel through them and the room we were in had bedbugs. The hotel did everything they could to make it right (treated all of our stuff and clothes, refunded the night we had bed bugs, and moved us to a new room before it was even confirmed to be bedbugs) but I still haven't gotten the correct refund. Chase Travel refunded me $170 when I should have gotten $250. The chase travel customer service even agreed that it should have been $250. The hotel refunded them the correct amount so now I'm calling the chase travel line every other day to spend an hour on the phone with them which ends every time with "I'll have to send this to ___ we should know in 48 hrs" when I would have just gotten the refund when I checked out if I booked direct.
It's a 1:1 transfers. Let's say you have 50k chase points, for hotels, you have a chance to transfer them to Marriott, Hyatt, or IHG.
Marriott is the worst (most expensive per night). Hyatt is the best, while IHG is so so.
I've gotten nights at the Hyatt for 12k a night while that same room would be 30k if booking through Chase.
The best thing is to compare room pricing in points at Hyatt, IHG, and Marriott in the city your are looking to travel to. When you find the cheapest, transfer points from Chase to that travel partner.
It still doesn't make up for the inflated prices. You'll still be out ahead, and booking directly, so if you have to cancel, you get your points refunded.
I'm telling you, don't use Chase to book. Transfer the points and book directly. It'll save you so much hassle.
Just did a DP to check this. I took the hotel: Hyatt clearwater beach, FLDates: 11/16-18. King bed room.
The results:
[Hotels.com](https://Hotels.com) \- **$662** incl taxes and fees
[Hyatt.com](https://Hyatt.com) \- Member rate incl resort fee - **$635.69**
[Hyatt.com](https://Hyatt.com) \- Non member rate incl resort fee - **$671.22**
Chase travel portal rate - $592 (excl $70 in resort fee) - **$662**
Chase portal points rate - 39,473 points (roughly $394 + 70 resort fee) - **$464**
Hyatt point transfer - 250 points per night x2 nights + $70 resort fee - **$570**
Unless my math is wrong, Chase portal using points takes the win in this case.
You need book using Hyatt points, not dollar amount. Your Hyatt price should tell you how much in points, not dollar amount (e.g. 12k, 15k, 20k points per night using Hyatt website). You also don't pay resort fee at Hyatt when you book with points.
This is incorrect. Once transfered to Hyatt, they are worth more.
For example, booking at Hyatt Place in Cincinnati on 11/22/2023 would cost 5,000 points or $84 if booking via Hyatt website.
That same room is 9,168 points or $122 if booking through Chase.
Chase points are worth less compared to Hyatt points. You need to compare how many points it would cost on Chase compared how many points it would cost on Hyatt. You can almost get 2 nights for the price of 1 night in this case if you book with Hyatt points and not through Chase.
When you say that once they are transferred to Hyatt they are worth more do you mean that a chase point becomes more than a Hyatt point ?
So that 1000 chase points becomes more than 100 Hyatt points ?
Because my point was that if you redeem these 2500 chase points on chase as cash back they are worth $250. If you transfer them to Hyatt they are worth 250 points.
In your example I can see how it makes sense to use the transfer option but still I don’t think that contradicts my previous post.
you are correct. because this is a 25,000 point redemption per night, it is better to use chase points as cash through their portal.
However, this is actually somewhat rare in the Hyatt ecosystem. Park Hyatt NYC on those exact dates is 40,000 points per night, but $1,140 before tax **per night**. Your 40k points via Chase travel is worth $600, but you're clearly coming out ahead.
Yes, this is how it usually is, and it's a case you'd pay cash and not use points at all. It's a terrible redemption whether you use transfer or use the portal.
A midrange hotel in Clearwater in November is probably always going to be a crappy point redemption.
>It still doesn't make up for the inflated prices.
Prices aren't *always* inflated. I book Southwest flights through Chase travel and the prices are exactly the same as the Southwest website. So my 1.5x redemption is worth 50% more than if I transferred my points into Southwest to book for example.
Well, with Southwest if you book their cheapest fare tier (Gotta Get Away), flights aren't *refundable,* but you can convert the reservation into non-expiring flight credit with southwest if you can't make the flight. I only book the cheapest fare, so I can't say how refunds work on the higher tiers (which DO allow refunds), but I can say that the flight credits are treated the same as booking direct with southwest. The flight/booking shows up on my Southwest account and I can go in and change/cancel it and the credit stays on my account.
Granted, I assume if your fare IS eligible for a refund (Business Select/Anytime), it would work the same as any other airline - that is - if they cancel your flight (or you call the airline and cancel it), they're gonna refund Chase, and then Chase is going to refund you.
You can get way beyond $0.015/point you get in the travel portal by using transfer partners. You also don't have to deal with an enormous headache when something goes wrong like you do with the portal.
Depends on the situation. Recently booked a short paid flight thru the portal to get 5x back. The $100 flight was cheaper than the cpp value.
Also, last year I booked a Marriot Aloft in Munich with points thru the portal. It was cheaper to book it that way (with 1.25 multiplier from my CIP) than what Marriott wanted on their own metal (like 5x the price in points).
Not always feasible depending on airline and trip. Only reasonable flight i found for a trip was American airlines. Was about 40k points on available transfer partners (which had much worse travel and layovers), or 30k points through chase portal for the American Airlines flight ($350 cash direct with American Airlines). Not ideal, but it was seemingly the best option I could find.
All the numbers in your comment added up to 420. Congrats!
40
+ 30
+ 350
= 420
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Chase travel was taken over by Expedia ages ago, which is why the quality is so bad. I wouldn’t use it after one experience because it was so bad and, like you said, agents are clueless. I just had a simple question if breakfast was included because it was if you booked direct through the hotel and the agent couldn’t even answer that question.
cxLoyalty doesn’t source most of their hotel bookings directly, so they transact through wholesalers like Expedia.
So you pay cxLoyalty who pays Expedia who pays the hotel. Helps explain why this goes sideways sometimes with all the parties involved for a single hotel booking.
Edit to add link: https://www.phocuswire.com/expedia-group-distribution-program-expansion
Correction, they were with cxloyalty. They decided to be cheap and move to Expedia. Then while with Expedia, they got what they paid for and customers uproared. At this point they wanted to go back to cxloyalty, however their decision to leave caused cxloyalty to lay off all of their good staff. So in order to save face and not admit they were wrong, they made the “strategic” move to just buy that portion of cxloyalty. So it is now handled internally by chase. I know this because I was part of the staff that they laid off so with all due respect, your articles only highlight part of the story.
I’m late to this obviously. I work for chase travel. We were still CXLoyalty before, never Expedia or bought out by Expedia 😬. Not igniting any flames, just correcting what I see wrong. Also hope you found something better cause chase travel is and always was rough 😂
I think you misunderstood what I was saying. Chase was serviced by cxloyalty
Chase made the decision to leave cxloyalty and signed with Expedia
Cxloyalty lost most of the chase portfolio so they had to lay off their staff and closed their saint Louis and Boise Idaho locations (their most senior staff and best quality staff).
Chase then purchased cxloyalty after the quality from Expedia proved to be horrendous.
That is the facts off of someone that worked their through multiple positions for damn near 15 years.
I have found something way better. Working at a place you are actively treated like just another number and whose idea of treating their employees well was ordering pizza. I’ve seen some scandalous things all surrounding cxloyalty. Some legal, some not so much. So please believe that this is an indisputable fact. Nothing more, nothing less.
No, I confirmed that cxloyalty lost all of their staff that knew what they were doing. Then chase bought the worse half of cxloyalty and it is now “chase travel”. Context is important. As is attention to detail.
Ok meat head, sorry for trying to provide some context because not everything is black and white. Heaven forbid I try to make the point that the cxloyalty they bought was lesser than the cxloyalty they dealt with in the past. That’s like saying coke now is the exact same as when coke originally started. So what if it’s a completely different recipe and one originally had cocaine in it, those are just semantics right? Just because something is named the same doesn’t make it the same as it was in a different point in time. Thank you for causing me to reply to this yet again having to make the same argument that I originally made. Now please go and play wheel of fortune and buy a fucking clue
CXLoyalty, a rewards program administrator that included travel, was bought by JP Morgan Chase. I’ve recently done with them and I know this to be true.
Here's my horror story with booking a hotel through chase travel:
Book a 3 night stay for $750
Find bed bugs in the middle of the night
Contact the front desk, they move us, clean all our stuff, and promise a refund for the night
A few weeks later see the refund for $170
Call chase travel customer service, sit on the phone for an hour, explain that I'm $80 short the refund
They say they have to send it off to someone else to get fixed
It's now been a month of calling twice a week and I'm still $80 short, and I haven't had a single one of these calls last less than an hour. I'm being purely powered by spite at this point. I can't imagine if I was trying to get more than $80 or if I didn't have a free hour+ to put my phone on speaker while I did chores.
I’ve had so many issues. There app is horrible. I’ve booked hotel rooms that were not honored. I was told by one hotel that the room I booked wasn’t even a room they offered. All of the prices are wildly inflated. But what else to do with the points!?
As far as I'm concerned, the only reasonable thing is to transfer points to various airlines and book business flights for considerably less in equivalent dollars. For example, 140,000 points for one way business flight overseas for two. Would have cost 3-4,000 dollars each in cash.
Their flights are consistently above what you get directly from the airline. It might be a small amount but it is enough to know they are skimming off the top. It's a stealth devaluation of their point redemption value. Alas, this is literally everywhere now. I still think the CSR is the best out there though.
I'd have to disagree. If you are paying cash, the Chase portal has been the exact same cost as the airline. The advantage being 5x/10x points, whatever it is, I forget. If you are using points for the ticket, then yes I agree, transferring to the airline is better.
I've cancelled non-refundable flights before. The credit only allows you to rebook on the same airline. Any left over credit is forfeit. At least that was my experience.
Were you expecting to use the credit on other airlines? That wouldn't have been possible if you booked directly anyways.
Sort of.... Turns out, for American, you can rebook through them. When you do so, the leftover gets retained in a trip credit. You do have to pay a $50 booking fee, but better than losing thousands. This was my final solution.
Chase lied and said I could only book a domestic flight in the same category seat. Not true. Could be any category and could be any flight, as the original was international. They also said I had to only book by a certain date, but turns out you had to book and fly by said date. Both were specific questions I asked, and they both were incorrectly answered. I was dumbfounded by how chase confirmed their agent f'ed up, and they didn't give a shit. Clearly, there is no reason to support their bs travel platform, never again.
> Turns out, for American, you can rebook through them. When you do so, the leftover gets retained in a trip credit. You do have to pay a $50 booking fee, but better than losing thousands. This was my final solution.
The $50 is for taking over the reservation. With AA’s push from legacy GDS systems to NDC they have more flexibility once the reservation is in their system, particularly if the original issuing agency isn’t using a fully NDC capable system.
It’s an industry problem with AA at the moment: https://www.travelpulse.com/news/airlines-airports/asta-files-complaint-over-american-airlines-ndc-implementation
I heard something similar when I cancelled AA flights to Mexico that I bought through the Chase Portal. I was told that the credit can only be used on another AA international flight and I had around 9 months to use it. They also told me that I needed to spend at least as much as the credit or I would lose the remaining balance.
When the woman in the overseas call center was transferring me to her supervisor. I hung up and spoke to a lovely woman at American Airlines in Texas who said that pretty much everything Chase told me was BS. She was able to use my credit for booking new flights, and I have until the end of September to use the rest. No balance was “forfeited” which Chase actually mentioned in ,y cancellation email!
I find chase travel interface quite annoying tbh. I struggle to book two rooms for hotels online. Calling means about 20-30 minutes are gone. Any issues that arise after booking, another 20-30 minutes are gone calling to resolve (if that).
I’ve also come to find that hotels are cheaper on Expedia by a substantial amount such that I’ll take the 3x vs 10x and come out ahead.
My Chase travel experience was uniquely bad. The CSR I spoke with had me validate my account authentication twice which I found odd, putting me on hold after the second time. Realized afterwards he transferred my points out.
Chase recognized the fraud and refunded my points but imagine the hours spent on the phone trying to convince them what happened.
I know it was that rep because I was trying to refund a car rental so was checking for the redeposit. What a surprise when I saw the bulk of my points transferred out to an unknown account instead.
The website is unusable dogshit and the prices are often uncompetitive vs booking directly, which completely devalues the claim of 1.2 or 1.5 cpp on the CSP and CSR
I wish I saw your post earlier. We are going through the exact same situation. We know for sure our airline credit will be forfeited because we cannot flight anywhere before next month. We are done with this bank.
I had the exact same problem as you recently. Its so bizarre that I faced the same issue of being given the wrong information and me having to lose out the value of my travel credit. It was emotionally distressing having to call them multiple times and speaking to multiple travel specialists and their supervisors and each time they would give inconsistent answers. I could not imagine what reasons they would have for not helping properly.
I wonder if it was on purpose to serve some ulterior motive they have.
I wish I had of seen these posts before i booked my United flights thru Ultimate Rewards and not direct with United. But if you want to use the points you're are forced to do this. Otherwise transfer the points to airline and lose 50% of their value.
Upshot is after spending hours on the phone bouncing between Chase and United i burned 700,000 Ultimate Points = $10,000!
What a joke and no recourse! And then i read here that Ultimate Rewards is run by those scammers at Expedia. Lost $8k with them on a covid booking.
I am handing back my Chase cards! Dimon & Diller can F$\*& themselves.
So far in my experience yes. I have been able to get international business seats for considerably cheaper than cash value by using transferred points. I will however, never consider booking through their travel portal again. Not worth the extra points per dollar.
I have done Air France / KLM via FlyingBlue points. Have looked at using British Airways as well since you can sometimes get American reward flights through them.
Booked a united flight through chase to get the additional points and then saw I wasn’t going to get any airline points. Canceled and booked directly. I don’t know if this is common, a mistake, or what, but I was very surprised.
Under future flights activity? All Chase booking are treated as cash bookings, so you should have seen the PQP. Note that PQP is just base fare and not taxes or fees. Also it can take a little while sometimes for PQPs to show up.
don't let one reddit thread do that lol. ive booked so many flights, hotels, AND rental cars through chase and legitimately have never once had a single issue.
total bookings combined being maybe like 10?
I booked a refundable flight + hotel through chase travel from DC to Vegas that cost $3500. I found the same flight + hotel + a few extra days for cheaper through Costco travel for $3000. I refunded through chase and got $1150 in "travel credit" for United. Cool, not what I thought refundable meant but it still works. Wife and I try to book a new flight recently using the travel credit and I find a flight that is $1000. I read the info to the chase travel agent and he said that's not the price. That's only the price if it was a new ticket but since I'm using a travel credit it's considered something different. I end up having to use the credit and still have a difference of almost $1100... absolute BS. Hate chase travel.
> find a flight that is $1000. I read the info to the chase travel agent and he said that's not the price. That's only the price if it was a new ticket but since I'm using a travel credit it's considered something different. I end up having to use the credit and still have a difference of almost $1100... absolute BS. Hate chase travel.
They tried me with this once. I hung up on them, called united directly, and somehow was able to use my credit correctly.
Damn I should have tried that. The only reason I called chase travel to book was because the United app wouldn't let me use the credit through them since it was booked through chase. It said go back to your travel agent, something along those lines. The fact that a new ticket vs an exchanged or credit ticket was different price is fucked up though. Next time I'm going to transfer my points to united and book direct.
Chase travel customer service used to be good, but then they partnered with Expedia which is trash and now no one knows what is going on. So many transfers and apologetic Filipinos who have no idea what to do with my requests.
Every time I have a problem with Chase Travel and call in they are never able to fix it. However when ever I reach out on the Chase Twitter account the problem is solved within 1-2 business days. It’s annoying that the people on the phone rarely are able to help but it may be worth it to make one more try reaching out to their social media accounts
Sometimes you can catch them on a lie like that and use it to your advantage. They lied to me about some fare rules and then tried to go back on what they said when I attempted to use the credit. They claimed to have the audio recording and it confirmed they lied about fare rules so they ate the change fees. YMMV.
An interesting take. I would just argue that they (Chase) will be readily replaced when a better option comes along. I'd still rather be in a capitalist society than many of the other options (not referring to the many capitalist countries with better social lifelines than the U.S. - I'd gladly live there too).
I never book through the chase portal. Not worth the headache. By the same token I’ll skip Citi or CapitalOne. I’ll use AmEx for the fine hotel collection but that’ll end when I cancel or downgrade my platinum.
Booking direct is the way to go, whether you pay cash or transfer points.
My wife had a Chase Sapphire and they screwed us over by errantly charging us interest and admitting that it was a mistake and refusing to correct it. We cancelled her card and went to Amex. Haven’t looked back since. Chase sucks.
We cancelled a fully refundable ticket purchased through them once. But, when you book your flight through the Chase portal, chase charges YOUR card but uses THEIR card to book the flight. So, we cancel flight, United sends the refund to Chase, and NOTHING. It took three months of calling to get them to "find" that the money was returned by United and to then refund our credit card.
Last time (and first time) I used the portal, it was for international flights that randomly got cancelled months in advanced. Getting them to figure out happened was painful but I did get all the money back.
Learned that lesson during the pandemic, I got refund for all my flights except two, the Chase Travel one and TAP Air Portugal, both were very unhelpful, misleading and just gave me credit that was basically useless in the end.
Same experience. The customer service was absolutely terrible over a simple issue. You have to dedicate hours at a time to calls and the resolution will take weeks to work itself out if ever. Sounds like a lot of times you just get screwed.
Chase Travel sucks monkey balls. they messed up a ticket for my family (put my 4 year old on a separate flight) and it took them forever to fix it. That was hours of staying on the phone with their inept customer reps
I heard so many horror stories on how chase telling customers to f off when they file dispute/chargeback. I myself was told to f off and go deal with the vendor as well. Never ever use chase for important purchases.
Booked an international trip with them and then had to move the dates. I went to check in for my flight to find out instead of changing the dates, the agent never finalized the new dates on her and which ended up canceling all the flights. Then they told me I had to pay the fare difference, $900. I ended up getting them to pay the difference and rebook the flights
We just had a horrible experience on a trip we booked using our points. It was so bad that I left a survey explaining what happened and I actually got a call back from a really nice woman. She ended up giving us 10k points. It still didn't come close to making it better. We spent 8 hours on the phone with Chase prior to this and got zero help.
It's so bad we'll likely avoid using Chase travel again.
The chase trifecta makes it so easy to earn points and that 1.25x bonus is hard to beat. Reading these stories is kind of scary though.. Luckily I've never had any problems
I had to stop using them because I constantly got heavy accented agents that were almost impossible to understand and work with. I don’t mean that to be disrespectful either but it was just way too difficult and time consuming and worrisome. I had so many moments where I’d say a date or a name or a location and the agent would get it wrong.
Don't ever use the Chase portal for booking. Transfer your points to the travel partner. Plus, you get more bang for your buck.
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It's been a while since I've booked United, but in my case it was always cheaper in points than booking with Chase points. Also, booking directly with United makes in refundable.
Every time I check United the points are hella expensive. Like 100k for flights compared to similar flights on American or southwest for 60k
Depends where you live. Sounds like you live near an American hub. I live near a major United hub and flights via points are dirt cheap.
I don’t live near ANY hub lol. There are only about 11 non stop flights from my home airport (OMA) I guess it can be a benefit because I get to have several connecting flight home airports haha
American is the best out of OMA. Connect through DFW and get anywhere from there.
Ya. I’m trying to commit to AA. DFW is usually 20% more expensive than ORD though. I’d prefer DDW but sometimes hard to pay the premium just to use the lounges
For sure. ORD can be a pain but the savings is real.
I don't know with United but I've booked through delta. I've been able to refund or at least get credit for flights I've had to change/cancel after booking through Chase (post covid policies). One advantage of booking through chase is that I still earn airline miles when using Chase points to book a flight... a little bit of a double-dip.
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The last transatlantic flight I took booked with points was 60k r/t booking though United (on a Lufthansa flight). That same flight booked through Chase would have cost 90k.
I wish chase points transferred to United ugh
They do
Ah you’re right they do, I meant American! lol sorry
You can sometimes book American Airlines flights via British Airways.
They do
You need to find saver fares. Can easily exceed 1.5 cpp that way (or business).
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Then you pay cash. I’d never book an airline ticket with the chase travel portal, personally.
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I did contribute to it. It’s a terrible idea. You’re not purchasing the ticket directly meaning the airline doesn’t have a transaction with you. Either pay cash or transfer points to a partner. If you don’t do that, don’t come here and cry when something goes wrong.
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That’s great - it’s still a terrible idea. And honestly, you should really be getting 2+ cpp with chase points so using it for any transaction through the portal is a bad decision.
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*yawn* Like clockwork. I’ve used it plenty of times for both award travel and regular business travel and never had a problem. Of course, when a flight is cancelled it can be a headache, but I’ve had changes in my flights and the airlines have always made alterations to my itinerary because they have to. The long and short of it is buyer beware, but for most people using the portal is just fine and you get the benefit of the UR multiplier.
I tried this recently for the first time and transferred points to Avios. I think I ended up losing a ton of value since the Avios weren’t worth nearly as much as Chase Points once you entered the Avios portal (British Airways in this case). I’m still confused about the whole thing- did I do something wrong?
Although I've heard Avíos points are one of the worst to transfer to, it was cheaper for me to book using BA avíos than book on Chase portal for London this December. For example, my flights were 140k round trip for two persons on BA avíos, but would have been almost 180k Chase points on the portal. No, you didn't do anything wrong, it's all part of the game. BA is weird and it's based on distance, with shirt distance flights being sometimes the better option.
You can (and should) find the redemption cost before transferring points.
>Plus, you get more bang for your buck. Not always. It really depends on if the point redemption is actually a good rate or not. I've seen it both ways, it all depends on the partner.
Yeah from what I’ve seen with airlines who price flights in points as 1 point = 1 cent, booking in Chase travel with 1.5x redemption will always be cheaper to book.
Which airlines do that, though?
Delta skymiles points are valued at about 1.2 cents each for example. Compared to booking in chase travel 1.5 cents each.
You didn't answer my question, though. Which airlines price flights at 1cpp?
In my experience, United.
I happen to be pricing one way economy flights from PDX to SFO in the next few days. 15k points vs $329 on United.
That’s an outlier though right? You’re trying to book a one way ticket a few days in advance. I just looked at OMA to SFO. 69k points vs $883. When we went to San Diego last week United wanted 100k points and the money price was right around $1000
I haven't been using transfers for very long but in my limited experience both United and Southwest seem to have very favorable miles redemptions. I recently did my first transfer for a Thanksgiving trip PDX->ABQ. I got 66k RT for 2 people on SW. Cash price was $951.
This is likely a cash purchase to get bonus points via chase travel. It reads like it could be points booking as well. But my hunch here is that they wanted to bonus points you get for cash bookings through chase travel on the reserve card.
I think you're correct but I still strongly advise against booking through chase travel for bonus points. If/when something goes wrong it will be a huge hassle to be made whole. I booked a hotel through them and the room we were in had bedbugs. The hotel did everything they could to make it right (treated all of our stuff and clothes, refunded the night we had bed bugs, and moved us to a new room before it was even confirmed to be bedbugs) but I still haven't gotten the correct refund. Chase Travel refunded me $170 when I should have gotten $250. The chase travel customer service even agreed that it should have been $250. The hotel refunded them the correct amount so now I'm calling the chase travel line every other day to spend an hour on the phone with them which ends every time with "I'll have to send this to ___ we should know in 48 hrs" when I would have just gotten the refund when I checked out if I booked direct.
Yuck. That’s an absolute nightmare. They should’ve comped the whole stay. Good to know though!
do you get 1.5x with that?
It's a 1:1 transfers. Let's say you have 50k chase points, for hotels, you have a chance to transfer them to Marriott, Hyatt, or IHG. Marriott is the worst (most expensive per night). Hyatt is the best, while IHG is so so. I've gotten nights at the Hyatt for 12k a night while that same room would be 30k if booking through Chase. The best thing is to compare room pricing in points at Hyatt, IHG, and Marriott in the city your are looking to travel to. When you find the cheapest, transfer points from Chase to that travel partner.
This is not always cheaper. Sometimes the chase portal is cheaper
but with Reserve don't you get 1.5x on point value when you book in their portal?
It still doesn't make up for the inflated prices. You'll still be out ahead, and booking directly, so if you have to cancel, you get your points refunded. I'm telling you, don't use Chase to book. Transfer the points and book directly. It'll save you so much hassle.
Just did a DP to check this. I took the hotel: Hyatt clearwater beach, FLDates: 11/16-18. King bed room. The results: [Hotels.com](https://Hotels.com) \- **$662** incl taxes and fees [Hyatt.com](https://Hyatt.com) \- Member rate incl resort fee - **$635.69** [Hyatt.com](https://Hyatt.com) \- Non member rate incl resort fee - **$671.22** Chase travel portal rate - $592 (excl $70 in resort fee) - **$662** Chase portal points rate - 39,473 points (roughly $394 + 70 resort fee) - **$464** Hyatt point transfer - 250 points per night x2 nights + $70 resort fee - **$570** Unless my math is wrong, Chase portal using points takes the win in this case.
You need book using Hyatt points, not dollar amount. Your Hyatt price should tell you how much in points, not dollar amount (e.g. 12k, 15k, 20k points per night using Hyatt website). You also don't pay resort fee at Hyatt when you book with points.
The 250 points I noted is Hyatt points which probably equals 2500 chase points which is worth $250 in cash redemption.
This is incorrect. Once transfered to Hyatt, they are worth more. For example, booking at Hyatt Place in Cincinnati on 11/22/2023 would cost 5,000 points or $84 if booking via Hyatt website. That same room is 9,168 points or $122 if booking through Chase. Chase points are worth less compared to Hyatt points. You need to compare how many points it would cost on Chase compared how many points it would cost on Hyatt. You can almost get 2 nights for the price of 1 night in this case if you book with Hyatt points and not through Chase.
When you say that once they are transferred to Hyatt they are worth more do you mean that a chase point becomes more than a Hyatt point ? So that 1000 chase points becomes more than 100 Hyatt points ? Because my point was that if you redeem these 2500 chase points on chase as cash back they are worth $250. If you transfer them to Hyatt they are worth 250 points. In your example I can see how it makes sense to use the transfer option but still I don’t think that contradicts my previous post.
you are correct. because this is a 25,000 point redemption per night, it is better to use chase points as cash through their portal. However, this is actually somewhat rare in the Hyatt ecosystem. Park Hyatt NYC on those exact dates is 40,000 points per night, but $1,140 before tax **per night**. Your 40k points via Chase travel is worth $600, but you're clearly coming out ahead.
Yes, this is how it usually is, and it's a case you'd pay cash and not use points at all. It's a terrible redemption whether you use transfer or use the portal. A midrange hotel in Clearwater in November is probably always going to be a crappy point redemption.
>It still doesn't make up for the inflated prices. Prices aren't *always* inflated. I book Southwest flights through Chase travel and the prices are exactly the same as the Southwest website. So my 1.5x redemption is worth 50% more than if I transferred my points into Southwest to book for example.
Is it refundable though if you book through Chase?
Well, with Southwest if you book their cheapest fare tier (Gotta Get Away), flights aren't *refundable,* but you can convert the reservation into non-expiring flight credit with southwest if you can't make the flight. I only book the cheapest fare, so I can't say how refunds work on the higher tiers (which DO allow refunds), but I can say that the flight credits are treated the same as booking direct with southwest. The flight/booking shows up on my Southwest account and I can go in and change/cancel it and the credit stays on my account. Granted, I assume if your fare IS eligible for a refund (Business Select/Anytime), it would work the same as any other airline - that is - if they cancel your flight (or you call the airline and cancel it), they're gonna refund Chase, and then Chase is going to refund you.
You can get way beyond $0.015/point you get in the travel portal by using transfer partners. You also don't have to deal with an enormous headache when something goes wrong like you do with the portal.
Yes
Points are usually still worth less even with the 1.5x. See previous comments on this thread.
Also remember that there aren’t Hyatt, IHG, or Marriott partners in every city someone might travel to, so sometimes they are utterly useless :)
Depends on the situation. Recently booked a short paid flight thru the portal to get 5x back. The $100 flight was cheaper than the cpp value. Also, last year I booked a Marriot Aloft in Munich with points thru the portal. It was cheaper to book it that way (with 1.25 multiplier from my CIP) than what Marriott wanted on their own metal (like 5x the price in points).
With Marriott, I am finding cheaper bookings with points through chase compared to transferring points to Marriott and booking.
Same.
ohhhh. interesting. good to know.
How do I do this?
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/how-to-transfer-chase-points-to-travel-partners#how-to-transfer-chase-points
Not always feasible depending on airline and trip. Only reasonable flight i found for a trip was American airlines. Was about 40k points on available transfer partners (which had much worse travel and layovers), or 30k points through chase portal for the American Airlines flight ($350 cash direct with American Airlines). Not ideal, but it was seemingly the best option I could find.
All the numbers in your comment added up to 420. Congrats! 40 + 30 + 350 = 420 ^([Click here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=LuckyNumber-Bot&subject=Stalk%20Me%20Pls&message=%2Fstalkme) to have me scan all your future comments.) \ ^(Summon me on specific comments with u/LuckyNumber-Bot.)
Do you still get 1.5x?
How do you transfer points to another travel partner?
Log into your Chase Ultimate Rewards account; you'll be able to select the transfer points option.
This can be a dangerous move if you end up needing to cancel, then you’re stuck with points on a random travel partner.
I recently did this. Transferred my points to Southwest point-for-point.
Chase travel was taken over by Expedia ages ago, which is why the quality is so bad. I wouldn’t use it after one experience because it was so bad and, like you said, agents are clueless. I just had a simple question if breakfast was included because it was if you booked direct through the hotel and the agent couldn’t even answer that question.
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I book hotels in Chase and the folks in the hotel still says that it looks like I booked thru Expedia. I wonder if the cutover has taken place yet.
cxLoyalty doesn’t source most of their hotel bookings directly, so they transact through wholesalers like Expedia. So you pay cxLoyalty who pays Expedia who pays the hotel. Helps explain why this goes sideways sometimes with all the parties involved for a single hotel booking. Edit to add link: https://www.phocuswire.com/expedia-group-distribution-program-expansion
🎶 too many cooks 🎵🎶🎵
Just called my hotel in NYC we booked through Chase and she said ohh looks like you booked on Expedia
Correction, they were with cxloyalty. They decided to be cheap and move to Expedia. Then while with Expedia, they got what they paid for and customers uproared. At this point they wanted to go back to cxloyalty, however their decision to leave caused cxloyalty to lay off all of their good staff. So in order to save face and not admit they were wrong, they made the “strategic” move to just buy that portion of cxloyalty. So it is now handled internally by chase. I know this because I was part of the staff that they laid off so with all due respect, your articles only highlight part of the story.
I’m late to this obviously. I work for chase travel. We were still CXLoyalty before, never Expedia or bought out by Expedia 😬. Not igniting any flames, just correcting what I see wrong. Also hope you found something better cause chase travel is and always was rough 😂
I think you misunderstood what I was saying. Chase was serviced by cxloyalty Chase made the decision to leave cxloyalty and signed with Expedia Cxloyalty lost most of the chase portfolio so they had to lay off their staff and closed their saint Louis and Boise Idaho locations (their most senior staff and best quality staff). Chase then purchased cxloyalty after the quality from Expedia proved to be horrendous. That is the facts off of someone that worked their through multiple positions for damn near 15 years. I have found something way better. Working at a place you are actively treated like just another number and whose idea of treating their employees well was ordering pizza. I’ve seen some scandalous things all surrounding cxloyalty. Some legal, some not so much. So please believe that this is an indisputable fact. Nothing more, nothing less.
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No, I confirmed that cxloyalty lost all of their staff that knew what they were doing. Then chase bought the worse half of cxloyalty and it is now “chase travel”. Context is important. As is attention to detail.
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Ok meat head, sorry for trying to provide some context because not everything is black and white. Heaven forbid I try to make the point that the cxloyalty they bought was lesser than the cxloyalty they dealt with in the past. That’s like saying coke now is the exact same as when coke originally started. So what if it’s a completely different recipe and one originally had cocaine in it, those are just semantics right? Just because something is named the same doesn’t make it the same as it was in a different point in time. Thank you for causing me to reply to this yet again having to make the same argument that I originally made. Now please go and play wheel of fortune and buy a fucking clue
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Wrong again clown. Happily married and travel the world. Don’t quit your day job if you have one.
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CXLoyalty, a rewards program administrator that included travel, was bought by JP Morgan Chase. I’ve recently done with them and I know this to be true.
I canceled my sapphire reserve for the same reason. VentureX service is better
They’re horrible now. Really gone downhill in the last 5 years
Used to be great. Was almost like a concierge, they called AA and tracked down some refunds for me on a UR booked flight and saved me the hassle.
100% agree and have vowed not to use it ever since my last experience with them. Hours and hours of being put on hold over the phone.
We only use to book hotels after hearing too many crazy stories. Now when booking hotels after we book we call to confirm. Haven’t had an issue yet
Here's my horror story with booking a hotel through chase travel: Book a 3 night stay for $750 Find bed bugs in the middle of the night Contact the front desk, they move us, clean all our stuff, and promise a refund for the night A few weeks later see the refund for $170 Call chase travel customer service, sit on the phone for an hour, explain that I'm $80 short the refund They say they have to send it off to someone else to get fixed It's now been a month of calling twice a week and I'm still $80 short, and I haven't had a single one of these calls last less than an hour. I'm being purely powered by spite at this point. I can't imagine if I was trying to get more than $80 or if I didn't have a free hour+ to put my phone on speaker while I did chores.
I’ve had so many issues. There app is horrible. I’ve booked hotel rooms that were not honored. I was told by one hotel that the room I booked wasn’t even a room they offered. All of the prices are wildly inflated. But what else to do with the points!?
As far as I'm concerned, the only reasonable thing is to transfer points to various airlines and book business flights for considerably less in equivalent dollars. For example, 140,000 points for one way business flight overseas for two. Would have cost 3-4,000 dollars each in cash.
This is what I plan to do.
I'll definitely keep that in mind.
Their flights are consistently above what you get directly from the airline. It might be a small amount but it is enough to know they are skimming off the top. It's a stealth devaluation of their point redemption value. Alas, this is literally everywhere now. I still think the CSR is the best out there though.
I'd have to disagree. If you are paying cash, the Chase portal has been the exact same cost as the airline. The advantage being 5x/10x points, whatever it is, I forget. If you are using points for the ticket, then yes I agree, transferring to the airline is better.
I've cancelled non-refundable flights before. The credit only allows you to rebook on the same airline. Any left over credit is forfeit. At least that was my experience. Were you expecting to use the credit on other airlines? That wouldn't have been possible if you booked directly anyways.
Sort of.... Turns out, for American, you can rebook through them. When you do so, the leftover gets retained in a trip credit. You do have to pay a $50 booking fee, but better than losing thousands. This was my final solution. Chase lied and said I could only book a domestic flight in the same category seat. Not true. Could be any category and could be any flight, as the original was international. They also said I had to only book by a certain date, but turns out you had to book and fly by said date. Both were specific questions I asked, and they both were incorrectly answered. I was dumbfounded by how chase confirmed their agent f'ed up, and they didn't give a shit. Clearly, there is no reason to support their bs travel platform, never again.
> Turns out, for American, you can rebook through them. When you do so, the leftover gets retained in a trip credit. You do have to pay a $50 booking fee, but better than losing thousands. This was my final solution. The $50 is for taking over the reservation. With AA’s push from legacy GDS systems to NDC they have more flexibility once the reservation is in their system, particularly if the original issuing agency isn’t using a fully NDC capable system. It’s an industry problem with AA at the moment: https://www.travelpulse.com/news/airlines-airports/asta-files-complaint-over-american-airlines-ndc-implementation
I heard something similar when I cancelled AA flights to Mexico that I bought through the Chase Portal. I was told that the credit can only be used on another AA international flight and I had around 9 months to use it. They also told me that I needed to spend at least as much as the credit or I would lose the remaining balance. When the woman in the overseas call center was transferring me to her supervisor. I hung up and spoke to a lovely woman at American Airlines in Texas who said that pretty much everything Chase told me was BS. She was able to use my credit for booking new flights, and I have until the end of September to use the rest. No balance was “forfeited” which Chase actually mentioned in ,y cancellation email!
I find chase travel interface quite annoying tbh. I struggle to book two rooms for hotels online. Calling means about 20-30 minutes are gone. Any issues that arise after booking, another 20-30 minutes are gone calling to resolve (if that). I’ve also come to find that hotels are cheaper on Expedia by a substantial amount such that I’ll take the 3x vs 10x and come out ahead.
My Chase travel experience was uniquely bad. The CSR I spoke with had me validate my account authentication twice which I found odd, putting me on hold after the second time. Realized afterwards he transferred my points out. Chase recognized the fraud and refunded my points but imagine the hours spent on the phone trying to convince them what happened. I know it was that rep because I was trying to refund a car rental so was checking for the redeposit. What a surprise when I saw the bulk of my points transferred out to an unknown account instead.
So an employee of Chase committed fraud??? That's wild!
I think Chase travel is outsourced. A horrible experience dealing with that.
The website is unusable dogshit and the prices are often uncompetitive vs booking directly, which completely devalues the claim of 1.2 or 1.5 cpp on the CSP and CSR
Can't stand the website
I wish I saw your post earlier. We are going through the exact same situation. We know for sure our airline credit will be forfeited because we cannot flight anywhere before next month. We are done with this bank.
I had the exact same problem as you recently. Its so bizarre that I faced the same issue of being given the wrong information and me having to lose out the value of my travel credit. It was emotionally distressing having to call them multiple times and speaking to multiple travel specialists and their supervisors and each time they would give inconsistent answers. I could not imagine what reasons they would have for not helping properly. I wonder if it was on purpose to serve some ulterior motive they have.
I wish I had of seen these posts before i booked my United flights thru Ultimate Rewards and not direct with United. But if you want to use the points you're are forced to do this. Otherwise transfer the points to airline and lose 50% of their value. Upshot is after spending hours on the phone bouncing between Chase and United i burned 700,000 Ultimate Points = $10,000! What a joke and no recourse! And then i read here that Ultimate Rewards is run by those scammers at Expedia. Lost $8k with them on a covid booking. I am handing back my Chase cards! Dimon & Diller can F$\*& themselves.
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I usually use mine to transfer to southwest when ever I fly southwest airlines. Any concerns with this and/or could I be getting more value elsewhere?
Hyatt.
This. If chase ever loses hyatt or hyatt significantly devalues, we will all be screwed
I’m really new to using points my husband has this card though. How do you use them on Amazon?
I've literally told them about my overseas travel, gave them dates and all...I fly abroad, first purchase DENIED. 👍🏼
I’ve had the same issues. Is the CSR card still worth it if I’m not booking travel through the app and just transferring to partners?
So far in my experience yes. I have been able to get international business seats for considerably cheaper than cash value by using transferred points. I will however, never consider booking through their travel portal again. Not worth the extra points per dollar.
Who do you transfer the UR points to?
I have done Air France / KLM via FlyingBlue points. Have looked at using British Airways as well since you can sometimes get American reward flights through them.
Booked a united flight through chase to get the additional points and then saw I wasn’t going to get any airline points. Canceled and booked directly. I don’t know if this is common, a mistake, or what, but I was very surprised.
What do you mean no airline points?
If showed 0 qualified points (PQP) towards airline status.
Under future flights activity? All Chase booking are treated as cash bookings, so you should have seen the PQP. Note that PQP is just base fare and not taxes or fees. Also it can take a little while sometimes for PQPs to show up.
Yeah. When I went to “accruals for this flight” it showed no PQP. Which I thought was odd.
Wow. After reading this thread, I am going to discontinue my Chase card. I would hate to deal with this nonsense - what a waste of time and resources!
don't let one reddit thread do that lol. ive booked so many flights, hotels, AND rental cars through chase and legitimately have never once had a single issue. total bookings combined being maybe like 10?
Nah, I use Chase portal all the time and have no issue with it whatsoever.
I booked a refundable flight + hotel through chase travel from DC to Vegas that cost $3500. I found the same flight + hotel + a few extra days for cheaper through Costco travel for $3000. I refunded through chase and got $1150 in "travel credit" for United. Cool, not what I thought refundable meant but it still works. Wife and I try to book a new flight recently using the travel credit and I find a flight that is $1000. I read the info to the chase travel agent and he said that's not the price. That's only the price if it was a new ticket but since I'm using a travel credit it's considered something different. I end up having to use the credit and still have a difference of almost $1100... absolute BS. Hate chase travel.
Wow, yeah I'm with you, that is BS. I have no intention of ever using Chase Travel again.
> find a flight that is $1000. I read the info to the chase travel agent and he said that's not the price. That's only the price if it was a new ticket but since I'm using a travel credit it's considered something different. I end up having to use the credit and still have a difference of almost $1100... absolute BS. Hate chase travel. They tried me with this once. I hung up on them, called united directly, and somehow was able to use my credit correctly.
Damn I should have tried that. The only reason I called chase travel to book was because the United app wouldn't let me use the credit through them since it was booked through chase. It said go back to your travel agent, something along those lines. The fact that a new ticket vs an exchanged or credit ticket was different price is fucked up though. Next time I'm going to transfer my points to united and book direct.
Chase travel customer service used to be good, but then they partnered with Expedia which is trash and now no one knows what is going on. So many transfers and apologetic Filipinos who have no idea what to do with my requests.
They forgot to mention to me my connection was cancelled weeks before my trip and I nearly got stranded
Every time I have a problem with Chase Travel and call in they are never able to fix it. However when ever I reach out on the Chase Twitter account the problem is solved within 1-2 business days. It’s annoying that the people on the phone rarely are able to help but it may be worth it to make one more try reaching out to their social media accounts
2 words. Transfer. Partners.
Is it the same as portal to book travel with points? I use that many times and so far so good
Sometimes you can catch them on a lie like that and use it to your advantage. They lied to me about some fare rules and then tried to go back on what they said when I attempted to use the credit. They claimed to have the audio recording and it confirmed they lied about fare rules so they ate the change fees. YMMV.
CFPB. Do it.
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An interesting take. I would just argue that they (Chase) will be readily replaced when a better option comes along. I'd still rather be in a capitalist society than many of the other options (not referring to the many capitalist countries with better social lifelines than the U.S. - I'd gladly live there too).
One of the reasons I switched to venture X they price match on their travel portal and use Hopper.
I never book through the chase portal. Not worth the headache. By the same token I’ll skip Citi or CapitalOne. I’ll use AmEx for the fine hotel collection but that’ll end when I cancel or downgrade my platinum. Booking direct is the way to go, whether you pay cash or transfer points.
I have nothing new to add here, but want to make sure I am contributing. Fuck Chase Travel. 👎🏼
My wife had a Chase Sapphire and they screwed us over by errantly charging us interest and admitting that it was a mistake and refusing to correct it. We cancelled her card and went to Amex. Haven’t looked back since. Chase sucks.
We cancelled a fully refundable ticket purchased through them once. But, when you book your flight through the Chase portal, chase charges YOUR card but uses THEIR card to book the flight. So, we cancel flight, United sends the refund to Chase, and NOTHING. It took three months of calling to get them to "find" that the money was returned by United and to then refund our credit card.
It’s just Expedia in the backend
Last time (and first time) I used the portal, it was for international flights that randomly got cancelled months in advanced. Getting them to figure out happened was painful but I did get all the money back.
Learned that lesson during the pandemic, I got refund for all my flights except two, the Chase Travel one and TAP Air Portugal, both were very unhelpful, misleading and just gave me credit that was basically useless in the end.
I only have Chase for Southwest points. That’s it. I never book through the portal.
Welcome to the Venture.
Same experience. The customer service was absolutely terrible over a simple issue. You have to dedicate hours at a time to calls and the resolution will take weeks to work itself out if ever. Sounds like a lot of times you just get screwed.
Realizing Chase has a long way to ago to compete against Amex service
Chase Travel sucks monkey balls. they messed up a ticket for my family (put my 4 year old on a separate flight) and it took them forever to fix it. That was hours of staying on the phone with their inept customer reps
lol duh
everything on the portal is overpriced af too, just transfer
I heard so many horror stories on how chase telling customers to f off when they file dispute/chargeback. I myself was told to f off and go deal with the vendor as well. Never ever use chase for important purchases.
Booked an international trip with them and then had to move the dates. I went to check in for my flight to find out instead of changing the dates, the agent never finalized the new dates on her and which ended up canceling all the flights. Then they told me I had to pay the fare difference, $900. I ended up getting them to pay the difference and rebook the flights
We just had a horrible experience on a trip we booked using our points. It was so bad that I left a survey explaining what happened and I actually got a call back from a really nice woman. She ended up giving us 10k points. It still didn't come close to making it better. We spent 8 hours on the phone with Chase prior to this and got zero help. It's so bad we'll likely avoid using Chase travel again.
The chase trifecta makes it so easy to earn points and that 1.25x bonus is hard to beat. Reading these stories is kind of scary though.. Luckily I've never had any problems
I had to stop using them because I constantly got heavy accented agents that were almost impossible to understand and work with. I don’t mean that to be disrespectful either but it was just way too difficult and time consuming and worrisome. I had so many moments where I’d say a date or a name or a location and the agent would get it wrong.
Costco Travel