Like many of you, I got the highly touted Chase Sapphire Reserve card back in 2016 with a bonus of 100,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points. At the time, 100,000 bonus points were rare. I used my Sapphire Reserve card and loved my card for the next 5 years, but with so much more hitting the market, and my card inventory changing a lot over the last 5 years, I made the decision to part ways with my Reserve and downgrade it to the Chase Sapphire Preferred.
Many factors went into my decision to downgrade this card…
1. Although I got a $150 retention offer to keep the card in 2020, Chase would not give me another retention offer in 2021. If you haven’t asked for a retention offer yet, you should when you get re-billed for your $550.
2. In the past, I knew I could get the fee down close to the Sapphire Preferred fee ($95) as in 2020 I was grandfathered in at the $450 rate. So $450 less my $300 travel credit less my $60 DoorDash credit brought me to $90 which is $5 less than the Sapphire Preferred fee.
3. The fee is now $550 and I will not get the $60 DoorDash benefit in 2022.
4. They have made so many positive changes in terms of spending to the Sapphire Preferred. You can read about those here. One of the biggest ones is that they upped dining to 3x (just like the Reserve) and for all of you with the Freedom Unlimited, you get 3x on dining there too!!
5. Although they have made some positive changes to the Sapphire Reserve too, they are all tied to booking travel thru Chase Travel or Chase Dining I don’t like being locked in to booking travel/dining like that, I like exploring my options. You can read about the changes to Sapphire Reserve here.
6. I have another $550 luxury card (Amex Platinum) that gives me many of the same benefits like lounge access, Global Entry credit, 5x on flights, etc. And I just got the brand new, unbelievably sounding Capital One Venture X card that I am excited to start using, and pooling my Capital One Miles with Rob’s Miles from his Capital One Spark Business card.
Just a reminder-DO NOT cancel your Sapphire Reserve. Downgrading is always a better option.