September 23, 2024: Last week, Chase changed the marketing language used to advertise the new cardmember welcome bonuses on two of its premium cards. The bank is no longer advertising the dollar value of using the points toward travel redemptions with Chase Travel℠. Could this mean a devaluation is coming?
Before the change: A stated dollar value of rewards
Previously, both the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card and the Chase Sapphire Reserve® offered sign-up bonuses that contained language about the value of your points when you redeemed them through Chase Travel℠. This language has now been removed from most sites.
Google’s cached search results still contain links to sites with the old language:
But now, the welcome bonus marketing language doesn’t mention that value when you redeem your points through Chase Travel. Here’s what shows up at Chase.com. Note that only the amount of points is mentioned, not the value when you redeem through Chase Travel:
What does this mean? Likely nothing immediately.
Given that Chase has promoted the fact that you can get 1.25 cents per point when you redeem your points through Chase Travel with your Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card or your Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card and 1.5 cents per point when you redeem your points through Chase Travel with the Chase Sapphire Reserve®, I imagine that they would have a very hard time walking away from those redemption options in the near term.
If they changed travel redemptions through their travel portal to be worth anything less than they advertised, they would have a lot of unhappy customers. For most people, redemptions through Chase Travel℠ represent the easiest high-value use of Ultimate Rewards® points…and changing the value proposition on that redemption would be a huge blow to the program.
Remember: Programs can and do devalue. Use your points
Although we don’t think that there is any imminent change coming to Chase Ultimate Rewards or the ways you can redeem your points, Chase’s subtle marketing change should serve as a reminder that programs can devalue at any time.
Miles and points are not cash and the value you can get from them is completely dependent on what the airline/bank/hotel program wants to offer you for your points at the time you redeem them. We know plenty of people who built up stashes of frequent flyer miles in the 1990s and 2000s, only to see their options for redemptions slashed in the 2010s. And programs can even vanish, as anyone who collected Air Berlin Topbonus points can tell you.
Bottom line: Earn your points, but don’t hoard them
Chase updated its marketing language on some of its premium Ultimate Rewards cards last week to remove the reference to the value you can get from Chase Travel. While that isn’t necessarily an indication that anything is happening soon, it serves as a reminder that rewards programs can be devalued at any time.
Don’t hoard your points.
