re: Chase sapphire Reserve

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It's going to be exciting to see how the competition responds.

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5x instead of 3x on AmEx Plat

I think Citi already has a competing product with 4th night free. Actually a pretty compelling product until next year when the nerfs kick on. (No AA lounge or 1.6c redemptions on AA). Maybe Citi will drop that idea

Entire family can get in

I personally don't think there is any way that they will keep up the 100k sign up bonus or the 3x points on dining and travel long term. I'm 100% sure that within 3 years both will end and people will hemmorrage the card, they went full on for the Amex jugular and succeeded but it just can't be cost efficient for them if say someone spends like $100k/year on travel and dining and then they net $150 after the $300 travel credit

fair enough but its not that much money, im in the convenience store business and fees are 1.5% or so for visa + the swipe fee but amex had higher fees almost double and still never gave out rewards like that so i really dont think its that lucrative but who knows.

so was amex just absolutely killing it making all that money charging double fees and giving out nothing special rewards wise?

Since AmEx mostly relies on its charge cards (no interest revenue) for the bulk of its revenue, it charges higher fees to vendors to cover costs. AmEx only recently introduced credit cards. Also - AmEx is a little different than any other bank as it is closed loop. Bank + Processor. Further, this is pretty much all AmEx does. Unlike other banks that have other sources of revenues and don't solely rely on 1 main stream. Discover is the same, and I'm sure you know, discover charges vendors higher processing fees as well.

Also remember - AmEx was the first one to bring in Travel rewards. The flipside to that was higher fees to vendors. Other banks only recently came into the picture with similar offerings and i suspect are currently in expansionary phase to earn market share. I think they are winning so far.

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I think they are winning so far.

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I disagree. While the CSR may be providing the best product in terms of rewards etc, you are assuming that the target demographic cares/values that.

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While the CSR may be providing the best product in terms of rewards etc, you are assuming that the target demographic cares/values that.

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Saw an article that said a lot of millennials signed up for the CSR just for the points.

So I am not a big CC points guy, so I hope I do not sound like a fool in this post. But I would appreciate the help. My wife and I have a SW card (we share) and we like having one of our 3 kids fly as a companion (a perk from the card is that after a certain amount, you can pick one companion to fly free with you) and using the extra points to fly ourselves around.

That said, this CSR card sounds pretty great...and it says you can transfer points 1:1... does that mean after we each get 100,000 (I assume we will both be approved), we can just transfer our points to Southwest (SW is listed as a partner)? I would want to cancel the card within the year, so that we would not have to pay a second go round of $450 each. Honestly, I am not concerned about my credit getting dinged...we have good credit and we are already living in our forever house, and we both have steady jobs (both physicians) that it would be tough to be fired from. So a small drop in our credit is kind of irrelevant.

But we wouldn't lose the points that we already transferred to SW if we canceled the CSR would we (I know that is probably an idiotic question, but I have no idea how point transfers work)?

And would we really get a second $300 bonus in 2017 before having to pay another $450? Someone mentioned that, but is that really how this would work? We have a trip coming up in June, so we could use all of our travel money for that trip, and then cancel after.

And is it easy to arrange travel through Chase? Can we bring our kids into those VIP lounges, too?

At the end of the day, we really like our SW card, and we don't want to lose our yearly companion pass, so I do not think we need another major card with a high fee, as I do not think we will be able to fully take advantage of its rewards since we are sticking with SW.

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Would purchase of Disney tickets through undercovertourist.com count towards the $300 credit?

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I would check with the website first. They have to be coded as a travel entity, and some that you think are, are not.

Right after getting our card, I booked a cabin for 3 nights through VRBO and it was not coded as travel, so I didn't get the travel credit. I did call Chase and they gave me the 3x points, but I had to book a separate hotel for another trip to get the travel credit.