A few months ago I decided I needed to diversify my point spending and find new ways to earn airline miles and points with credit cards. Although I love my American Express Gold card and all the opportunities to earn double and triple points (travel, gas, etc) and have always loved Amex’s transfer partners like British Airways, Delta, Hilton, Aeroplan, etc. it was time to find ways to earn points on United without flying United Metal and find a way to transfer to the Hyatt. This is where the Chase Sapphire Preferred card came into my life!
Thanks to the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, I can now earn double miles on travel (including airfare, car rentals, hotel stays and even taxis and parking!) and restaurants but most importantly I found a card that had NO foreign transaction fees! For someone like me, who LOVES to travel internationally and use my credit cards to purchase discount flights abroad (on Airlines like Cebu pacific, AirPhil Express, Air Asia, etc) this perk was a huge plus! Not to mention if you’re traveling domestically in China Ctrip.com is much cheaper than foreign websites for air bookings (kayak, Travelocity, etc), but like all the discount airline sites, came with a foreign transaction fee! Now that 1-3% fee is gone and I’m saving money and earning points while traveling abroad!
Yet the point of this article is not to tell you about how much I love my Chase Sapphire Card, it’s about how much I hate it (well kind of)! The Chase Sapphire card is heavier than most cards and is actually made of metal! Every time I use it, I always have to endure the comment “wow that’s a heavy card!” At first I thought it was fun and found creative answers, but overtime it became slightly annoying. It’s a Chase credit card, not like the Amex Black! However, despite this, I continue to use my Chase Card and earn points easily like it’s going out of style!
Yet two weeks ago, I got a phone call from work to let me know their cafeteria Credit Card system had been hacked and I might have had my credit card data stolen! I rolled my eyes and thought nothing of it. Then two days later I received a phone call from Chase, informing me they had denied a number of suspicious charges happening on the east coast (I was in California at the time). I knew exactly what was happening! Chase was very good and handling the situation and they told me to destroy the card immediately and they would overnight me a new one (they had taken notice that I was using the card a lot!).
When I return home, I decided it was time to destroy that card. My identity was already stolen and I wasn’t about to just throw away the card. I first tried to bend the card in two. Fail!
I then tried to cut it with my J.A. Henckels kitchen scissors. FAIL!
My third attempt was to burn it with my kitchen stove…this was working but it smelled HORRIBLE! So again a third FAIL!
I then gave up, I walked into the Chase bank 3 blocks from my house and returned them the card. They informed me they would be happy to destroy it! Problem solved!
So in all honesty I love my Chase Sapphire card and would highly recommend it to anyone! Just don’t lose it or have your identity stolen because destroying it is not fun and it will destroy your shredder—so don’t try it! Right now it has a 40,000 point sign up bonus (spend 3k in 3 months) and the meager $95 annual fee is waived for the first year! Also, the other bonus to the Chase Sapphire card is they offer a 7% annual dividend on award points earned over the course of a year, something Amex Premier card does NOT offer!
So do I hate this card? No I love it, Just don’t try to destroy it yourself!
