The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is one of the most popular travel reward credit cards out on the market. With an easy to use rewards program through Chase Ultimate Rewards and worldwide acceptance with Visa, it’s common to see this card being a first choice for travelers.
While this card offers some excellent opportunities to earn Chase Ultimate Reward points if you like to travel, there are 3 useful benefits that you may not be aware of. This card offers an easy way to earn points while traveling by giving you 2X points on all travel related purchases including airfare, hotels, taxis, Uber and more without any limitations like some of the other travel rewards cards in the same category.
This card also provides the opportunity to earn 2X points on restaurants and dining wherever you are in the world. It also offers zero foreign transaction fees and an embedded chip for enhanced security.
While the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card has been deemed as one of the best travel point earning credit cards for all frequent travelers, there are also 3 important benefits that offer additional protections for your travels and purchases that you might want to know about.
1. Trip Protection
When making travel reservations, most of the time those purchases like airfare and hotels come with a lot of restrictions. Often, there are nonrefundable payments in order to secure your reservation. However, nonrefundable travel purchases made with the Chase Sapphire Preferred card limit some of your risks when making those purchases by offering helpful travel protection.
Trip Cancellation / Trip Interruption Insurance
When booking airfare, hotels, vacation packages and other travel related activities, this card offers insurance of up to $10,000 if your trip is canceled or interrupted due to severe weather, the health of you or an immediate family and other covered situations. This benefit can offer a lot of reassurance since you know your trip is protected if your trip is interrupted or has to be canceled.
If for example, you had a vacation planned for the whole family to visit family in Florida, but you or your kids came down with the flu the day before you are set to take off, then the entire family’s travel arrangements would be protected under this benefit. You would just need to provide enough documentation such as a doctor’s note, to take advantage of this additional insurance.
No need to worry about making those non-refundable travel plans with this great benefit since your travel related purchases are insured if certain unforeseen situations occur that prevent you from taking that trip.
Trip Delay Reimbursement
Your trip is also protected if it is delayed for up to 12 hours or requires an overnight stay for reasonable expenses of up to $500 made using your card. These expenses would include lodging, meals and other personal items needed during your delay.
This means if you had the last flight out for the evening and you were rebooked for the first flight the next morning, you would be reimbursed for expenses. For example, if you had to pay for certain expenses out of pocket, like a hotel and dinner near the airport, while using your Chase Sapphire Preferred® card.
2. Lost Luggage Reimbursement
Luggage is also protected when you travel. If your luggage is lost by the airline you are entitled to up to $3,000 per passenger to cover the cost of what was lost. This benefit requires a precise documentation of what was in your luggage in order for you to be compensated the full amount of the reimbursement benefit. To take advantage of this benefit, it is always wise to keep receipts of all the valuables inside your luggage.
Remember: Your travel is protected for up to: $10,000 if canceled or interrupted under certain circumstances, $500 for delays of 12+ hours or overnight, and $3,000 for lost luggage or $100 a day for up to 5 days for delayed luggage.
3. Protection on the road:
Car rental expenses can add up quickly before you even step foot in the actual car. When making your reservation, you are often offered a variety of options that can greatly increase the cost of what you thought would be a relatively affordable car rental. Car rental companies are quick to encourage you to add extra insurance protection, roadside assistance, and even flat gas rates, keep in mind that sometimes your credit card offers some of those as benefits just by being a cardmember and using your card to pay for your rental.
Primary Collision Damage Waiver
One of the most common insurance offerings, which is also sometimes a requirement, is the Auto Collision Damage Waiver or CDW, which is an extra daily fee that can increase the cost of your car rental. However, car rentals made entirely with the Chase Sapphire Preferred® card are covered for the CDW when you decline to purchase that option from the car rental company.
The CDW benefit provides reimbursement for damage or theft of the vehicle for up to the actual cash value of most rental vehicles. The big perk of the card is that it offers this benefit as primary coverage. This means you do not need to make a claim with your personal insurance first, while other credit cards mostly offer secondary coverage, which only covers anything above what your personal insurance will cover first.
Remember: Decline the CDW option from car rental companies and use your card for the entire reservation for primary coverage of damage or theft of certain car rentals and don’t worry about roadside assistance memberships since you can use the Roadside Dispatch program when you run out of gas.
Conclusion
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® card is most known for its amazing point earning potential on travel related purchases. It is good to know that your travel purchases made with this popular travel rewards card are also coming with extremely helpful travel-related protections credit cards offer.
Another good thing to know is that the terms and conditions of all of these benefits also specifically state that if you used points from your rewards account and put a portion of the charges to your card, your trips and purchases will come with the same protections as if you paid the full amount on your card.
So you are sayin if i crash my car and its reserved with the CSP, then i dont have pay anything with other insurance? Is that really true
Yes, according to the terms that is true.
I wonder if it’s worth paying the $95 annual fee if I get all these benefits. Like if the calculations of paying for car rental insurance would be more than the $95 then it’s worth it with that alone
The insurance can cost up to $15 a day for rental cars. Assuming you rent a card for one week, you would automatically make your money back from the annual fee.
Your point of view caught my eye and was very interesting. Thanks. I have a question for you.