I think everyone that travels should have a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Reserved. Why? Let me tell you a story of why the Chase Sapphire card is my number one recommendations. A lesson we learned the expensive way. The Chase Sapphire cards have this awesome travel delay/cancellation benefit. If you pay for your flights (even just the 911 fee of $5.60) you have travel delay/cancellation benefits.
It was a stormy Wednesday in Orlando, we were having our final treat at
Universal Studios, passing time while we wait for our driver to arrive. Just 45
minutes before his arrival we receive a notification that our flight
(scheduled to depart in 3 hours) had been cancelled and we were rebooked to on a SATURDAY flight! Due to weather delays, airlines aren't responsible for food or
lodging expenses. No big deal, after a long wait we manage to get on a flight
for the following day, we just needed to find a hotel room for the night. We
were staying at one of Universal Studios' Premier hotels at about $300+ night, could we
swing another night there? Sure, but we didn't need to stay there since we wouldn't be needing the front of the line benefits, but it would be easier than moving
to another less expensive hotel. As a Sapphire Reserve card holder I figured we could stay there to make things easier, and we would be flying out the following afternoon, so why not? With the Reserve card Chase will
reimburse us up to $500/person for food, lodging and transportation. I check
our original Southwest reservation, turns out I didn't use the Reserve to make
the reservations, I used our Southwest card. No big deal, we used the Southwest
Priority card (annual fee of $149), that has to have some sort of travel delay
benefit right? The Priority card's annual fee is more than the Sapphire Preferred
fee ($95), why wouldn't it have trip delay benefits? You see where this is going? Yup, you guessed it, NO travel delay
benefits. Now we are on the hook for all additional expenses. Turns out that the following day also had massive flight cancellations due to the storms, we didn't get
home until Friday evening, that delay cost us about $500. That would have been
closer to $0 if I had used our Chase Sapphire Reserve to book the flights.
The Reserve has
better benefits than the Preferred,
but the annual fee is $550. We prefer the Reserve, but I know that the fee is a
lot, for this benefit the Preferred is perfectly fine.
