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It’s Chase Sapphire Preferred Week! (Sponsored by the Hawaiian Airlines World Elite Mastercard)

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Posts in this series:

Chase Sapphire Preferred vs. the Hello Kitty Visa Platinum Reward Card: Which is better?

The Chase Sapphire Preferred credit score conundrum

EXCLUSIVE: An interview with D. Barrett, the guy whose name appears on the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card

We taped a Chase Sapphire Preferred to a piece of string and dangled it in front of a cat. You won’t believe what happens next.

A list of metal credit cards: besides the Chase Sapphire Preferred, what are your options?

It’s hard to believe, but there are a lot of people out there who still don’t appreciate the greatness of the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. As a famous blogger once said to me,

Something something something First Friday.

But no more! This week, I’m only going to write about the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card. Why? Because it’s it’s the greatest thing ever as this graphic proves:

csp arrow

See that? It’s got a green arrow pointing at it, and green arrows only point at awesome things.

I was hoping that Chase would come through with some sponsorship money, but they ignored my emails and phone calls for a while. Then when I finally got a hold of some actual human beings, they pretended that they had never heard of my blog. What a bunch of jerks!

Fortunately, the good folks who run the Hawaiian Airlines World Elite MasterCard came through. Sure, I’ve had some creative differences with Barclaycard in the past but we’re all willing to let bygones be bygones.

So let’s get CSP week started! Feel free to share your favorite CSP memories below.

Banana Republic / Gap credit card changes: top-tier status easier to get

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I recently heard from the lovely folks who issue my Banana Republic credit card. They wanted me to know that a new card and new benefits are on the way. I could care less about the look of the new card, but I always perk up when folks start talking about new benefits.

Here’s a page describing the new changes. What caught my eye was this:

Upgrading to Luxe has never been easier.

  • 5,000 base points qualifies you for Luxe
  • For Visa Cardmembers, your spend in and out of our brands counts towards you based points

Now up to this point you could only get Luxe status by spending $800 at the Banana Republic / Gap family of stores. But if I’m reading this correctly, you can now get Luxe status by spending $5,000 anywhere you want, since you get 1 point per dollar spent outside of the stores.

I checked the T&C’s for clarification and it said this:

Cardholders must earn 5,000 points (excluding bonus points) to upgrade to Luxe, Silver or Navyist status. Visa cardholders will qualify for status by making purchases outside of Gap, Inc. locations.

So yes, it seems you can get Luxe via spending outside of the Gap, Inc. family. I also noticed this bullet point:

Gap Silver, Banana Republic Luxe and Navyist by Old Navy accounts will earn a 20% rewards bonus each calendar quarter.

…Which makes this card 1.2% on everything, and 6% back at the stores. And today I received a promotion in the mail: 3X back on everything next month, which would be 3.6% back on everything with Luxe status. I may need to think about putting some spending on this thing. As far as I can tell, Luxe/Silver/Navyist status isn’t all that great. Here are the benefits as per the website:

  • FREE shipping on all online purchases7
  • 15% off Choose Your Own Sale Day offer8
  • FREE basic alterations on all Banana Republic purchases9
  • Luxe-only offers and shopping events like Triple Points Days
  • Exclusive toll-free Luxe priority line

If there are some good coupons / discounts, then $5K of spending at 3.6% looks a little more enticing. Anybody have any experience with status at the Gap brands? (MilesAbound, I’m looking at you.)

BBVA Compass NBA Amex Marketing Fail

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The bad news–from a professional basketball standpoint anyway–is that I live in Charlotte. The good news is that the credit card industry has given me a reason to care about the NBA finals!

I recently signed up for the BBVA Compass NBA Amex card. They’re offering a nice little deal: get the card before June 30 and the $50 annual fee is waived for the life of the account. Oh, and also they’re offering 5% cashback on all spending during the NBA finals.

I don’t know anything about BBVA’s credit card operation, but they gave me a pretty good credit card line. I was not too impressed with this email, however:

bbva marketing failThe key phrase there at the bottom: “Bobcats fans like yourself”. For those of you who don’t keep up with the NBA, the team was called the Bobcats, but the name was changed before the 2014-15 season after rights to it were relinquished by the New Orleans Pelicans after they dropped the name. (The original Charlotte Hornets franchise had moved to New Orleans a while back.)

So, it was amusing to see the Hornets graphic combined with the Bobcats name, as I’d thought I’d heard the last of the awful Bobcats team name. But I have no complaints after they sent me this:

bbva nba promotion

They are really promoting the heck out of this thing! Not that I’m complaining. The NBA finals ought to be interesting this year.

 

 

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