Newbies beware! Don’t let Chase convince you to click Travel under the Ultimate Rewards home page. Yes, they have a big tab at the top that says travel… but ignore that and under “Use Points” on the left click “Transfer Points to Travel Partners”. Trust me! I’m going to show you step by step how to use them well and step by step how you’re getting shiested by Chase if you don’t.
Previously I talked about Chase Ultimate Reward Transfer options, and basically there are 9 travel partners you can transfer to and that post talks about how much I value each transfer. Let me be very clear, do not use your points on their search engine thing! Do not click redeem points for travel, even though they want you to. It would be a shame and should be a crime.
First let me show you what they are doing to you. Here is the best flight under the Chase Ultimate reward flight searcher thingy.
This is a flight out of my hometown, Charlottesville, to London. You could redeem it for $1,574 or 157,420 UR Points. All they are doing is taking the price of the ticket and multiplying it by 100 and there you have the price in points. Here is the same flight on Kayak:
See! You’re being ******! You would be better off redeeming your points for cash and then buying the ticket!
I’ll take it one step further. Here is the price in points on United.com (which UR points transfer 1:1 to United):
Dear goodness! Even first class is half the cost! You could be flying first class to London for less than half of the cost of using Chase’s little search tool. This is a random one-way search I did for a random day. And don’t complain about frequent flyer mile availability:
Transferring your points to United is easy. You could call them if you’re just a complete luddite but it’s really simple.
- Log onto Chase.
- Click Ultimate Rewards, found on your right as well as under your card.
- Under “Use Points” click “Transfer Points to Travel Partners”.
- Transfer to whatever partner you want. Again, here is my guide to valuing these points. Once you decide, it’s as simple as putting in your frequent flyer number.
If you don’t have a card like the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Ink Bold that can transfer to travel partners you need to get it. If you have the Freedom card and the Sapphire Preferred, it is very easy to combine points. I believe it now pops up when you click the UR link showed in step 2.
I hope this helps someone. If you find this post helpful please let me know by commenting below. Also if you have any question please post them!
Thank you so much for this post. I’ve been asking this question on Milepoint and FT for days and really didn’t get a good explanation or opinion. We are going to FL on Monday and I can’t pay for it so I need to use points. I just need to book hotels and a car rental. Any suggestions for those? I have tons of points in lots of programs.
Great. First thing I would do is check PointBreaks. A list of hotels for 5,000 Priority Club Points. Which is an easy transfer. I don’t know what points you have but I assume you have UR Points and can also transfer to Hyatt. I don’t know where you’re going but there are a lot of nice Hyatt hotel in FL for a reasonable amount of points.
I never use points for car rentals since you can get them so cheap on Hotwire and similar sites. However, I know some people use Avios to rent cars but sure seems like a waste.
I hope this helps but you can always email me if you have any more questions. drew (at) travelisfree.com
Thanks for not only a great and easy to follow post, but also a we’ll put together blog. I truly feel that your post directly help me in decisions compared to other that I have read because how you tie in your posts to previous related ones. And I only found your blog a couple of days ago!
Great, I’m glad you found it! Thanks for the feedback Ash!
Drew
On the Chase Sapphire Preferred site it states,” If you redeem your points for travel booked through the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel tool, your points are worth 25% more.” Does this offset the higher mileage requirement by using their travel tool?
I think it would be helpful if you could answer Don Carson’s question because I have the same one! 🙂
This post is outdated. New formulas now make the Chase UR site the best way to buy a flight.
Just looked up a hotel in KC through Chase and the price was 25% higher as compared to directly booking on the hotel’s website. Do not use UR for travel purposes.
I have a question like the person who asked you about using points on the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, which provides 25% more than points earn when applied to travel. In my case I have a Sapphire Reserve that now provides 50% more points from a 100,000 sign-up bonus. As that bonus is free, isn’t that bonus better than spending earned points?
In addition, since I get 50% more for every point I earn, shouldn’t I use Chase Ultimate Rewards when booking with my Sapphire Reserve card? Or do you think most of the time I could book a flight, hotel or cruise for half the cost without using my Ultimate Rewards program?
I wonder if the UR points I earn will always outdo any travel program unless I find a 2 passengers for 1 offer on a cruise, for example?