These are benefits that I really should take more advantage of, but somehow I really do forget, so in order, here are the big ones for some of the major credit cards:
Chase Sapphire Reserve
They have a mini website devoted to benefits, here are the interesting ones in order:
- Auto rental primary insurance, so you don’t have to deal with your insurance company when renting, a good deal.
- 3x on Travel and dining points
- Priority Pass VIP lounge access
- Return protection for stores that don’t take back items (like Amazon in many cases), up to $500/claim and up to $1K/year.
- 90 day purchase protection up to $10K/claim and $50K/year
- Baggage delay insurance pays $100/day for incidentals if you don’t get your bags on time. You do need to file a claim and I presume pay with your card.
- $1K emergency medical benefit if you are 100 miles away from home.
- $300 credit towards any travel, pretty much hit this right away and reduces the fee from $450 to $150 immediately after buying one airfare with it.
- You get $50 four times a year for car breakdowns.
- $100K Travel accident insurance.
- Relais & Chateau benefits as part of Visa Infinite. I’ve never said in one of these, but good to watch out for.
American Express Platinum
They also have a site that requires a logon to see:
- $200/year with Uber structured as $15/month with $35 in December.
- $100/year with Saks
- $200/year from a select airline, the above three, reduce the $550 fee to $50/year, FYI!
- 5x points for airfare when booked directly with airline or Amex Travel
- American Express lounges
- Boingo membership (but no Gogo membership, that is 10 passes only if you have the Business Platinum card).
- Purchase protection of $10K/claim and $50/year for items damaged or stolen in the first 90 days of purchase.
- One extra year of warranty on purchases
- Return protection of $300/claim up to $1K/year
- Shoprunner membership for 2-day shipping at some online stores.
Merrill Lynch Signature Rewards
Like the others listed, they have, in order:
- If you spend more than $50K, you get to choose between a $200 Travel Credit (this is mainly for incidentals from US airlines) or a Delta Sky Club membership. If you are in a Delta city the Sky Club is pretty useful. the $200 is a little bit of pain and you have to keep track of it to make sure you get the reimbursement.
- Warranty Manager, you get an automatic doubling of the warranty period for any US product. This means that your MacBook for instance gets an automatic 2-year (instead of one year warranty). You do have to submit a claim, but pretty valuable, although a hassle to get.
- Trip Delay. You get $500/ticket/trip for a delay, I’ve never done this, but seems like they the details are pretty strict.
- There is also $2,500 for trip cancellation for prepaid nonrefundable passenger fare tickets.
- And also Lost Luggage reimbursement.
- And $100K worth of Emergency Evacuation Insurance.
- Purchase Security, this means that in the first 90 days of any purchase, if there is theft or damage, you get $10K per claim and $50K per cardholder. This is most useful in the case, where you didn’t buy Applecare or something like that and torched the item early.