Exactly a week ago I applied for the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card. My goal was to get this card just in time to utilize the $300 travel credit in 2016. For those unaware, your $00 travel transaction on the card must hit by your December statement close date, you do not actually have until the end of the month. After I was approved, I called Chase and they were able to change my first statement close date to December 23rd (originally it was some date in January). You can read more about this here.
Since I only had exactly 16 days to spend $300 on travel with the card, I wanted to make my travel related purchase as quickly as possible. I am not traveling over the next few weeks and have no new airfare I need to book. Any hotel reservations I need to make will also not require prepayment until checkout and those stays are not until January. So I went ahead and purchased a Marriott gift card! Reports showed that both eGift cards and physical gift cards were coding as travel so I figured I’d give it a try. I stay at Marriott hotels often enough that I do not mind having a gift card to eventually use. And even if I use points, the gift card can be used towards incidentals on my bill.
I purchased a $300 Marriott eGift card about 2 hours after the new credit card arrived and two days later the $300 travel credit was issued.
In my Chase Ultimate Reward account for this particular card, it also shows that I’ve hit my $300 maximum for the year.
If you are still trying to figure out some ways to utilize your travel credit before your December statement credit hits, here are some ideas:
- Purchase a Southwest gift card
- Purchase a Marriott gift card
- Purchase a AirBnB gift card
- Make a prepaid hotel reservation (just be 100% positive you will not need to cancel)
- Make a regular hotel reservation (some hotels will charge your credit card a certain amount even it is a fully refundable reservation – this typically is for expensive resorts or during peak travel, just look at the reservation details)
- Book airline travel (you do not need to actually fly by your statement close date, just have the transaction hit your card)
- If you re a JetBlue Mosaic member, you can book a JetBlue flight and then cancel it to receive a voucher in your travel bank to use for a future time
If you have any other travel related purchases that qualified for the statement credit, please feel free to leave comments below.
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How about AA or United gift cards? Are they treated as Travel Related?
@JW – reports show that AA does but United does not.
I think you wrote recently that you now live in the Boston area, right? (Welcome!) Well, you can load your CharlieCard (for the T) with $300 for later use.
@Pawtim – I did recently move to Boston! Thanks for letting know about the Charlie Card. I’m living in the burbs and don’t take the T much though. But I’ll let me siblings know who are right in the city!
I live in the ‘burbs too, but work in town — I spend $336 per month for a train pass to get to work so I can breeze through the $300 travel spending effortlessly. I even let one of my friends buy my pass for this month so she could easily get hers spent. Not the most fun way to spend on travel, but it gets the job done. I’ve already taken a weeklong cruise to the Bahamas using only about a third of the bonus points from this card bonus so not complaining!
Hi,
Does Southwest gift card, purchase through them count as a travel expense towards the $300 credit?
Kae
@Kae – Reports have shown it has.
@kae – many reports show it has been working
I liked my approach more than the GC option. I applied a $300 pre-payment onto my EZ-Pass account. Will basically travel the toll roads for free in 2017.
Guys, thanks for this post and comments.
Does Rapid Rewards® Points count to travel segment?
Thanks.
Vojtech
@Vojtech – not sure what you mean??
Does it work for $300 Delta egift?
@Joanna- Unfortunately it does not.