Sunday Reader Question on Transferring Chase Freedom Points to Get Sapphire Preferred 7% Bonus
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TPG reader Bryan writes:
"I have the Freedom and Sapphire card and received a bunch of points through the Freedom card for the dining bonus they had this quarter. My question is, should I transfer the points I received on my Freedom card over to my Sapphire card to receive a greater anniversary points bonus? I'm not sure if I leave the points on my Freedom card, if Chase applies those as a bonus also."(The Chase Freedom is no longer open to new applicants) First off, nicely done with combining the Freedom and Sapphire Preferred cards. For those of you who don't know, Chase will allow you to transfer points earned with the Freedom card - which are normally only able to be used for 1 cent towards travel or gift cards - to your Sapphire Preferred Ultimate Rewards account. So this means you can earn 5 points per dollar spend at the quarterly spend categories and then transfer these points to any of the Ultimate Rewards transfer partners like United, Continental, British Airways, Korean, Hyatt, Marriott, Priority Club and Amtrak. Earning 5 United miles per dollar spent is pretty spectacular - especially since I consider them to be one of the most valuable mileage currencies. I wrote about combining these two cards benefits in more detail here.To answer your question; no, transferring them to your Ultimate Rewards account will not qualify for the Sapphire Preferred 7% annual bonus. Per my PR contact at Chase the 7% bonus counts towards all points earned in a given year regardless of how they were earned. This includes the current 50,000 point sign-up bonus - at the end of the year you'd get an additional 3,500 points deposited in your account. However, the key word is earned. Transferred points will not count, though weirder things have happened so it could happen, but I wouldn't bank on it. If anyone has any personal experience, feel free to comment. I've only had my Sapphire Preferred card since August, so I can't speak from experience.Another tip is that you don't need to be linked to the same account to transfer Chase points to each other. In this post, I explain why I love Ultimate Rewards and one of the reasons is that you can transfer points to anyone. My friend Lori had 2,000 random Freedom points and instantly for free she transferred them to my Sapphire Preferred Ultimate Rewards account. That type of flexibility is key when maximizing points, especially among family members.
