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The Chase Sapphire Reserve® card comes with a $300 annual travel credit. If you max that credit it drops the cost of the excellent card down from $450 to $150/year. Read more about why the Sapphire Reserve is a must have card in this post.
If you applied for your Sapphire Reserve on or after 5/21/17, the annual travel credit is based on your cardmembership year. In other words if you opened a card on 3/1/19 and your statement closes on the 1st of the month, you will get a $300 credit for travel spending from 3/1/19 through 4/1/20 and it will reset annually on 4/1.
If you applied for your Sapphire Reserve before 5/21/17, the annual travel credit is based on the calendar year.
It’s important to remember that while AMEX uses a true calendar year, Chase’s calendar year credit ends once your December statement closes, so a calendar year can end anytime from 12/1 through 12/28. You can call Chase to push off your statement close date to as late as the 28th of every month (which would impute a statement due date of the 25th of every month).
Once your December statement closes you can start getting credit for the next calendar year. In other words if your statement closes on 12/15/18, you can start spending your 2019 credit on 12/16/18.
Click here to view how much of your annual travel spend has already been credited:
Wondering where you can use your travel credit? These categories have been confirmed as working for automatic travel refunds. Just spent in any of these categories and you’ll get an automatic refund:
Air:
- Airline tickets from any airline
- Air Canada Gift Cards
- Alaska Airlines gift cards
- American Airlines gift cards
- Baggage fees from any airline
- Delta gift cards purchased from their desktop site only.
- Hawaiian Airlines gift cards.
- Online travel agencies (Including Expedia, Orbitz, and Priceline)
- Seat selection or upgrade fees for any airline
- Southwest gift cards
- Retail travel agencies
- Taxes on award tickets for any airline
Dining:
- Uber Eats
Lodging:
- Airbnb
- Airbnb gift cards
- Campgrounds
- Cruises
- Groupon Getaways
- Hotel stays
- Marriott gift cards
- Motel stays
- Norwegian Cruise Line gift cards
- Online travel agencies (Including Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, and Priceline)
- Timeshares
- Retail travel agencies
Theme Parks and activities:
- UndercoverTourist.com (Discounted Disney, Universal, Legoland, and SeaWorld tickets)
Transportation:
- Amtrak
- BART
- Bridge tolls
- Buses
- Car rentals
- Car2Go
- Eurostar
- Ferries
- Greyhound
- Jerusalem Light Rail
- Limos
- Long Island Railroad
- Lyft rides
- Megabus
- Metra Rail Chicago
- Muni/parking meters
- NJ Transit
- NYC MetroCard
- Oyster card
- Parking apps
- Parking garages
- Prepaid EZPass tolls loaded with the one-time payment option online or over the phone. If the system auto-loads then it may not count as travel, though it usually does.
- Prepaid I-Pass tolls loaded via one-time payment
- Prepaid FasTrak tolls loaded via one-time payment
- Prepaid SunPass tolls loaded via one-time payment
- Prepaid Washington DOT Good to Go tolls loaded via one-time payment
- Postpaid 407ETR Toronto tolls
- Subway travel
- Taxis
- Tolls
- Trains
- Trenitalia
- Tunnel tolls
- Turo
- Uber add funds in Uber app (plus get 5% off).
- Uber gift cards only if they are bought from the MileagePlusX app for iOS or Android
- Uber rides
- Ventra Chicago
- Zipcar
Know of other charges that will trigger a credit? Hit the comments!
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15 Comments On "Don’t Forget To Spend Your 2019 Chase Sapphire Reserve® Travel Credit Before Your December Statement Closes!"
All opinions expressed below are user generated and the opinions aren’t provided, reviewed or endorsed by any advertiser or DansDeals.
Got my card in August 2018 and my rewards says it resets in 8/2020. My wife’s card we got in nov 2017 says it resets in 12/2019
Are you sure you didn’t get approved in July 2018?
Turo works for the credit.
I threw the rest of my credits into uber ride credits. That way I am not in a rush to use them. It worked by doing it on the app.
Uber eats was not reimbursed
Kavim RavKav machines have done the trick for me consistently.
Dan, am i able to make my December statement close earlier so i can start getting travel credit earlier?
Yes.
FYI, Alaska Air gift cards did not trigger the credit for me in January 2019.
any way to double dip the travel credit for 1 x AF?
Dan, can you do a similar post for Citi Prestige?
I transferred 83,000 points from Platinum to Aeroplan and have not been able to book ticket due to “error”. Phone calls are not going through.. No email address as contact. It has been 7 days that I have been trying.
Anyone have this issue??
I got messed up with this last year spent money on like December 28 I try to fight them about it and they were not letting me go anybody have experience arguing this issue with them and who the contact would be greatly appreciated please let me know thanks
If I opened my card in December and it closes in January will I get 300 credit for 2019?
“If you applied for your Sapphire Reserve on or after 5/21/17, the annual travel credit is based on your cardmembership year. In other words if you opened a card on 3/1/19 and your statement closes on the 1st of the month, you will get a $300 credit for travel spending from 3/1/19 through 4/1/20 and it will reset annually on 4/1.”