Chase Sapphire Reserve | Rob Pegoraro

For years, I resisted the requests of various credit-card issuers to add their apps to my smartphone. Why bother when I can log into their sites in my phone’s browser? But three of them finally won me over in the simplest way possible: bribing me.

American Express, Chase and Citi didn’t pay me directly to install their apps on my Pixel 3a. But beyond reducing an account login to a tap of my finger on that phone’s fingerprint reader, these apps offer simpler access than these companies’ own sites to the rebates and discounts I can opt into with designated merchants–and in some cases, to their regular cash-back rewards. So these apps effectively do hand me money, one $5, $10 or 20% per-transaction credit at a time.

Photo shows Chase, Citi and Amex cards atop the back of a Pixel 3a phone.

Here’s how I rank these three Android releases:

1: Amex. The American Express app puts a button for Amex Offers right in the bottom row of its home page, then not only lists the offers awaiting your opt-in but provides an “Explore Nearby Offers” button to plot the closest merchants on a map. (If only you could search through them, as Amex is quite prolific with these deals; grouping these by category would help.) An “Added to Card” link lists those you already put in for, with the ones soonest to expire shown first. The app also shows a running total of how much money you’ve saved with these offers.

2: Chase. You have to swipe down to see the home screen’s Chase Offers module and its peek at three of your available rebates (with a helpful “new” stamp on the latest ones) and a number badge counting how many await (as I type this, 18). Tap that number to see all of them or eyeball only those in a category like “Dining” or “Shopping.” You don’t get a map view here, but on the other hand most of these seem to promote online merchants. (I wrote a cheat sheet Thursday for Patreon readers about the rebates available through all three issuers for digital services, the second time I’ve done that this year.) Chase fails to list the offers you’ve added to your card in first-to-expire chronological order, but the limited inventory here makes that less of an issue.

3: Citi Mobile. This app needs serious work. It effectively buries the Merchant Offers that Citi began offering in December; you have to tap “Services” in the bottom rail, tap “Products & Offers” on the next screen, then wait a few seconds before the currently featured offers materialize. Tapping “SEE ALL” produces a long list, grouped by such categories as “Travel” and “Dining & Entertainment.” This shows each merchant not by name but under a tiny thumbnail of its icon; with so many restaurants included, the absence of a map view like Amex’s represents a huge missed opportunity. Finally, this app fails to list enrolled offers in chronological order of expiration.

These apps also share the collective fault of serving as a little financial distraction machine. But having given up hope years ago of shopping like a normal human being, what’s one other screen to check for a possible discount or rebate before a purchase?

I got a giant financial firm to treat me to a nice dinner and a reasonably comfortable hotel room, and I only had to ask once.

But that is what Chase promised with the trip-delay coverage on the credit card I use for business (and also offered on the Sapphire Reserve card carried by almost every avgeek I know). I’d just never cashed in this feature before, and I’d thought they’d make the process a little more difficult.

Should you find yourself in a similar situation, here’s how it worked.

Step one: Miss a flight. In my case, a line of afternoon thunderstorms shut down the airport in San Antonio as I was heading home from covering the Geoint Symposium conference there. That ensured I’d miss my evening flight from Houston back to National Airport and would instead have to fly home the next morning (my thanks to the helpful SAT United Club agents for getting me a spot on the first flight to DCA when only first-class seats were left).

Step two: Pay for what you need. First I got dinner–I treated myself a little at Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen in terminal E–and then I booked myself a hotel. Knowing I could get that covered, I didn’t stress over my choices and chose the closest decent option Marriott’s app listed, a SpringHill Suites just outside the airport with free shuttle service to and from IAH. Having all these on the same card as my flight simplified things, but that’s also basic business accounting.

Step three: Get documentation. Keeping receipts for dinner and lodging was obvious, but trip-delay coverage also demands verification that you got those bonus hours away from home. At United, this involved sending an e-mail to delayletter@united.com requesting confirmation of my missed connection; two days later, an airline rep e-mailed a PDF outlining what weather did to my itinerary.

Step four: File your claim. After I got home and read One Mile At A Time blogger Ben Schlappig’s recap of exercising his own trip-delay coverage, I opened a claim at the Eclaims site that Chase employs. There, I plugged in the basic details of my travel–original flights, replacement flight, total resulting expenses–and uploaded PDFs of my dinner receipts (I scanned in both the itemized check and signed total), original flight booking receipt, hotel bill and United delay letter.

Step five: Wait for compensation. Nine business days after I submitted the claim, I got an e-mail reporting approval of it. The money should be in my bank account in three to five business days, which means I’ll have it before I need to pay off the credit-card balance.

That made me a satisfied customer… and one wishing I could jump into a time machine to tell myself to exercise this protection right after 2015’s weather-induced IAH overnight instead of waiting until after Chase’s 60-day window to claim my coverage had closed.

Rob Pegoraro

Occasional shop talk about journalism, technology and a few other things

Tag Archives: Chase Sapphire Reserve

A small consumer victory: exercising a Chase credit card’s trip-delay coverage