Changes Coming To Chase Freedom Card
Last month Chase announced quite a few “enhancements” to the Sapphire Preferred card. While their use of that word was a little misleading, they did add primary auto insurance to the card while eliminating several other features such as the 7% annual points dividend.
In a similar way, Chase announced changes to the Freedom card today and it isn’t good. Currently Chase Freedom cardholders who also have a Chase checking account get a 10% annual rebate on all points earned during the year. Earn 20,000 points in the year and you get 2,000 back! It is a great deal.
Unfortunately at the end of 2015, this rebate will go away with the final points posting on the January, 2016 statement. Chase has also announced a few other minor changes including the elimination of paper check refunds and travel bookings through Ultimate Rewards will no longer earn an extra point per dollar after December 2015.
Chase has a setup a webpage with a full list of all of the changes. (link)
Analysis
This is just another sign that Chase is doing well and thus is able to scale back the more generous of their benefits. When they eliminated the annual dividend on the Sapphire Preferred, it only seemed like a matter of time before something like this would happen.
I currently have two Freedom cards and love them for the 5% rotating categories. While the elimination of the 10% rebate is a bummer, the Freedom is still one of the best no annual fee cards out there, especially when paired with one of Chase’s premium cards which give you the ability to transfer your points to their travel partners such as United, Hyatt & British Airways.
Conclusion
In the end I am not surprised by this change and nor should you be. The banks are doing better and no longer need to offer these lucrative ancillary benefits to entice us. Of course there are still smaller banks out there looking to gain market share, so there will always probably be great deals to be had.
What do you think? Is the elimination of the 10% rebate a big deal? What about the other changes?
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I would like to see Chase replace the 10% with something else like they did for the Sapphire Preferred. You’d think they wouldn’t want a run. I can see people moving their money elsewhere if they have no incentive to stay.
They must feel the product is still really competitive when compared to other cards. I actually think it is still competitive, but there is no doubt that it is a blow to current cardholders. Perhaps they will ad something between now and the end of 2015 when the 10% bonus goes away.