Chase Sapphire Reserve Trip Delay Claim Delays
One of the main reasons I have chosen to keep the Chase Sapphire Reserve over the years is because of its suite of travel benefits. Yes, I also love Ultimate Rewards and find the travel credit to be among the easiest to use, but for me the idea of having primary rental car coverage and decent trip delay benefits is one that brings peace of mind.
With that said, the truth is I have rarely used said benefits. In fact the only time I used the benefits was a few years ago when my wife’s bag was lost. The claim was filed and paid relatively quickly, but that was in the days before Covid. I’ve been interested to see how things are in today’s world and unfortunately am finding out the hard way.
Chase Sapphire Reserve Trip Delay Claim Experience
Back in late February my family and I were stuck for two extra nights in Dallas when an ice storm forced the cancellation of over 400 flights including ours. Our Frontier plane tickets were paid for with the Chase Sapphire Reserve and cost a grand total of $113.94 for 3 tickets. But what about all of their fees? I don’t pay any thanks to my top tier status gained through the match.
Chase’s Guide to Benefits describes the coverage as follows:
Trip Delay Reimbursement covers up to a maximum of five hundred ($500.00) dollars for each purchased ticket for reasonable expenses, on a one-time-basis, incurred if your Covered Trip is delayed by a Covered Hazard for more than six (6) hours or requires an overnight stay. To be eligible for this coverage, you need to purchase either a portion or the entire cost of your Common Carrier fare using your Account
Based on the terms we should have been eligible for up to $1500 in (reasonable) expenses for our delayed trip. Weather is a covered hazard and our flight was cancelled by the airline with the soonest rebooking available being two days. We stayed at a Hyatt Regency and didn’t go crazy with spending as to keep everything “reasonable”.
Applying for Chase Sapphire Reserve Trip Delay Coverage
Once the ice storm passed we got home and filed a claim. The initial claim process was fairly simple with us providing the basic information for our claim on March 4. This is the message we received after submitting our claim online to Chase’s third party insurance provider.
A claims examiner will be reviewing your information and contacting you within 5 business days to outline the next steps of the process. Please allow 2 business days for any uploaded documents to be available to your examiner.
This all seems quite reasonable right? And exactly one week later on March 11 our claims examiner emailed us asking for some more evidence. I uploaded a copy of the email showing Frontier cancelled the flight and boarding passes for the flight we took a couple of days later. All of the info requested was uploaded on March 11 and now they have ghosted me. My claim status has remained in pending status despite them having all of the documentation for over a month.
Chase Sapphire Reserve Trip Delay Claim – Should I Call?
The main reason for this post is to inform people that the claims process is just not as simple as before. I can imagine Covid has not only caused staffing issues, but has also caused the number of claims to skyrocket. They simply aren’t processing stuff in a timely manner. I guess at this point the big question is whether I should call. Considering I can track my claim in the system I have been hesitant to call, but I know someone could potentially fast track it. I suppose it isn’t a huge rush but it would be nice to get paid.
Chase Sapphire Reserve Trip Delay Claim Delays – Bottom Line
Perhaps the moral of the story is that in current times just about everything is taking longer than before. That’s okay, but just expect to wait for travel insurance claims. I’ll follow up when I get this resolved and let you know whether I finally broke down and called. In the mean time feel free to share you recent travel insurance experiences to help people better navigate the current world of travel!
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My claim was denied because JetBlue will not respond to my request why the flight was delayed. Can anyone tell me how to retrieve that document? Many thanks
Seems like they should mention this long process in the marketing material for their cards.
I have the same story with my claim. Filed on 2/14, still waiting…
Same thing happened to me. Apparently you’re not supposed to upload the additional documents, but rather reply to the email with the additional documentation. I did that, and the claim was approved a few days later.
Thanks for the tip Ken. I’ll try that!