Chase Sapphire Reserve/Preferred:
The Best Downgrading Strategy

The Chase Sapphire Reserve® is Chase’s most premier credit card on the market today. It is a travel focused credit card packed with benefits such as a $300 annual travel credit, Priority Pass membership, up to $100 Global Entry or TSA PreCheck® or NEXUS Fee Credit, high earning travel bonus categories, and more. However, it does come with a hefty annual fee of $550.

Unfortunately, there may come a time where you don’t find as much value in this card as you once have. Even with the $300 travel credit, the effective annual fee will still be about $250. So what are our options? You can keep the card, cancel, or downgrade the card (also known as a product change) to a card with a lower or no annual fee. 

Note: Chase is not known to give Retention Offers for their products.

General Recommendation for the Chase Sapphire Reserve Card

The most common downgrade strategy for the Chase Sapphire Reserve is to downgrade to the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card. The benefits of the Chase Sapphire Preferred are still great but you do lose out on the travel credit, and Priority Pass amongst other perks. However, you will retain the benefit of being able to transfer your Chase Ultimate Rewards points to travel partners and the annual fee is only $95. This is the recommended path for those who are looking to downgrade the Chase Sapphire Reserve card and want to keep the ability to transfer points to travel partners. 

General Recommendation for the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card

If you don’t want to pay an annual fee at all and are ready to let go of your Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card or the Chase Sapphire Reserve (and don’t want to downgrade to the Preferred), you can downgrade to a no fee Chase card. Your no fee options you can downgrade to are going to be the Chase Freedom Flex℠, the Chase Freedom Unlimited®, or a legacy card called the “Chase Freedom with Ultimate Rewards Visa”.

Which No Fee Card I Prefer

Please note that you NEED a Sapphire product or a Chase Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card in your household to transfer your Chase Ultimate Reward points to travel partners. Of the three no annual fee Chase cards, the legacy Chase Freedom credit card (now called “Chase Freedom with Ultimate Rewards”) is the one I’d choose. The Chase Freedom card is a legacy card and is no longer available to new applicants, however, at the time of writing, you can still product change to this card by talking to a Chase agent.

The Chase Freedom Flex took over and replaced the original Chase Freedom.

Why Is This The Best Strategy In My Opinion?

Well since the Chase Freedom is a legacy card that you can no longer sign up for, there is no sign-up bonus to worry about. Many people are concerned about product changing because you do not earn a sign-up bonus when you product change and only are eligible for sign-up bonus as a new applicant. So by product changing to the Chase Freedom, you do not lock yourself out of a future sign-up bonus. 

Another reason why I prefer the legacy Chase Freedom card is that it’s a Visa which can be used at places like Costco (US) where they currently only take Visa credit/debit cards or Mastercard Debit cards.

What If You Already Have A No Fee Chase Card?

Chase allows you to have multiple Chase Freedom products, whether it is the Chase Freedom Flex, Chase Freedom Unlimited, or legacy Chase Freedom. By product changing to the legacy Chase Freedom, you’ll have access to 5% cash back (given in points) on rotating quarterly bonus categories just like the Chase Freedom Flex. So having the Chase Freedom and Chase Freedom Flex allows you to “double dip” the rotating categories by having two cards that can earn the 5% cash back. 

Final Thoughts

Some things to note are to make sure that you product change or downgrade within 30 days after your annual fee posts and not before the annual fee posts. This ensures your relationship with the bank is still good and that your annual fee will still be refunded in full. Anything past 30 days can be pro-rated. You can also get the most out of the card by using your Chase Sapphire Reserve $300 travel credit before you downgrade. As far as I know, there has not been any case of Chase clawing back these credits after you product change. As a final note, some Chase agents may not be fully aware that the legacy Chase Freedom with Ultimate Rewards Visa is an option for a downgrade so if they give you push back, ask for a supervisor or hang up and call back later.