Chase opens 'Apple Ultimate Rewards Store' for discounts on Apple hardware

Memoji on iPhone XS

U.S. bank Chase on Tuesday opened the "Apple Ultimate Rewards Store," a site where people with eligible credit cards can knock down the price of Apple devices with points earned through purchases.

People must have a Sapphire, Freedom, or Ink card to gain access through the Ultimate Rewards portal. Each Apple device has a point value — an Apple TV 4K, for example, is 17,900, while an Apple Watch Series 4 is 39,900, and a 64-gigabyte iPhone XS costs 99,900.

Shoppers can still get a product with partial points, but they'll have to make up the difference with another form of payment, through the Chase store. To kickstart the program Chase is temporarily translating one Ultimate Rewards point into 1 cent. Under that arrangement, at least some of the store's prices are comparable to Apple's list costs.

The bank didn't say when the store would switch to its normal point value, or what that might be.

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6 Comments

mac-daddy

said about 5 years ago

I don't see this as relevant considering Chase has always allowed you to redeem your points for cash, which in turn could be applied to Apple hardware purchases (and literally anything else).

urashid

said about 5 years ago

When purchasing travel products from chase website, you get a 50% bonus if you use points (e.g., 10,000 points are worth 15,000). They should do something similar for Apple products if they want people to spend points instead of converting to cash.

zoetmb

said about 5 years ago

Most of these programs are pretty worthless -- most translate to 6/10th of a cent for every dollar spent. So spending $1000 gets you a $6 benefit, but the benefit is calculated at list prices, so it's really closer to a $4 or $5 benefit. I have one card with Chase points, but I don't think I've ever gotten anything out of it. With one of my Citibank cards, I can use points to pay off certain purchases (not all qualify), but it only works if you have enough points to pay for the entire charge.

adbe

said about 5 years ago

zoetmb said:

Most of these programs are pretty worthless -- most translate to 6/10th of a cent for every dollar spent. So spending $1000 gets you a $6 benefit, but the benefit is calculated at list prices, so it's really closer to a $4 or $5 benefit. I have one card with Chase points, but I don't think I've ever gotten anything out of it. With one of my Citibank cards, I can use points to pay off certain purchases (not all qualify), but it only works if you have enough points to pay for the entire charge.

Even at a standard conversion rate Chase Sapphire Preferred offers a straight 1pt/1c exchange. Spending $1000 gets you exactly $10.

Depending on the flavor of card you have, certain classes of purchases may return higher rewards rates: E.G. a travel card may offer 2 points for every dollar spend on dining out, taxis, hotels, airfare etc.

Also, often web-purchases earn higher reward rates. For example, if I walk into BestBuy I'll get 1pt/$1, but if I order online I get 2pts/$1.

They are far from worthless if you make an effort to work them. Whether they're economically sustainable is another matter.

williamh

said about 5 years ago

zoetmb said:

Most of these programs are pretty worthless -- most translate to 6/10th of a cent for every dollar spent. So spending $1000 gets you a $6 benefit, but the benefit is calculated at list prices, so it's really closer to a $4 or $5 benefit. I have one card with Chase points, but I don't think I've ever gotten anything out of it. With one of my Citibank cards, I can use points to pay off certain purchases (not all qualify), but it only works if you have enough points to pay for the entire charge.

Not true. Most of them translate to 1% minimum. For example, Capital One has such as benefit that you can apply to your balance - 1%. Fidelity Investments has a card with a benefit of a 2% contribution to an IRA. After taxes - it's worth more than 2%. The Sapphire card referenced in the article gives you 3% back on travel purchases and you get a 50% addition if the points are put towards travel (as Urashid mentioned above) so that's worth 4.5%. I checked the website you use for booking travel using points and lots of discount airlines and hotels are available (Icelandic Airlines for example) so you aren't getting screwed that way. You can indeed book travel that is a much better deal than you could get elsewhere, points considered. People sometimes seem to get silly about accumulating and using points, but it's a nice benefit particularly when you're going to be spending the money anyway. I charged a college tuition not long ago - nice little free something as a result through the points. (And I will pay off the balance immediately - duh - you don't pay interest to get points.)

To the subject at hand - if the Apple site is giving you the straight 1% which I could take in cash, there's no real point to it.