Chase Ultimate Rewards can now be redeemed for Apple products within the Ultimate Rewards redemption system. Standard redemption value for Apple products is .75 cents per point. There is currently a time-limited redemption value of 1 cent per point as part of the launch. If you don’t have enough points to cover the purchase, the system automatically uses up your points and charges the rest to your card.
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I literally don’t see any reason someone would want to shop Apple through Ultimate Rewards. Even at the current promotional 1 cent-per-point rate, you may as well redeem the points for cash and use that cash to buy the Apple product on apple.com while going through a shopping portal and using the credit card of your choice. And of course, many people get better redemption values for travel.
DO NOT use Chase Apple Ultimate Rewards Store! They are nothing but a scam!!!! They steal your points and don’t ship your Apple Products!!! Stay far away! Instead, redeem your points as credit to your card and buy from Apple DIRECTLY!
UR points = free stuff. UR points converted into cash sitting in checking account = no longer free. Just like people’s “free” vacations using UR points.
Chuck, as you concluded at the end of your post, this offer is useless and dumb. So I suggest you not to spend your valuable time on this low-value thing in future. Whoever likely will “take” the offer are not typically the readers of this blog. Vice verse, the readers of this blog doesn’t need this remind from doing stupid things. Show us something unique to your deal style :).
I agree, but this can be useful for people that quickly see the new option and just want to quickly confirm it’s trash. Plus others might google it at a later date and not be as educated about why it’s a bad deal. I think it’s as important to write about bad deals as it is about good deals.
Kind of agree. But probably I will just use several sentences in that post and the subject is straightforward, “Do NOT redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards for the new options: Apple Products” or “Chase Ultimate Rewards can now be Redeemed for Apple Products and Why you should ignore”
Seriously. Cannot believe people fall for this.
You can’t believe people are stupid? Jeez, look around!
Either their math is wrong or your post is wrong about base value.
100:75 is 33.33% more (compared to 25% in the screenshot).
Or perhaps the default value for Apple redemptions is .8 (compared to .75 in your post)? 100:80 would be 25% more.
Note: bad redemption regardless, but curious about the math.
Possible
You have to be der stupid to fall for this. “Special Offer” of 1c per point? Wow.
Is there sales tax when redeeming points for merchandise?
I was thinking this also. Could save you a decent percentage if it negates sales tax (like a coupon). But I doubt it will be the case.
Of course there is. Duh.
I know it’s probably not the case, but there are several reward programs that act as a coupon and reduce sales tax. I can think of two off the top of my head: Kohls and Gamestop. Both point systems (Yes to You rewards that turn into Kohls cash and power up points) convert to coupons and hence reduce sales tax. I realize this is probably not the case here, but it’s not unheard of.
Math is hard for chase, I guess.
Nah, math is easy for Chase. They’re going off the psychological principle that people are dumb, and will click the button to use their points on the checkout page because it’s easy. This saves them a 25% payout per customer. If people redeem $1,000,000 worth of points they just saved $250,000
The math that chase messed up relates specifically to the phrase “25% more” If the original value of the point is .75 cents and the promotional value is 1 cent then the current value is 33% more than standard. 1-.75 = .25 .25/.75 = .33 or 33%. People generally confuse “percentage more” wording. If I were to say the promotion is 25 basis points more than normal it would be accurate as basis points refer to the percentage value and not relation-ally to the original percent.
Exactly. Chase knows exactly what they’re doing. Some of their customers are under-informed enough to think this is a good deal, and thus they save Chase money.
The same reason you get lower redemption values at Amazon.com. Heck, even the using the points from the Amazon Chase card at a 1:1 ratio is worse than buying it and redeeming for a statement credit at 1:1 as you lose out on the 5% when you pay with points directly.