A lot of people have asked this question, so I thought it worthy of a post:
If I upgrade to the Sapphire Reserve card, does that restart my 48-month clock when I’ll be eligible again? For example, suppose I got a Sapphire Preferred bonus in January 2017, which means I’ll be eligible for a new Sapphire signup bonus in January 2021. If I now upgrade my Preferred to a Sapphire Reserve, will I need to wait 48 months from now to get a new Sapphire bonus or will I still be eligible for a new bonus in January 2021?
The terms specify that you get one Sapphire bonus each 48 months; there’s nothing mentioned about not having the card.
This product is available to you if you do not have any Sapphire card and have not received a new cardmember bonus for any Sapphire card in the past 48 months
Indeed, if you currently have a Sapphire Preferred card which you’ve held for 4 years straight, you should be able to close the card (or downgrade it to a Freedom card) and then immediately apply for a new Sapphire Preferred or Reserve card.
Likewise, upgrading and downgrading should not reset the clock since you still “have not received a new cardmember bonus for any Sapphire card in the past 48 months”.
I’m fairly confident of this being accurate, but if anyone has a solid data point to confirm this (or if it’s wrong, of course), please leave a comment below.
The only thing to beware of is that when you do want to apply for a new Sapphire card in the future, you won’t be able to be holding any Sapphire card, so be sure to get rid of the Sapphire card, or downgrade it, before applying for the new one.
In our example, you want to apply for a new Sapphire card in January 2021; that’s less than one year from when you upgraded in June 2020. You’ll have to close the card, thus potentially losing a nice amount of money on the annual fee. You might be able to downgrade to Freedom in mid-year and get an annual fee prorate (last I know they do prorate 1), but they don’t typically allow downgrades during the first year, and this might be treated as ‘first year’ since your upgrade.
[Tangentially, reader rocky_NNC notes that the Sapphire bonus clock starts ticking based on the date bonus is received, not the date you first applied.]
In short, so long as you don’t plan to apply anytime within the next 12 months, you should be fine. Just remember to get rid of the existing Sapphire card before applying for a new one.
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