The other day I saw a rather interesting email from Chase regarding my Sapphire Reserve card. It was a standard marketing email, but one that caught my eye. It caught my eye because it was promoting a use of points that I would never advise and one that is typically a terrible value. That is, the email from Chase highlighted an option to buy Apple merchandise with Ultimate Rewards points.
Typically buying merchandise with points represents absolutely terrible value. A while back I looked at American Express’ shopping portal and most items cost an absurd number of points. When looking through that shopping portal most consumers would only get $0.005/point of value when paying with points. To put that into perspective, I try to get at least $0.10/point of value when booking airfare.
So, after seeing the email from Chase I decided to check it out to see just how bad of a deal it was.
Buy Apple Products With Chase Ultimate Rewards Points
After opening the email I found some copy which encouraged card holders to use points to buy apple products to lower the “out-of-pocket” cost of many of Apple’s products.
Further below were a few pictures of Apple’s latest products which some may be holding off purchasing because of their high price tags.
Apple AirPods especially are an item that a ton of people purchase, but few want to spend $150+ for headphones.
Then, at the bottom of the email was a simple note from Chase reminding card holders that if they do purchase products with points their purchases will also be covered under Chase’s Purchase Protection program.
At this point I was intrigued by how much these items would cost when using points so I decided to click the link in the email and visit the Chase Ultimate Rewards Shopping Portal.
Buying Apple Products With Chase Points Is A Bad Value
First, I decided to check out AirPods. AirPods are at least $150 and are definitely a purchase I could see people making with points as they would consider the AirPods free.
To my surprise, Chase is valuing Ultimate Rewards points at $0.01/point for apple purchases. So, $159.00 AirPods only cost 15,900 points, which isn’t awful.
Likewise, it seems as though Chase is allowing for $0.01/point of value for all Apple Purchases. Again, this isn’t as bad a deal as I originally suspected, but it’s still a bad deal.
While you are getting $0.01/point when shopping at Apple, you can easily get $0.015/point of value when just using your points to pay for travel through the Ultimate Rewards travel portal. So, if you have 10,000 points and use them at Apple you’ll get $100 of value. However, by using those same points to pay for travel you’ll get $150 of value.
Taking this a step further, if you transfer points to United and book a Lufthansa First Class ticket you’ll get at least $0.05 to $0.10/point of value. So, those same 10,000 points, when pooled together, could be worth about $1,000!
Final Thoughts
Buying merchandise with points always seems like a great idea. If you really want AirPods, but don’t want to spend the money, you can use points and the purchase feels like it’s now free. However, when you use points to pay for merchandise you will typically get a terrible value for your hard earned points. So, do yourself a favor and avoid making a purchase like this. Instead, continue saving your points until you have enough to use them wisely.
The only reason that I’d consider taking advantage of something like this would be if I had just burned a large number of points somewhere else and had a small balance I wished to liquidate. If I had 2,000 or 3,000 points laying around I’d consider making a small purchase. However, even then, I’d still probably transfer those points to the Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer program where I could pool them with Citi ThankYou points and Amex Membership Rewards points for a better value.
