A few days ago, a moment I’d long been waiting for finally arrived: I was finally offered the chance to product change an old card to the Capital One SavorOne card. I am thrilled to finally have that card in my household even if the physical replacement card isn’t yet off the presses, but the addition of the SavorOne to my wallet begs the question: will I finally dump the Amex Gold card?
A hot reader tip leads to my product change
I have to start out with a word of thanks for reader Darin, who reported a few days ago in our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group that he was “finally able to product change a card to the SavorOne” after trying “for ages”. That was music to my ears as I had also been trying to find a product change path to a Capital One SavorOne card for ages.
For those unfamiliar, it’s worth noting that Capital One product changes are an odd bird / mixed bag. Capital One refers to any product change as an “upgrade” (even when changing from a card with a higher annual fee to a card with a lower annual fee or no annual fee). Unlike most issuers, there is no clear pattern as to product change options. Capital One’s computer system provides certain options to certain cardholders and if the computer system doesn’t offer you the product change that you want, you’re just out of luck.
That’s significantly different than how product changes work with other issuers. Most issuers allow product changes within a “family” (like you could product change a Hilton Surpass card to an Aspire card or a plain Hilton Honors card for instance). Some issuers offer a product change to almost anything (Citi will generally allow you to product change a consumer card to almost any consumer card they offer). Some other issuers don’t generally offer product changes at all. But I think that Capital One stands alone in offering a random, specific assortment that is targeted to the individual cardholder.
I periodically check for upgrade offers. On desktop, you can do this by logging and navigating to card account and then clicking the “I Want To…” cog and selecting “View Offers and Upgrades”.
That link brings you to a page where you may see the option to “swap your card”.
If you’re eligible for a product change, you’ll then see your options for an “upgrade”.
I put the word “upgrade” in quotation marks because you’ll notice that in my case I had a Capital One Venture Rewards card (which has a $95 annual fee) and my “upgrade” options are all to no-annual fee cards: The Capital One Quicksilver Rewards Card, the Capital One Venture One card, or the Capital One SavorOne card. We would traditionally refer to that as a downgrade, although in this case I do feel like I’m getting something of an upgrade.
I selected to upgrade to the SavorOne and received the confirmation message that my upgrade might take 2-3 days to complete and that I’d receive a new card in the mail but that the card number wouldn’t change, so I could continue to use my current card. Within the next 24 hours, the card changed to the Savor One in my Capital One login.
I’m really thankful that Darin shared his experience with this as I’d been looking for this “upgrade” offer for a long time and was thrilled to finally get it. For what it’s worth, Darin reported seeing the Savor One as an “upgrade” from a Quicksilver Mastercard. In my case, it was an “upgrade” from a Venture card, through my Venture card began life as some other more generic Capital One card that I eventually upgraded to a Venture card. At the time when I upgraded, Capital One had long been issuing Venture cards as Visa cards, but my old generic card was a Mastercard, so my Venture card has been a Mastercard for years. I mention that only to say that both Darin and I had Mastercards. I’m not sure whether that made the difference in making the product change available for us.
I should also note that my wife has a Venture X card (and also a Venture card), so there was no good reason for me to keep the Venture card. It’s one of my oldest cards, so I’ve wanted to keep the line open for average age of account purposes but had been hesitant to product change to a no-fee card hoping to not lock myself out of a change to a Savor One should it ever become available. That moment finally arrived!
Why I’m excited about a product change to the Capital One SavorOne card
It may seem surprising or strange to some that I’m excited about product changing from a Venture card that earns miles to a no-annual-fee cash back card. That excitement comes from both the earning structure of the SavorOne card and the transferability of Capital One rewards.
The Capital One Savor One card offers unlimited 3% cash back on grocery, dining, entertainment, and popular streaming services (and 1% back on all other purchases). It also temporarily (through November 14, 2024) offers 10% back on Uber and Uber Eats and provides a monthly statement credit for UberOne membership through 11/14/24.
That’s already not bad at all for a card with no annual fee, but it gets better if you also have a card that earns Capital One miles.
That’s because Capital One offers the ability to easily move rewards between your own cards (and somewhat less easily to move rewards to others). It is possible to move rewards from a card that earns cash back to a card that earns miles at a rate of $0.01 = 1 mile.
Within your own account, you simply hit the “View Rewards” button and then select “Move Rewards” in order to do this. Note that you can only move rewards from cash back to miles, not the other way around.
This makes Capital One’s cash back cards very intriguing since 3% cash back can alternatively become 3 transferable Capital One miles per dollar spent. I also have an old Capital One VentureOne card (which also has no annual fee), so I now have the capacity to earn an unlimited 3% cash back on grocery, dining, entertainment, and popular streaming services and convert that to 3x Capital One miles and then transfer on to airline and hotel partners using my Venture One card. With no annual fee at all, that’s a great deal given Capital One’s strong stable of transfer partners.
As mentioned above, it is also possible to move rewards to another cardholder, though you can’t do that online. You’ll need to call the number on the back of your card and have both your card number and the card number of the cardholder to whom you want to move your rewards. My wife has done this numerous times to move miles from her account to mine and even cash back from her Spark Cash card to my VentureOne card.
For those curious, the reason I’m excited about product changing rather than opening the card new is two-fold. First of all, Capital One is known to be tough on approvals for people with many credit cards and I haven’t had any luck with them in the past couple of years. Second, the welcome bonus on the SavorOne card tends to be quite small. While I like a welcome bonus as much as the next person, I don’t really want to jeopardize my ability to get approved for a more valuable bonus elsewhere for a bonus that is often just $200 cash back (which can become 20,000 miles) on the SavorOne card. I’m happy to have its ongoing earning structure to complement my spending patterns while I simultaneously work on more valuable bonuses.
Is it time to finally dump the Gold cards in my household?
About a year and a half ago, I published a post wondering whether I should go after a SavorOne card and dump the Amex Gold card (See: Should I dump the Amex Gold card for the Capital One SavorOne Cash Rewards credit card? (On Nick’s mind)). At the time, the internal debate was mostly philosophical since I didn’t have the option to product change to the SavorOne and wasn’t convinced that I wanted to waste a new account application on such a small welcome bonus.
However, now that I have a SavorOne card, I need to revisit my thoughts a bit.
You should see that old post if you’re interested in my previous math regarding my break-even point, but I feel like the tide has changed a bit.
At the time, I said that I’d value the monthly Uber credits offered by the Amex Gold card at 80% of face value, though I noted that might be a bit generous. I think it definitely was too generous of a valuation for the monthly Uber credit.
On the one hand, my wife and I have a few Platinum and Gold cards in our household. By adding all of our cards to a single Uber account, the monthly Uber credits stack in one account and so we have enough in credits each month to easily cover a complete meal for the family.
On the other hand, we continue to have some breakage with our credits. We had at least one month this year where we forgot to use the credits entirely and another where we didn’t use them completely. Furthermore, we very, very frequently see Uber gift cards go on sale for at least 10% off of face value (and sometimes at 20% off of face value). Although I could buy an Uber gift card at 90% of face value almost any time or 80% of face value now and then, I haven’t found myself pre-paying for Uber credit at those rates because I just don’t use Uber often enough to make it worth tying up the money in those gift cards.
And yet that’s exactly what I’m doing with my Amex Gold card annual fee money: I’m effectively tying up my money (in paying the annual fee) in Uber credit. But worse than gift cards, that credit expires at the end of every month, use it or lose it (and I sometimes lose it). I’d probably feel differently if I lived in an area with many Uber Eats options, but I don’t, so using the credits requires some planning and effort.
So how much do I value the monthly Uber credit on the Amex Gold card? It’s hard to say.
Obviously, a 10% or 20% discount on Uber Gift Cards isn’t enough to make me a buyer (and a 10% discount shouldn’t be enough of a discount for now since my SavorOne card will earn 10% back on Uber through 11/14/24 and that can convert to 10x miles that I value at around 1.5c per mile, which makes it effectively like 15% back). I’m not even sure that a 30% discount would be enough to force my hand to the “buy” button. At 50% off of face value though, I’d probably load up on some Uber credit knowing that I’ll eventually save half off of dinner at some point during our travels.
However, the Gold card’s monthly Uber credits aren’t something I can use “at some point during our travels” but rather are a “use it or lose it” once-a-month credit. I am therefore not convinced that I should even value those credits at 50% of face value. Greg often says that you should consider the price you’d be willing to pay to subscribe to a particular benefit. How much would I be willing to pay in advance to subscribe to a monthly $10 Uber credit that expires at the end of every month? Honestly, not very much given the fact that we’ll lose it some months and might have to stretch to find a use during others. I’d probably be willing to pay $30 up-front to subscribe to those $10 monthly credits, but I don’t don’t think I’d pay far more.
As I’ve previously noted, I just don’t often use the other $10 monthly credit on the Gold card. I should make a concerted effort to buy a $10 gift card each month at a qualifying merchant, but I don’t. So for me, I don’t really value that monthly credit at all.
That has me considering the $250 annual fee on the Amex Gold card at more like $220 (after subtracting the $30 that I’d be willing to pay for the monthly Uber credits). Keep in mind that this is just a personal valuation based on my circumstances. If you live in a city where you order from Uber Eats and GrubHub weekly, I imagine that you would value the monthly credits much higher than I do.
The Amex Gold card of course offers more points on its category bonuses. With the Gold card, I can earn 4 points per dollar spent on dining or 4 points per dollar spent at U.S. Supermarkets on up to $25K in purchases per year (then 1x).
By contrast, the Savor One only offers 3% back (an effective 3 points per dollar spent) in those categories. However, Capital One offers those categories without caps and worldwide (with no foreign transaction fees). It also adds “entertainment”, which is a category I had mostly ignored, though the Wells Fargo Attune card has me thinking that I need to dig into what qualifies as “entertainment” with Capital One.
Ignoring annual caps and additional bonus categories, does it make sense to keep the Gold card for 1 additional point per dollar spent?
If we imagine that I value both sets of points at 1.5c per point (which isn’t exactly spot on with our Reasonable Redemption Values, but it’s close enough), how much would I need to spend on the Amex Gold card to earn enough to outweigh the $220 that I view as the “net” fee?
Amex Gold
- $220 = 14,667 points at a value of $0.015 per point.
- I would therefore have to spend $14,667 at 4x to earn 58,667 Membership Rewards points
- 58,667 Membership Rewards points at a value of 1.5c per point = $880
Capital One SavorOne
- $14,667 x 3% cash back = $440.01 = 44,001 miles
- 44,001 miles x value of 1.5c per point = $660.02
If I will spend much more than $14,667 in the Amex Gold card’s 4x categories, then I’d still come out ahead with the Gold card despite the $220 in “net” annual fee (though keep in mind that I’d stop earning 4x at U.S. Supermarkets after $25K in annual spend there, so I’d inevitably switch to spending on the SavorOne at that point and I would want to bring my SavorOne card when traveling abroad both for wider acceptance and what I expect would be 3x worldwide on grocery).
In my household, we do spend more than $14,667 per year between supermarkets and dining. It therefore looks like we probably should keep an Amex Gold card.
That said, I’m less convinced now than I was before that keeping a Gold card makes sense given the fact that I now have a SavorOne. At the moment, both my wife and I have Gold cards. It just isn’t worth having two of them at $500 in combined annual fees. We’ll definitely drop one at next renewal. The math dictates that I should rationally keep one Gold card open and still use that as my primary dining and U.S. Supermarket card.
One intangible here is access to unique transfer partners. Amex and Capital One have a few differences in transfer partners. Of those differences, on the Amex side, I like ANA quite a bit in theory (though in practice, the slow transfer time and need to book round trip make it less practical). On the Capital One side, I still like Turkish for travel to Hawaii when it can be found. Given that the Amex partners that I most frequently use (Aeroplan, Avianca LifeMiles, Air France / KLM Flying Blue, and Avios) are also available to Capital One, I find the programs to be close to break-even. I might tilt a bit towards Capital One simply because I think I’m more likely to use Turkish than ANA. That gives me a slight preference for the Savor One from a transfer partner perspective, but it’s slight.
Despite the math telling me that I should keep a Gold card, I’m going to continue to monitor this. I’m not sure that I want to spend $250 per year to lock myself into spending $14,667 or more on a single card — and if I would spend less, I should definitely go with the SavorOne.
Bottom line
I was very excited to finally be able to product change an old Capital One Venture card to a SavorOne card. Capital One targets its product change opportunities, so there is no guarantee that readers will be able to make a similar product change. However, a few members of our Facebook group have reported recently being able to product change to a SavorOne after years of it not being an option, so I think it is at least possible that Capital One has targeted a wider range of customers with this product change option. I was thrilled to finally add a Savor One to our household wallet. While the math dictates that we should still keep a Gold card, I’ll have to more carefully track the numbers on that because it’s hard to ignore the allure of an effective uncapped 3x grocery and dining with no annual fee.
The post Something to Savor: A reason to dump the Gold? appeared first on Frequent Miler. Frequent Miler may receive compensation from CHASE. American Express, Capital One, or other partners.