[jwells89]

Travel cards haven’t been that restrictive in the time I’ve been using them (since around 2016). Chase Sapphire Preferred/Reserve and Amex Gold/Platinum don’t have any restrictions on what earns points, it just needs to code as travel (flights, rides, or hotels) or restaurants and while there’s some benefits from using the Chase/Amex portals to book even that’s not required. Similarly points can used towards anything that codes as travel.

Of course there are airline/hotel specific cards and those may be more restrictive but I’ve never seen the point in those.

[wombat-man]

I used to have a sapphire preferred, which promised 1.25x point value or something when spent on travel. When I went to book via the chase portal, everything was magically .25x more expensive when compared to the airlines page.

[jwells89]

I can’t say I’ve observed that. Checking just now the prices I’m seeing in the Chase portal are identical to those listed on Expedia (which the Chase portal is built on). Some flights are slightly cheaper on airliner sites though.

[wombat-man]

hmm, maybe it was just jetblue specific, or something about the time I was booking. But it left a bad taste in my mouth, I decided to cancel the card at that point.

[falsenapkin]

> but I’ve never seen the point in those

The one points card I have actually is a Marriott card which obviously only works with Marriott, but Marriott is everywhere and doesn't restrict scheduling options so it was an easy choice at the time. I used to travel weekly for work and the hotel was on me for reimbursement whereas the airline was on company card, and Marriott was the preferred booking option by my company so it made a lot of sense to get the card. The math at the time for that was like 5-7% when spending the points at Marriott plus a free night for what was an $85/year card. Useful for personal travel.