Chase Marriott Premier Vs Chase Marriott Premier Plus – Should You Upgrade?

The Chase Marriott Premier Plus is now accepting applications, in addition Chase Marriott Premier cardholders can now upgrade to the Premier Plus and receive a bonus of 0 to 50,000 Marriott points. Let’s compare the two cards to see what the differences are and whether it makes to upgrade or not.

	Premier	Premier Plus
Annual Fee	$85	$95
Free night certificate on anniversary	Category 1-5 properties (up to 25,000 points)	On any property up to 35,000 points
Trip Cancellation Insurance	Yes	No
Trip Interruption Insurance	Yes	No
15 Credits Towards elite status	Yes, plus one for every $3,000 in spend	Starting in 2019, no additional ones with spend
Elite status	(This card gives Silver status due to the 15 night elite credits)	Silver status, plus gold if you spend $35,000 each account year
Points earned at Marriott/SPG properties	5x	6x
Points earned on all other purchases	1x	2x

In addition to this upgrading will also give you anywhere from 0 bonus points to 50,000 points. There are a few things I’m unclear on:

• How the increase in annual fee works. Are you charged an additional $10 regardless of when the annual fee on your Premier card posted? Or is it prorated based on how long is left in your card member year? One thing I do know is that if you’ve had the card for less than a year you won’t be charged anything additional due to the CARD act preventing this.
• The differences between the free night certificates. The original Premier card offers a free night at any category 1-5 property, under the new joint program a category 5 property costs at least 35,000 points until January 1st, 2019 with the introduction of peak/off peak pricing and even then it drops to minimum of 30,000 points. I had assumed this was an error, but are the free night certificates on this card being devalued?
• What happens with the 15 credits for elite status. I assume if you’ve received this on the Premier card already, then you won’t lose them when you upgrade but the Premier Plus card specifically states that benefit isn’t coming until 2019 so maybe they will retroactively take them away?

It’s a shame that the F.A.Q doesn’t address any of these questions. One thing it does make clear is that your account information will stay the same, but the CVV/security code will change. This means the information on your credit report will also stay the same and upgrading will not affect your 5/24 status. Upgrading should also not affect when you’ll be eligible for the bonus again (this is based on when you last received the sign up bonus and I doubt the upgrade bonus will count).

Most readers will want to know, should I upgrade or should I not upgrade? Personally I’d just wait until we get a bit more clarify on how this upgrading process works. I think for most people upgrading will make sense (especially with the free night certificate difference) but keeping the old card might make sense in some fringe cases and even more so if the free night certificates are identical.