100% this. I book a decent amount of my leisure flights on Sapphire points only. Rebooking is trivial if you book directly with an airline, you can often do it within the app for that airline itself. Rebooking with Chase is often a 30-60 minute ordeal that can only be done over the phone involving 2-3 transfers. Often this is not even something that is your fault - the airline can rug pull the flight by changing the time or cancelling it, forcing you to undergo this ritual.

The funny (unfortunate) thing is that this used to be the opposite - years ago, Chase's in-house travel service was as close as you'd get to a white glove phone support experience in this day and age.

Then they outsourced it to Expedia, and the hold times went up and the efficiency and sanity of the whole process of dealing with any minor adjustment to your flight or travel plans degraded precipitously.

It seems like in 2021, they bought the company that was providing the backing technology for the in-house version of the service and have ditched Expedia again, so maybe this has gotten better since my last stint of big international travel?

If there is a security issue with the airline better that the intermediary has your payment information rather than the airline. When Cathay Pacific got hacked I was glad I had booked with (RIP) Vayama. Of course if this is an airline like Thai Airways that has you present the payment card at check in this might be pointless (and of course Apple Pay has obviated it too)

Can one transfer the points immediately before booking or is that process too slow. This way one could take adventange of fact that reward points do not expire.

Not from what I have seen. Prices are the same. Perhaps it depends on what international flights one is after.

I do understand the strategy of just going after the cheapest flights and I know younger people who swear by it. But these are often the same people who will not pay annual fees for credits cards, so they have never tried these rewards programs.

Also, if a customer has accumulated a large quantity of points, then she may not want to use the points on the "cheapest" options. She might want to choose more expensive ones since she is using points.