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Is the American Express Platinum still worth holding?

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If I were one of the select few bloggers with affiliate links, you would expect this to be an immediate skip, because, from their perspective, the American Express Platinum is clearly worth holding or better yet, applying for a new one! and here’s 10 affiliate links to use! Me on the other hand, hopefully you’ve come to expect a bit more objective. 

American Express Platinum

The New Annual Fee for American Express Platinum Cards

In March of 2017, American Express added a bunch of benefits to its Personal American Express Platinum card, but with those benefits, came a jarring annual fee increase to $550.

The new benefits (via Gary Leff):

  • New metal card design
  • $200 annual Uber credit (parsed out monthly)
  • 5x earning on some hotel bookings
  • Free authorized user Gold cards
  • 2 free guests on Priority Pass lounge visits
  • 2, $100 Statement Credits for Saks 5th Avenue (my add)

Then, we learned that the Business American Express Platinum card would get new benefits, too:

The new benefits, via Doctor of Credit:

  • One Year Complimentary Platinum Global Access from WeWork ($2.7k value)
  • 2, $100 Statement Credits for purchases at Dell (think this breaks out to the first 6 months of the year and second six months)
  • $100 Hotel Credit at properties in The Hotel Collection
  • 5x points earning at Amextravel.com
  • 2 free guests on Priority Pass lounge visits

Of course, the Business Platinum comes with a jaw dropping $595 annual fee.

Let us not forget, the Sign-on Bonus Rules

Some years ago, American Express introduce a “once per lifetime” rule for getting sign-on bonuses. There are some ways to circumvent this, such as for example, when American Express introduces new cards. There are some slight variations on the business side as well.

That said, I offer that more often than not, the conversation about American Express is the long term value of holding the card, since you can justify away a lot of things when you’re getting 100,000 Membership Rewards points in year one. But is a card costing $550-595 a year worth keeping long term? For me at this point, the jury was still out.

American Express Priority Passes No Longer have Priority Pass Restaurant Benefits

Late last month, it came out that for Hong Kong and US based American Express Platinum card holders will lose access to Priority Pass Restaurant Benefits. Starting 1 August, your American Express Platinum provided Priority Pass card loses significant value. If I knew which card came from American Express, it would have a giant “X” on it.

American Express Platinum, Priority Pass

Last year I wrote how Priority Pass was changing the game for airport lounges. So you can probably guess how I feel about American Express’ change to their Platinum card Priority Pass benefit.

Is American Express on its way down?

When I first started in the game, American Express was the head of the pack in the premium travel card market. They may have been the only mainstream game in town at the time. Since then, Citi Prestige came in big, and has since scaled things back, with changes such as making it harder to use their fourth night free benefit and increasing the annual fee to $495. Chase, on the other hand hasn’t made any notable pull back of benefits, unless you consider the risk of shutdown. There’s also a bunch of great discussion about Chase Shutdowns on the Milenomics Podcast, such as Episode 17.

Bottom Line: Hard to renew

Full disclosure – I just got myself a new American Express Business Platinum, with a 100k Membership Rewards sign-up bonus, so I’m in for at least the year. My wife on the other hand, has had hers for years, and we’re seriously thinking of downgrading when the annual fee hits. Both of our cards are business, and so the annual fee, while a business expense, still is significant enough that we want to be sure we are getting sufficient value. A few years ago, I had cancelled my previous American Express Platinum and we tried with me as an Authorized User. That math is even more challenged with changes like the Priority Pass downgrade.

What are your thoughts? Do you have an American Express Platinum card? Will you be renewing when the annual fee hits?

 

How to use Membership Rewards Points on Amazon

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There’s a super awesome deal going on now, that gives you 20% back on Amazon Purchases, up to $100 back, if you pay with at least one American Express Membership Rewards point. Doctor of Credit has a great and updated post on the deal. But as I was going through Amazon, I realized I’d never linked my accounts, as a result, I couldn’t use Membership Rewards Points on Amazon!

How to use Membership Rewards Points on Amazon

Linking is fairly easy to do, first you want to go to Amazon.com/Membership Rewards

Use Membership Rewards on Amazon

You’ve still got a few steps to go through though.

You’ll want to click that Get Started link, then you’ll see the following screen:

How to use Membership Rewards Points on Amazon

Once you decide to add an account, you’ll need to enter your name and your credit card number:

How to use Membership Rewards Points on Amazon

From there you’ll have to confirm address, then provide just a bit more info:

How to use Membership Rewards Points on Amazon.

Once you’ve enrolled, you’ll just need to select an American Express card to pay with, then you should have the option to pay with points. 

Wrapping Up

Hopefully this provides a pretty easy to follow way to link your American Express Membership Rewards card to your Amazon account. More importantly, hopefully this provides you a way of maximizing some of the incredible opportunities like the 20% off purchases, up to $100 back deal that is currently happening. But I’d imagine there are so many more awesome deals to come!

AMEX Business Platinum is killing 50% rebate – Get some extra points!

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AMEX Business Platinum is killing the 50% rebate. I can’t begin to put to words how I feel about the matter. I’ve not even leveraged this particular benefit–it was only first announced in October. 

AMEX Plat, American Express Business Platinum, AMEX Platinum is killing the 50% Rebate

Image courtesy of American Express.

AMEX Platinum is killing the 50% Rebate – but what was it?

American Express enhanced the AMEX Business Platinum card benefits with a 50% rebate when you use Membership Rewards “Pay with Points” program. What does that mean?

  • For economy flights – you choose an airline, and Pay with Points and you get 50% back.
  • For Business and First Class – you don’t need to choose an airline, just do Pay with Points.
  • Expect to receive that 50% rebate 6-8 weeks later

Why is American Express pulling it back?

Perhaps the obvious reason is, that it is such a lucrative benefit that people might be using it more than American Express intended. I can’t blame people for using it. Nick had an excellent post to highlight the true value of the benefit. For many, it seemed like a no brainer. That said, some of us–me!–didn’t happen to have a huge cache of Membership Rewards points, and so with American Express rolling back the benefit so soon after rolling it out, those of us long time cardholders are left holding a bag so to speak.

American Express’ reasoning for giving new card holders better benefits than loyal cardmembers

When I called in, the reasoning I was given, was that the 50% points rebate was actually written into the legal terms. I get that, since its probably the 4th most highlighted benefit on American Express’ sales page. But, they really could give longer term loyal cardmembers a similar bonus, instead they are hiding behind the original terms of the application. 

Poorly played American Express! 

Getting a few more points

Reading this news, I was unhappy! I was almost as unhappy as I was with the Alaska Air no-notice devaluation of Emirates awards! So, I did what any normal, rational person would do. I called American Express and threatened to cancel my card! Incidentally, the statement closes tomorrow with my annual fee. Maybe that gave me a bit of an edge. I reached out to a few friends and the results varied.

  • My result: 10,000 Membership Rewards points for keeping my card open. 
  • A friend’s result: 15,000 Membership Rewards points (after initially being told to pound sand) because Massachusetts requires pro-rated annual fee refunds.
  • Unfortunately my wife, who’s annual fee is not yet due, received nothing, but her annual fee will be coming due soon.

Did you call to complain? Did you receive anything for it? 

AMEX Centurion Lounge Changes, Qatar QSuite, 50th Podcast, Emirates-Etihad Merger?

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The Weekly Travel News Roundup is a collection of headlines from around the internet that caught the attention of the Tagging Miles team. Content on these blogs do not necessarily reflect the positions of Tagging Miles, and should not be considered endorsements. Have a great story we should read? Contact us now and let us know.

Travel:

  • This is from last year, but after reading a review of Lucky’s on KLM, I saw him link to Tiffany’s write-up of KLM Airlines Dutch Houses, which I thought was a really cool, and definitely lore worth knowing!
  • Could Emirates and Etihad really merge? There are rumors.
  • Basic Fares are all the rage now-a-days for airlines. But you should avoid them! Between no carry-on bag, no seat assignment, and no elite upgrades, they are just plain bad–in my opinion. So what do you do, if you’ve used your FlexPerks or Citi or Chase points to buy a ticket? Well, Ed Pizzarello, writer of Pizza in Motion has the answer!
  • Rapid Travel Chai reports that Malta’s Azure Window has collapsed. This was an iconic site, which now sits in the Mediterranean. I never got the chance to see it, although I hope to still get the chance to head over to Gozo, the location of the Azure Window. 

Credit Cards:

AMEX Centurion Lounge Changes:

Observation Deck Podcast:

Tagging Miles Posts of the Week:

The Annual SPG AMEX 30k Sign-up bonus is out, what will you do?

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SPG Purple

By now, you’ve probably seen a dozen or so Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) AMEX 30k Sign-up Bonus posts. In fact, from a casual google image search–well take a look for yourself, I see a gaggle of the normal affiliate bloggers with posts — as one would expect, because it is a good offer. But in addition to that, I see a lot of other folks posting about it. Miles to Memories (note: apparently he also has affiliates, I never noticed before!) posted that it’d increase today (posted yesterday).

Doctor of Credit always has the jump on these things, so not much of a surprise, although the comments are certainly worth reading. More importantly, the Doctor, also highlights the valuable points, such as that this is only 5k more points than usual, you can only get the personal card once in a lifetime, you can only get the business card if you haven’t held it in the last year, etc. Seriously, if you’re going to get the card, take the 5 minutes to read his post, first.

But the thing that jumps out at me more is the fact that this is a rare opportunity that non-affiliate bloggers can highlight the card, and maybe pick up a few extra points.

Pointscentric, for example (quoted in the tweet above) has an excellent point. For those folks that have the card already, and really it’s not just bloggers, it’s anyone with the card, can go here, and put in your account information to see whether it will work. Or if you prefer, you can go login to your American Express account and go to “Rewards” and under there, is “Refer a Friend.”

SPG Refer a Friend

SPG Refer a Friend

If you’re curious what cards are eligible, well, here they are:

  • Platinum Card® from American Express
  • Premier Rewards Gold Card from American Express
  • Blue Cash Preferred ® from American Express
  • Blue Cash Everyday ® from American Express
  • Starwood Preferred Guest ® Credit Card from American Express
  • Gold Delta SkyMiles ® Credit Card
  • Platinum Delta SkyMiles ® Credit Card

You’ll note that only the Starwood Preferred Guest personal credit card is eligible. Now, full disclosure, I only have the SPG Business card (having cancelled the SPG Personal a month or two ago), however, I’d encourage folks to leave a comment if they are looking for someone who does have one, or would like to refer folks. I make no guarantees, but, happy to facilitate.

So, what will you do? Will you apply for the SPG AMEX with the 5k more rewards? Who through?

A Take on the 2015 American Express Hotel Collection

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Is The American Express Hotel Collection add up?Many of you who have some form of the American Express Gold or Platinum card may have recently received a notice about the American Express Platinum Hotel Collection. Trevor got an e-mail – but I was lucky enough to get the full glossy catalog. And if you haven’t seen it yet, I don’t know that you’re missing a whole lot.

The Hotel Collection offers preferred rates at select hotels around the world and “exclusive” benefits. The exclusive benefits are limited to a $75 hotel credit (on select charges) and a free hotel room upgrade. To receive the benefits, travelers have to book at least two consecutive nights on their American Express card.

Depending on where you’re staying, The Hotel Collection might be something you may want to look into for your next trip. With “Preferred” rates, the Hotel Collection could save you some cash. That being said, I personally find that The Hotel Collection is incredibly limited in offerings.

First off, The Hotel Collection is primarily focused on independent, luxury hotels. Frequent travelers will see recognizable names in The Hotel Collection, like Hyatt, Hilton, and Loew’s. But these major chains are the exception amongst The Hotel Collection, not the rule. This means that your status may not mean much at these hotels – nor would these bookings count towards your stay requirement. Second, the majority of the hotels are located in the United States, and international offerings are very limited. For example: there are only three provinces served by The Hotel Collection in Canada, and are limited to major cities. And when I tried searching various dates in Munich for 2015 (at both hotels), every search came up “Sold Out.”

For the $450 price tag that comes with the American Express Platinum Card, it’s my opinion that your best bet remains the Fine Hotels & Resorts. Exclusive to Platinum and Centurion members, the Fine Hotels and Resorts collection is focused on high-end hotels with some decent perks. Back in 2013, I booked a room at the Bellagio in Las Vegas for around $250, and it came with an upgrade, 4 PM check out, and over $100 in food & beverage vouchers for my stay.

In short: I feel like I should expect more from The Hotel Collection. Gold Card members should get some value out of this offering, while Platinum Card members should look at the Fine Hotels & Resorts first. Of course, if you’re status running (which, of course you are), then some of this is irrelevant, anyways.

What are your feelings about the Fine Hotels & Resorts collection? High value, or high hype? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

Ed. Note: No compensation nor incentive was given to mention or link to any product or service in this article. This content is not provided or commissioned by American Express. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of American Express, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by American Express.

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