American Express Membership Rewards - Seriously considering dumping my Plat, why not?

As Platinum card customer service has gradually deteriorated over the years, I have regularly considered whether it offers good value.

Two years ago I wrote what I thought was a thoughtful letter to the CEO of Amex expressing my concerns, and got no reply.

Now I have largish foreign charges coming up, and already hold an MBNA MC with a 1% (vs Amex 2%) exchange fee, so after posting here -- and getting no suggestions about how to get Amex to help me with that -- I wrote another letter, again polite, to Amex asking for their comment. Once again, no reply.

Given that I don't want 2-for-1 business class on airlines I never use, that I am already a life member of the airline clubs I need, and that credit limits are not a problem, is there any reason to keep the Plat? I am thinking of downgrading to a free loyalty card Amex to use at Costco, then moving the rest of my charges to my MC. OK, once in a while I will go on vacation and get hit for interest charges, but it takes a lot of those to total $350 a year.

Oh, yeah, the MC returns 1% cash annually, something I consider equivalent to MR points basically good only on Delta, which is not very useful out of SF.

This kind of decision I don't take lightly and have been thinking about for 2+ years. Anyone have a reason that I have missed suggesting that I shouldn't change?

As with most "should I drop X?" questions, you should consider whether you would sign up for the Amex Plat card if you didn't already have a card.

I wouldn't normally shill for the Starwood Amex card, but I do still like mine and do consider 1 Starwood point per dollar charged as more valuable than 1% in cash.

Seems like a valid point, but for some reason I have a higher initiation threshhold than my drop point. It's similar to hotels: to become a regular guest at a place I have to quite like it but then the effort of finding a replacement means I allow the hotel to slip fairly far before I start the search again.

Maybe I just hope that given some time, management will realize they have cut back too far and are alienating their best customers, then start a renewal.

Amex Plat has slipped that far with me, and I was just wondering if maybe I had missed the 'renewal.' Not unhappy with Amex as a company (although totally ignoring letters seems like a very bad thing), just having a hard time seeing the value in that card. Maybe they will make a retention effort, but I won't stay if I have to threaten to leave every year in order to get a reasonable offer; that's not something I enjoy doing.

Richard

I got the AMEX Platinum Card because it provided free air ambulance service home if needed and I was headed overseas. Now for vacations I sometimes buy travel insurance, I never do for business travel.

For me lounge access was a nice bonus and alone justified the price. You don't need it so the card is questionable.

I've used its travel related services with mixed but mostly excellent results.

The advice about the Starwood's card is good advice even if you never stay at one. I grabbed the 10,000 point sign-on bonus (really 4,000 plus so much extra per stay), paid $5,000 in taxes and got $10,000 in points (at a cost of $125) and now have just over 20,000 available. That can be traded for 25,000 miles on many major airlines including the AMEX usuals and AA.

And that's not all -- at 60,000 and 70,000 points you get airfare for two and a weeks' stay at a class 2 (nice) or class 3 (very nice) Starwood property. The way that works is that they give you 50,000 air miles (which would cost 40,000 points) and for the balance give you a week's lodging. Now Class 3 cost 7,000 points a night so for the cost of 3 nights you get 7. Class 4 cost 10,000 per night so again for the cost of 3 nights you get 7.

Hope this helps. BTW - the 10,000 point offer is dead and a 6,000 point one is available. It only gives 1,000 points on first use but like the other offer first year is free.

You'll probably get a Centurion invite, it seems most people do when they quit Platinum!

Considering your situation, I don't really see a benefit to the Plat. card. I personally have it mainly for the 2 for 1 Business Class deal. If you book 1 ticket a year the card pays for itself! I also have a Starwood Amex which is a great card and I would recommend this to anyone if they stay at *W properties.

Hmmm....an invite to Centurion -- if I doubt that Plat is worth $350, I cannot imagine I'd find Centurion worth $2500 (or even $1000)!

I understand that the concierge service uses the same supplier for Plat and Centurion and I've given them only one request, which they failed horribly at. I've also called "fine hotels" a few times and everytime their room price was higher than a rate I could get on my own, making the "free upgrade" look pretty dang expensive. Also, I now get emergency evacuation insurance through my company health plan.

So come renewal time, I'll take the majority advice and switch to the Starwood card which sounds pretty good. Most of my travel is on Hyatt, but at least I'm a gold on *Wood right now.

Oh, and Amex still hasn't replied to my letter to the CEO. Even the clerks there must be way too important to do that, I guess.

Thanks all for your help!

When you get the Starwood Amex, you become Starwood Preferred Plus. You don't get the extra points, but you otherwise get the same benefits as Starwood Gold.

BTW, Starwood Platinum is the level to shoot for because you get upgraded to a small Suite, subject to availability. That's the one real benefit to Centurion, as I see it.

Followup:

Someone from the Amex "executive offices" called me as a result of my letter. We discussed the services and she was very kind and offered me a $300 credit, which is nice, but (as I pointed out to her and she agreed) doesn't really answer my long term concerns. She also offered that I could call her directly if I had problems with customer service. She said that she could not imagine that Amex would ever go back to charging a 1% fee on foreign transactions.

I appreciate the call but I delayed several weeks after writing my letter before posting on Flyertalk, and will continue to wonder if it was the letter or the subsequent Flyertalk post that got the response. Doesn't matter; I did eventually get a response and still have something to think about.

Main reasons on keeping it for me are the Cruise savings and the Delta/Northwest club access.

If you've got an Amex or Fidelity Brokerage account, you can get the fee reduced by $75/year...

When you get the Starwood Amex, you become Starwood Preferred Plus. You don't get the extra points, but you otherwise get the same benefits as Starwood Gold.

My brother and I call Starwood every year and tell them we had a platinum Amex (we both have Starwood Amex cards) - they give us Gold immediately. They don't ask for a CC number. Since neither of us make Gold with stays, we have to call every year to renew the status with them. There are some FTer's who get Gold through stays that aren't very happy with this benefit.

My brother and I call Starwood every year and tell them we had a platinum Amex (we both have Starwood Amex cards) - they give us Gold immediately. They don't ask for a CC number. Since neither of us make Gold with stays, we have to call every year to renew the status with them. There are some FTer's who get Gold through stays that aren't very happy with this benefit.

I have Delta Plat and SPG plat cards. Recently I was just bumped to SPG gold status, (i dont have needed stays) and I was surprised. well ! makes sense now.

Back in the mid '90s, PLAT was fantastic, and well worth the $300.

No way that I would accept an upgrade to PLAT now for $395.

Looks like time to say goodbye to AMEX.

Update: I am off next week on an international trip where, at one point, I will have the $20k hotel bill (involving sponsoring an event) that caused me to initiate this thread. I will use my 1% exchange-rate charge MBNA MC instead of my 2% Amex -- it just isn't worth $200 extra for the privilege of using Amex!

On the other hand, I notice that MBNA has materially shrunk the time I get to pay off the bill. MBNA statements are now routinely postmarked a week AFTER the invoice date giving me only about 17 days before interest is imposed (and remember, with a US issued Visa/MC they have it set up so that anytime interest is charged, you get hit with interest for at least two statements, plus "late" charges at least once). So the Platinum card privilege of occasionally having until the second statement to pay does have significant value.

In order to avoid interest on the $20k charge because I missed a statement deadline while on my trip, I've figured out I have to avoid charges to the MBNA card for three weeks BEFORE my trip starts. This kind of planning is too troublesome (at least for me) to do routinely. Hence, I think I'll keep the Plat card for a while longer for smaller charges.

Just a thought, I assume you have thought of this or you might not have the option, but I use online bill pay with my credit union and the one I have, at least, gives me lots of options for paying credit cards. You can not pay anything until you go in and tell it to, or you can set it up to automatically pay the full amount each month or to just pay the minimum each month. If you have the option and you travel a lot, it might be worth looking into so that you don't get stuck with interest from missing a pyament while away.

Can you ask Amex to give you a longer grace period to pay off the balance? I am assuming you need to get reimbursed by your company before paying the amount.

Alternatively, think about a Diners Club card. They give you two billing cycles to pay in full with no interest or penalty charges.

Sorry, didn't make myself clear. Amex Plat does give you two billing cycles to pay with no penalty. However, I assumed that if you took advantage of this privilege routinely, Amex would get unhappy with you, so I only tend to use it when I am on a long trip and won't see the bill until too late. And of course there are options to do online statement checking as well.

Sorry, didn't make myself clear. Amex Plat does give you two billing cycles to pay with no penalty. However, I assumed that if you took advantage of this privilege routinely, Amex would get unhappy with you, so I only tend to use it when I am on a long trip and won't see the bill until too late. And of course there are options to do online statement checking as well.


I havve never heard of this before. I thought only Diners Club has a 60 days grace. Is this an unpublished benifit?

Published, AFAIK, I am pretty sure it is included in the Ts&Cs. Used to apply to all Amex cards in the good ole days, now just to Plat (and presumably Cent).

If you do decide to drop the Platinum card and downgrade to Gold (as my spouse and I just did) be careful how you (and Amex!) manage the transition.

When we called to request the downgrade, we were concerned that automatic monthly charges for cable service, phone, etc., would pose a problem (e.g., declined charges and overdue bills) until we received the Gold cards and changed the automatic charges with each service provider. We were assured that this would not be a problem, as the Platinum account would still accept such automatic charges UNTIL we received and activated our Gold cards. As we understood it, the downgrade would not actually become official until we received and activated our new Gold cards.

Thankfully, we did not have any problems with automatic charges on the old Platinum account.
However, we were not told the Platinum card was effectively closed the moment we called to request the downgrade, and that all outstanding Sign & Travel charges were immediately transferred to the new Gold account.

Since we had just mailed in our full-balance Platinum card payment, it did not cover the S&T charges that were quietly transferred to the new Gold account. Consequently, interest began to accrue on the new Gold S&T account even before we received our new cards.

We spoke with Amex customer service, which eventually understood our situation and issued a credit for the finance charges. We are waiting for our final Platinum card bill to ensure our payments were properly applied.

Amex S&T is evil. You can not easily figure out how much to send them to pay everything off. When I had it (I signed up to get "free" MR points) they put seemingly random things on it and since those were not calculated in the "Amount due" box we screwed up one month and got a BIG interest charge the next. They did reverse that and removed S&T once we found out about it but it was NOT worth the aggravation.

Amex S&T is evil. You can not easily figure out how much to send them to pay everything off. When I had it (I signed up to get "free" MR points) they put seemingly random things on it and since those were not calculated in the "Amount due" box we screwed up one month and got a BIG interest charge the next. They did reverse that and removed S&T once we found out about it but it was NOT worth the aggravation.

I CANNOT believe this is still a problem with S&T. I signed up I think when it was first offered, probably back in the mid-90's. I almost immediately cancelled the service after realizing how much of an accounting headache it would cause. Since then I have been getting a mailing almost once a month with an offer for 1,250 MR points for signing up for S&T. They all find their way to the trash. It just amazes me that they haven't made the program more user friendly!

It just amazes me that they haven't made the program more user friendly!If it was user friendly it wouldn't be as profitable. If you can't figure out how much to pay you won't be as likely to pay off your balance each month. Clearly, there are enough suckers out there to keep the program profitable the way it is.

Sorry, didn't make myself clear. Amex Plat does give you two billing cycles to pay with no penalty. However, I assumed that if you took advantage of this privilege routinely, Amex would get unhappy with you, so I only tend to use it when I am on a long trip and won't see the bill until too late. And of course there are options to do online statement checking as well.

That is a huge perk for me if it is true. I currently charge large amounts of business expenses on my green card. It would be worth it for me if I had two billing cycles to pay. I might give them a call tomm to upgrade to plat if this is so. Appreciate any feedback on this.

Rob