I was assuming you do not buy full fare tickets for leisure travel. If this is incorrect the Platinum Card could pay for itself for several years on just one trip.
You already have the best card for earning Membership Rewards.
Moving from Premier Rewards Gold to Platinum you would lose the bonus points earned when buying airfare, groceries, and gasoline, as well as the 15,000 point annual threshold bonus.
Ok, thanks. True, we do not usually buy the most expensive full fare tickets...but, we have, and could, especially considering the 50% discount from the companion ticket. I've seen the price differences when buying for business travel. I've also heard from others that sometimes you can get the 2 tickets through AMEX for less than what 2 restricted tickets would cost. But obviously that means the "benefit" is not the full price of the companion ticket. We paid $2300 each for F tickets to Tahiti a couple of years ago when the full fare F tickets were about $4000 so we would have saved $600 there. But I take your point that it might not be an extremely useful benefit for leisure travel.
I guess it is something I will have to think about and weigh the benefits of at the time. I used to be a UA Red Carpet club member and made good use of that. It would be nice to have access to that kind of thing again, even at a price.
I look at it this way - I'm paying $175 a year now plus $60 for Hertz, which I use. And I would be able to use probably at least one hotel special a year for a free night at say, $165 on average. That makes $300 - I could justify the extra $150 to myself on relatively slim grounds IF there were even marginal other benefits I would get even if I only used them occasionally.
But it sounds like what many are finding, based on discussions on FT and other places - that the platinum card has lost its shine since as AMEX scales back benefits. Maybe when the economy recovers they will need to offer more again to make it worthwhile. The first thing that would have to go would be the extra chareg for a spouse!