Originally Posted by onetess

Hi everyone,

I received the above offer in the mail and am trying to decide whether it is worth the $450 fee. (You need to charge $1,000 within four months for the 100k points, which isn't an issue.)

The only AmEx I currently have is one I use at Costco and hardly charge anything on it. I mostly use my AA Mastercard and charge quite a bit; in fact, I currently have accumulated about 250,000 "not from flying" AA miles that I have not used. (I will use them next year for two first class tickets to Europe.)

I understand the 100k AmEx points is a lot, but I also see that American is not a partner. However, I can possibly use the points for some hotel stays while in Europe. (I realize that I don't know enough about the rewards one gets with AmEx so I'll try to do some investigating along those lines.)

Is it worth taking advantage of this offer, and possibly even switching some of my "typical" charging over to this card instead of my AA Mastercard? For a person like myself who doesn't travel much but does do "big splurge" family vacations every 2 years (but never really have time to get to a Lounge!), would the benefits of an AmEx Platinum really be worth it? How about the no exchange rate fee? Is that a big deal considering I'm going to Europe next year, but then may not travel internationally again for a while?

Just trying to determine if a Platinum Card is worth that large fee for a "regular person" like me.

Thanks for any advice!