Originally Posted by mgchan

I don't think this is really a fair comparison -- $95 fee vs. $450. Amex Plat definitely wants to place quite a bit of value on their Fine Hotels & Resorts, Concierge services, etc.

I thought the $200 incidentals fee wouldn't be useful because I don't usually get charged incidentals but you can buy gift cards if the value is less than $100 so it turned out to work out well for me (I only had Platinum for 1 year).

Are Ultimate Rewards transfers instantaneous? That has also been a slight benefit of MR (though I agree that loss of partners and devaluation of Aeroplan and BAEC plans hurts).

A fairer comparison might be Sapphire Preferred versus Amex SPG. SPG also has a lot of transfer partners (though AA is probably the main one in the US). You can earn SPG gold through spend. It comes with some Amex benefits as well all for a reasonable annual fee. However it also has a foreign exchange fee which Sapphire doesn't have.

For the OP it sounds like Sapphire Preferred will be better, especially if UA joins as a partner, given international travel; though SPG has a lot of nice hotels abroad.