Originally Posted by
FlyingHigh20
There's NOTHING great about the Platnium DL card now that the gift card option is gone. You're not calculating the benefits correctly.
Most credit cards offer a miles/points for a flight program. Citibank, with their Thankyou rewards, does just this. Redemption is valued at one point per cent, with NO annual fee to the card. Let's look at it this way. If you spend $50,000, you essentially end up with 70,000 Delta Skymiles, that at this point, all you can use is for flights that earn you no MQM's, but 20,000 MQM's based on the spend.
With the Citibank card, if I spend $50,000 per year, I get roughly 60,000 points (some categories of spend reward double..etc). With those 60,000 points + $150 I save from not paying the annual fee, I can book 3 transcons on sale (usually an east cost to west coast run that costs around $200-215 all in) with my points alone and recieve 15000 MQM that way. Plus, with those runs, I'll still earn RDM's, so I'll net another 15,000 miles on Delta. I've also just booked a MR to Puerto Rico out of FL when it was $155 all in (equivalent of the Platnium card annual fee), which I'll earn another 6K in MQM's, plus 7K in RDM's. So apples to apples, the Delta platnium card becomes worthless. For the same spend, I get more on my Citibank card, with the freedom to do more with my points then I would with Delta.
The math is simple, which is why with no gift cards, I'm cancelling my Delta AmEx
But in my case, the platnium Am Ex allows me to keep PM status as opposed to Gold on DL. Until recently it was worth $150 a year, but now iwth my upgrades being so rare..... Before the mint stopped the dollar coin program, I was able to easily get in the minimum spend on the Delta card.
If I wasn't getting MQM's or could maintain platnium every year via BIS miles, I wouldn't keep the card. I would rather spend $50K on the Am Ex card than to do a few mileage runs.