Originally Posted by
TravelinSperry
Thank you for listening Starwood & Amex. No FTF was sorely needed.
I think the $95 annual fee is a fair exchange for it. Other no FTF cards charge $95 as well (United Explorer, British Airways, Hilton Reserve, IHG, Southwest) so it is competitive. Yes, you can find fee free FTF cards like Capital One but their benefits are lacking and their fraud catches are horrid outside the US and make their card too frustrating to use.
Although the other benefits are worthless to me - I'm happy with the exchange of $30 for no FTF. Kudos!
The thing is that the no-FTF is really more a benefit to Amex these days because it is hard to imagine a regular traveler who doesn't already have 1 or more cards that have no FTF. So really, dropping the FTF just gets Amex business that they would have lost otherwise. Also, as has been pointed out elsewhere, it takes 1K of spend to break even on the FTF in any case. So I certainly see less than $30 value in dropping the FTF (and I do spend well above the 1K internationally annually but just do it on the CSP card which has very good benefits.