Originally Posted by
bribro
It's a little absurd to say that the JPMR is "not even a good [let alone great] perks card," especially when compared to the AmEx Platinum card. Everyone is different, but I find the perks for the JPMR to be much more useful. $300 annual credit automatically applied against any travel spend vs. $200 annual credit against specific charges from a single airline you have to manually select. Primary CDW on car rentals vs. secondary coverage (unless you pay a fee). PP Select with free guest privileges vs. PP Select without guest privileges (unless you pay a fee). And JPMR insurance coverage seems to be superior to AmEx Platinum across the board. Plat doesn't even offer trip delay or baggage delay coverage.
The AmEx Centurion lounges are nice by domestic standards, but the footprint is obviously limited and the lounge locations tend to be out of the way in my experience. I'm sure some people out there enjoy getting to the airport a couple of hours early to eat some decent "free" food, but I generally try to spend as little time as possible in any domestic airport, no matter how nice the lounge is. Personally, I'd take the lounge access that comes with JPMR over AmEx Plat any day, since it is objectively superior when traveling internationally.
FHR and bottom/mid-tier Marriott/SPG/Hilton status is nice, but not very useful to people that already have top-tier hotel status (the target audience of "premium" credit card users).
I haven't found the AmEx concierge to be all that useful lately. The last time I tried to use the AmEx concierge, they kept me on hold for literally 30+ minutes, and they have little to no pull at high-end restaurants these days. I'm not saying the Visa Infinite concierge is necessarily better; I just find credit card concierge services in general to be of little value.
I'm hoping the rumors about additional benefits coming to the AmEx Plat card are true, otherwise I'm closing it down next month when my AF comes due.
I wouldn't consider the $300 travel credit a perk - it just effectively makes the card a $150 AF card, which is in line with the perks, or lack thereof, it offers.
Primary and trip insurance benefits are definitely nice, but almost the exact same benefits are available on Chase's $95 AF cards. Centurion lounges have free drinks including decent wine - if your home airport has one, it's an amazing value. I always get to the airport less than an hour before departure time and still manage to get a good amount of use out of them. FHR is great. I agree that credit card concierges in general aren't very helpful.
The mid-tier statuses are definitely nice, if only for priority check-in lines. I don't believe that the target audience has top-tier status - these boards skew highly toward consultants that need to travel a lot. And when you look at the target audience of the JPMR, they're typically well off enough that they don't need to travel for work as much, aside from some exceptions. The people on this board will definitely skew toward the exceptions.
It's fairly obvious why this all is - the JPMR is essentially a CSR, which has a $150 AF for all intents and purposes and offers 3x UR on travel and dining. It simply can't have great perks at that price point and spend bonus. The Amex Plat, on the other hand, has a $450 AF for a lot of people (very few people know about the MPX trick) with no spend bonuses, so it can have a lot of perks.
The JPMR / CSR are definitely the must have card, but the Amex Plat is a great complement when it comes to perks.