Originally Posted by
nyc2cal
I remember receiving an invitation about ten years ago when I had a company that was charging a lot for travel on a suite of cards ultimately under my patronage…laughed and threw it in the waste bin when I saw the fee, but in retrospect wish I had taken advantage of the card when it had some really great benefits.
Today it seems like the Platinum, which I have, has arguably more features than the Centurion (5X on travel vs. the Delta status, which would be interesting to me).
AMEX has been a great company over the years and should be capable of getting an attractive package of benefits for very upscale frequent travelers done right. I put a lot of my spending on the Chase SR because of the dining and travel rewards. Too bad AMEX isn't figuring out how to capture that market with a more compelling product. If I were involved in the marketing group there I would be trying to figure out how to capture that demographic because I have a feeling that a lot of the people here pining for this invitation might get one if AMEX figured out how to earn a consolidation of their spending. My point being there seems to be a large untapped and potentially very profitable market between the platinum which is now a quasi mass-market card and the Centurion which seems to be a status symbol card instead of the very compelling suite of high-end travel benefits it started out as. There's a market for this.
The current thread on getting an invitation reminds me of the Groucho Marx quote about not wanting to join any club that would accept him as a member. It's really kind of silly. No disrespect, of course, but where is this company in actually doing the customer focus groups to figure out how to create and market the right products? It would be ultimately more profitable than giving the black card to, say, Rhianna to flaunt.
(I have no idea how AMEX determines the invitations now, and whether I would accept it if I got one…but I put about 250K of spend collectively on my several AMEX cards each year and if AMEX had the right data analytical tools, I'm sure would consider me part of the target market…I guess I'm saying don't read too much into the invitations since it's not at all clear to me they're being done in any organized fashion).
I mostly agree with this.
At the same time, I also think it wouldn't take much to make the Plat a more compelling product. What's so special about the CSR? Outside of the signup bonus (no longer around), the main benefits of the card are:
3x Any Travel and Any Dining
$300 Credit on Any Travel
1.5x pay with points at Chase Travel
The only spend I put on my CSR is Travel and Dining. The bulk of my other Visa Spend goes on the Freedom Unlimited which earns 1.5x. I keep the CSR b/c of the 1.5x pay with points which before any flames me, is actually handy for paying for cheap flights and getting a discount on non reward based hotels (only useful to people with a lot of points).
I have the business Plat which now has 50% point rebate for pay with points on airfare so I now use that instead of Chase Travel. But Amex 50% rebate doesn't apply to hotels and they have a poor pay with points ratio for hotels anyway. So Chase will keep getting that business from me.
So IMO, all Amex needs to do is offer 3x on ALL travel (instead of 5x on airfare only - which they don't do for my biz Plat) and 3x on Dining. I honestly can't understand why they don't do 3x on Dining considering how big they are with restaurants and how much they want people to whip out Amex cards at fancy restaurants. I'm so bad I'll admit to using Amex Concierge to get me onto a restaurant they have a relationship with and then using my CSR to pay b/c I just can't miss the 3x points!
Biz Plat also gets 50% point bonus for >$5000 so in that way, similar to Freedom unlimited.
Would also be nice if the $200 airline credit were a little easier to use. Something similar to CSR.
They're trying to get closer with recent Personal Plat benefits on hotels. But restricting that to Amex Travel bookings is a bit of an own goal I think.
So do those couple of things and the Plat and Gold Rewards card would be my go to combo instead of CSR and Freedom Unlimited.