Originally Posted by
vinhsynd
Actually this would not work at all unless the credit was changed to per card year instead of calendar year. Other wise you would see blogs all over the world saying to sign up to receive (X-250) in cash for the first year. In the example case it would be an extra $1750 in cash for the second calendar year travel credit. This gets worse the higher the credit.
Originally Posted by
notquiteaff
Well, yeah, I was I imagining it to be a credit per paid annual fee.
There's a bigger issue here than charging an annual fee of X and giving a travel credit of X-250. This presumes that the reward structure of the card is such that you'd put travel spend on it in the first place. In the case of the CSR, most to all of my travel spend goes on that card, so I don't have a problem with this. But for the Plat? At most, I'd put a little (but probably not all) of my airline spend on it. 5x MR points vs. 3x UR points per dollar? That's a hard one. If I'm saving up for flying in the SQ suites, then I'd put it on the Plat, but if not, it would go on the CSR. So the problem with charging an annual fee of X and giving an easy to use travel credit of X-250? It transfers that spend away from my CSR, which results is a bigger opportunity cost to earn UR points the higher X is, even if I do spend that amount on travel every year.
And even worse, knowing Amex, they'd probably make it where the X-250 in travel spend either doesn't earn MR points or earns MR points at only 1 per dollar, unless you purchase through Amex Travel. Amex is great at giving you benefits that are difficult, annoying, or impossible to use.