So Amex thinks they can afford a 2X everywhere no AF card, but not a convoluted 50% back on a $450 AF card?
What's wrong with Amex?
Completely different things. The max OOP cost to AMEX is 35,000 additional MR vs the old Blue for Business (up to 1.3 MR/$) and it's limited to $50,000 in spend/yr.
Most of these points probably go unspent or spent at a 1 cpp valuation or possibly even less.
The 50% rebate was probably killing them. You had people who were redeeming 100,000s of points at 2 cents each and most people could earn more than 1 point per dollar spent.