Originally Posted by
BenSenise
i think the fact that your spend is "nowhere near to the amounts which have been quoted here" supports the argument that it's not just how much you spend but what you spend it on.
one could charge 100k/month at mcdonald's and not get an invite whereas someone who spends 10k/month at high-end hotels, flights in the front of the plane, and good restaurants might get an invite.
would you mind sharing what kinds of things your spend is on to corroborate or refute my theory?
I posted last year about my experience getting a Centurion invite in the USA. In my case, I started with the green card back in 1986, and since then I've had a variety of products, the green was upgraded to gold, and eventually to platinum, but along the way I also had things like the Optima card back then, acquired the Delta Platinum cobranded card, etc., and had corporate green cards at various employers. My personal spend in recent years wasn't particularly high or high-end/luxury products other than fine dining sometimes. Personal travel was always in mid-tier Marriotts and Hiltons, and so on. Nothing nearly as remarkable as some of the spend described here by people who don't seem to get invites.
But the one consistent aspect of my tenure with Amex: I've never been late paying the bill, and I've been paying annual fees for a long time. Maybe they liked me for the Centurion for that reason? i.e., if I obtained it I'd reliably pay the yearly fee, plus the initiation fee, yet not impose much load on them.
Incidentally, I kept the invitation as a memento, but I didn't think about getting the card even for a second. The admission and maintenance fees are way too steep.