Originally Posted by
SP03
The effective AF after subtracting the credits and benefits is quite low. I think AMEX cares more about the number of PLT card members than the annual fee contribution from someone who doesn’t spend much on the card.
Agreed, and they care more specifically about the number of Plat card members that use the card as their primary card without overthinking whether each incremental dollar of expenditure should go to Citi, Chase, Amex, etc. The cardmember that uses all the credits, and gets to airport 3 hours early for a business trip to make a meal out of a lounge visit to the Centurion or SkyClub, but allocates 95% of their everyday spend to Chase, is obviously not contributing to the bottom line. If these programs were tailored for this audience, all the issuers would go bankrupt (well, not really, they'd just "enhance" their way to profitability again).