Originally Posted by
STS-134
And there likely aren't enough cardmembers who put $1M+ of spend on the Plat card to make the Centurion lounges (or even the entire Platinum card program) economically viable. Part of the business model is getting people to pay for benefits that they feel good about, because they can use them as much as they want, but end up not actually using them enough to make up the fees that they paid.
Agree. I'd say 80/20 applies here, and that $50k-$100K spend per year is still considered a valuable customer.
Originally Posted by
SP03
After the fee credits, the Amex Platinum Consumer is basically (550-200 uber-200 airline-100 Saks) $50. So how many lounge visits can you get for $50 a year? A poster earlier mentioned that he barely spends anything on Amex other than to use the Amex Offers, so how would that cardmember ever be profitable?
Sure, not everyone maximizes the $500 fee credits, but those savvy enough to have a multi card strategy to maximize return on spending probably do.
True. It's just the savvy ones that stop spending on the card after that, yet expect retention bonuses annually that are a drag on the system.
Originally Posted by
STS-134
I would suspect that there was some discount compared to the face value, but this is only speculation on my part.
A safe bet that Amex is paying vendors for the amenities/credits at varying degrees of "wholesale" discounts, in part because the credit-related transactions allow an opportunity for the vendor to establish/grow their own relationship with the cardmember.