Originally Posted by sethMCOflyer

I feel like there needs to be a discussion about how confusing Amex needlessly makes their rewards and benefits in comparison to other issuers. I'm outlining the Gold card below, but it's similar for the Platinum card.

Amex Gold

• 4x points on restaurants and groceries (so long as you spend less than $25k on groceries) - simple
• 3x points on travel - But wait, only airline tickets booked direct with an airline and hotels booked through their travel portal. Useless for anyone pursuing hotel status
• $120 dining credit - Available at a few restaurants that are pretty common, but wait only $10 a month, use it or lose it.
• $100 airline credit - Good on pretty much any airline, but wait, you must pick the airline and then it's only on incidentals. They may as well make this a $10 a month too for further confusion

MR Point Redemptions

• Cash back - NO
• Pay for specific transactions on your bill - Yes, however it's $0.006 per point so your 4 points per dollar on eating out becomes 2.5% back, travel becomes 1.8% back
• Shop through Amex - You can buy stuff through their shopping portal, but again, a terrible value
• Pay for Uber - Yes, actually $0.01 per point so less terrible, but most other banks offer a direct $0.01 conversion per point just to get cash back
• Pay for Travel - Yes, but again terrible value
• THE ONLY GOOD VALUE - Transfer points to a travel partner. You'll need to do a lot of research to learn which programs offer the best value in flying you to a particular destination and then transfer points to fly in a J or F cabin. With this you can often get a couple cents per point of value, but it's also tough to find the flight on the date and time that you're looking for.

So for a $250 annual fee you effectively pay $30 after remembering to eat at one of the restaurants they support each month and using the confusing $100 incidental credit. In my case I enjoy Shake Shack, but would I be there every month if not for the credit? Probably not, so there's some extra cost associated with that.

This is all to say, the gold card only seems to be a decent deal if you spend a lot and really value the MR transfer partners. Otherwise it seems like a card with a bunch of gotchas that for most people who don't learn all the intricacies of the benefits would probably be better off with a no fee double cash back card. The card is simply needlessly complicated, they need to get with the program and look at what Chase does with the CSR and CSP cards, benefits that can be explained in less than a minute.So for a $250 annual fee you effectively pay $30 after remembering to eat at one of the restura