Originally Posted by
yerffej201
I don't know, but it's an assumption I'm willing to make. This is based on the fact that the overwhelming majority (say, 90%) of cardholders do not currently have a co-working membership, or already have an equivalent and don't see this limited offering as an acceptable replacement (or any other number of reasons). If they don't need such a membership, I don't believe that most people would pay anywhere close to $2700. They might see the value of the membership, the benefits of which I'm not necessarily debating, but their willingness to pay is not strongly tied to that.
It's misleading for AMEX to use MSRP because of the fact that most folks would not get $2700 of value, much less pay $2700 for this benefit. Again, I don't know whether that's true or not, but I don't think anyone else (other than employees of WeWork and AXP who have the analytics) would know either. Partly, I form my conclusion based on the (limited) number of SB cardholders I know and the variety of folks I've met in WeWork spaces. There's certainly bias, but that's what I think. I tend to balk at most inflated MSRPs anyways, so it's not like this is the only scenario where I dislike.
Your argument is simply that for many cardholders, they wouldn’t actually use the benefit very much or at all; which is obviously true. However, the same is true for many other benefits. Aside from a tiny minority of people such as those of us on FlyerTalk, most people aren’t going to get the full value of the $200 airline credit either. There’s nothing “misleading” about claiming the airline credit is $200, even though many people aren’t going to use it (either because they rarely or never check bags, don’t buy alcohol or food on flights, and aren’t aware of many of the workarounds). Similarly nothing “misleading” about claiming the WeWork benefit is a $2700 value when that is if anything lower than the price you’d have to pay to buy this same service on the open market. It’s quite clear what the benefit is, and anyone reading the ad can judge for themselves whether they would use it.
In fact, in this case I’m kind of surprised they chose $2700 instead of a higher number. On my invoice they are charging a price that indicates it would cost closer to $3000 to buy it myself (if I could buy it). They obviously went out of their way to choose a lower number precisely to avoid being “misleading”.
I mean we’re at dead horse territory at this point, but so far you haven’t made any arguments whatsoever that indicate even the slightest deception on the part of AX in this case. It’s clear what the benefit is, the price quoted is lower than the benefit would cost to purchase on the market, and the reader of the ad can determine for themselves whether they would use it or not and therefore whether it is worth $2700 or higher or lower to them. You seem to be focused on the fact that it isn’t a 24/7 program but that is also totally clear and in fact a 24/7 global access to any WeWork would cost far more than $2700 on the open market. The issue is here whether it is a “deception”; it simply isn’t. Whether it is a benefit every cardholder would buy otherwise is a completely separate question, but there’s nothing in the ad that suggests or implies that every cardholder would buy it or even use it.
Same goes for every other benefit advertised by AX. Is the Uber credit worth $200 to every cardholder of the personal card? Not if there’s no Uber in your city or you never use Uber. Is that misleading too?
To get back on topic: I’ve been using this in LA and the Bay Area and so far have found it super easy to reserve rooms. One nice thing about the Bay Area is most of the WeWorks are all close together, so it hardly matters if one is full since there are many others to choose from nearby. So far in my experience most of them have plenty of open desks, at least the ones I want to use.
The two LA WeWorks I’ve used haven’t been ideal, though, because like the rest of LA they tend to be far from other things; like the Manhattan Beach WeWork has no coffee shop really nearby, and good lunch food is so far I pretty much have to drive to get there. Nothing against WeWork per se, just LA. Uptown Oakland on the other hand not only has a coffee shop right in the lobby of the building (although WeWork provides decent free coffee and tea, I like to sometimes grab a croissant or something), but a ton of walkable lunch spots right nearby.
I’m glad they limit the number of reservable spots because it’s nice to be able to go to a WeWork that isn’t too crowded.
I haven’t yet tried to stay past 6pm but there’s clearly no enforcement of a 6pm deadline. If you enter the space before 6pm and it doesn’t totally close at 6, there doesn’t seem to be any reason or way for them to kick you out. So if you need to keep working for a little longer it seems like you can, at least in some of these spaces. I will report back with more data points.
Some spaces say the reservation is midnight-midnight and some say 9-6 so I’m guessing that might indicate whether you can stay or not? Not sure, will find out.