Originally Posted by
RedSun
You are 100% correct to say that "Benefits where you have to change your behavior have reduced value". That is exactly Chase made a lot people to sign up the Lyft and DoorStopDash otherwise they would not use.
I would not say CSR is any flexible.
AmEx Centurion does not matter what airlines you fly. And it is much better. Travelers are not limited by the $28 for meal, tax and tip. That comes up like $20 to $23 for the entire meal. Not even worth the trip to PP.
I showed the lists of PP location in EWR, LGA, ORD, ATL, PHL, all major US hubs. How many PP places that we can do?? PP is a complete joke in US.
Also, I get the same PP as you do from Ritz. So CSR does not add anything extra to PP.
The $60 doordash benefit does not require you to spend any additional money with doordash. It's $60 in free food. Obviously the dashpassmembership is useless if you don't use the service, but you can still make use of the $60 credit. You can make a pickup order when you are on your way in the door for a restaurant you would go to anyway.
Amex does not have Centurion Lounges in most of the places you mentioned. There are FAR more PP restaurants than there are Centurion Lounges. Many terminals have more than one. If you consider PP restaurant coverage to be bad, Centurion lounge coverage is much much worse, and you don't get arrival access.
If you don't think a free meal is worth a "trip" to the restaurant (usually you have to walk by them anyway to get to the gate area; but I guess lazinessknows no bounds) that's fine. That benefit alone (ignoring lounges) is worth about $400/year to me. I've never not been able to get a full meal and a drink under the allowance; at some airports a full meal will only use up half the allowance. You are also confused about how the whole tip/tax thing works -- you've made 2 different statements about it; both are wrong.
The Ritz is a co-branded card. It's goodif you are a customer of that chain. If you have no desire to stay at Marriott it's useless. The CSR is not co-branded -- it's useful regardless of what airline you fly and what hotel you stay in. I have a co-branded hotel card too (WoH) but I still need a generic travel card for when I stay at other hotels. I am obviously not going to get a co-branded card for a chain that I use once every few years. Also, Marriott points are worth, maybe, 1/3 the value of Hyatt pts (probably less), and UR pts can be transferred to Hyatt. Obviously I'd rather earn flexible, valuable UR pts on my purchases than worthless pts for a chain that I don't stay at. Enjoy redeeming 80k pts for a night at a hotel thanks to your "valuable" card though.