Originally Posted by
sullim4
I am a fellow CNB refugee.
It all depends on your needs. I product changed a free Hilton AMEX to the Aspire. I did it for a few reasons - it's easy for us to use the free weekend night and resort credit, I like getting diamond status included, and I avoided a hard pull by doing an upgrade. I also got a pretty decent 150,000 point upgrade bonus. It pays out poorly in terms of points for everyday spend, but for ancillary benefits, it's not a bad card... and anyway we put most of our spend on a legacy Priceline Visa which gets 3.3% back when redeemed certain ways.
I considered the HSBC card. I was a client of HSBC's back in the early 2000s when they rebranded the Marine Midland banks in upstate New York. I didn't like the lack of PP on this card (we're lucky in that most airports we care about have PP lounges) and I didn't like the relationship requirements to lower the fee, either. HSBC was fine back then but they were a pretty vanilla bank and have since re-oriented their US market focus towards customers that value their presence in Asia. If you value that, it might be a good fit. As for me, I'm happy with Alliant CU as our main checking account and our menagerie of online savings accounts.
As for CSR and AMEX Plat, they really weren't considerations in my case. I didn't want to pay an AU fee for my wife, and I was looking for a card mainly with solid benefits at the expense of good earn/burn rates. Since we can use the Aspire benefits and make the AF net-negative, that made the card more appealing to us.
As a Hilton fan, myself, I've had a Hilton AmEx since the beginning of time. I have the Surpass card so I earn Diamond through the $40K annual spend on the card. I had pondered either upgrading to the Aspire card, or simply applying for the card outright, as I still value the grocery spending bonus on the Surpass, which the Aspire lacks. The difficulty I have with the Aspire is that we need two Priority Pass memberships, which AmEx Platinum and CSR permit. I wish Aspire would allow this, as it would be a slam dunk decision for me.
I have a boatload of CNB points that I'd like to use before the card renews in November. My intent was to book a large trip for next summer, but we shall see if/how travel resumes. I can downgrade the card if I need to hang on to the points for a bit longer, but for a net of $50, I may be forced to keep the card for another year. I have far too many points to redeem for Amazon cards. I just hate what they did to their Priority Pass program in terms of not permitting any complimentary guests.
It's interesting that you mentioned Marine Midland bank, as we lived in upstate NY for a few years when I was a child. I remember that bank, although I'm not certain if my parents had an account there.