Originally Posted by
Adelphos
It seems pretty clear that neither Amex nor Chase want to increase the earn rate on their premium cards. Chase had the opportunity to do so when it refreshed the card and the Freedom line and chose not to do so. Amex has added tons to Amex Platinum and has only added 5x to airfare. For whatever reason both companies are more willing to add more rewards on spend on other cards.
I think dining can be a pretty expensive category to do 4x or 5x on. A lot of young urban folks spend a lot on "dining" every month (really bar tabs), much more than they spend on travel. I think banks are reluctant to go 5x or more on that category. Interesting that Citi Prestige is at 5x but that card frankly doesn't seem to be that widely held
I actually think for many typical consumers the Prestige is a better card than the Platinum (if you're going to pay a high annual fee either way). You can cash out at 1 cent per point with Prestige without any Schwab workarounds. You effectively get 5% cash back on dining, hotels, and airfare, which is really not bad if those are valuable categories for you. The $250 credit is easy to use. I know everyone complains about the 4th night free cap but even one use a year can wipe out most of the remaining annual fee. The downside would be the lack of travel protections of course, and lack of outsized value redemptions in many cases but it is much easier to redeem TY points for 1 cent than it is to do so for MR (with MR even a large chunk of gift cards go for less than 1cpp).
Now of course you need to do the math on the fee vs other available no fee dining cards, etc, but I'm just saying I think the Prestige is not a terrible option.