The old PQD waiver was a lot more useful to me than the bonus PQP, as was flying Platinum miles on Silver spend. That said, assuming no bonus category spend I'm looking at earning 12,000*1.5 = 18,000 United miles + 500 PQP on my Club card vs. 12,000*2 = 24,000 TY points on my Citi Doublecash. Even if you give a larger delta between the points values than most bloggers and such do, say 1 cent, that's a difference of 6,000 miles ~ $60, so if I do end up needing the $500 PQP then it is worth it. Most of my flying is personal rather than business, so I can pretty easily tell/plan ahead of time where I'm going to land PQP and PQS-wise, so it's still worth it to me. Although it still might be easier and cheaper to do a segment run (do we have a thread for those yet? ) since hitting the segment total is worth more than 500 PQP on all but Silver this year.