Just paid the annual fee on the Green card last billing cycle.

There is an upgrade offer to the Gold, with 40k points for $2k spend.

Would an upgrade mean they apply parts of the annual fee for the Green card to the upgraded Gold card's annual fee for the first year?


The one benefit I'd lose from the Green card is 3X on travel transactions, primarily hotels. I also have the Chase Sapphire Preferred and I use that for rental cars because of better protection.

For overseas though, a lot of hotels and restaurants do not accept Amex. Where the 3X on hotel payments with the Green card comes into play is if you book online and you pay the whole hotel bill upfront. That is through the big booking sites.

If you book a regional or family-run hotel in Europe, you get better rates but the booking engines they use often do not take Amex.

And during the pandemic, I noticed that there's a greater divergence in rates between booking directly and through a third-party booking site. Also, people are booking refundable reservations and that means you give them a card but when you pay at the end of the stay, they often don't take Amex.

So I'm not getting as much benefit from the Green card's 3X travel benefits as I might hope.

But restaurants and grocery transactions don't run up as much as airlines and hotel transactions. If you do find a hotel which takes Amex, one transaction is worth probably several restaurant and grocery transactions.


So the 40k MR points would have to be what would justify the $100 greater annual fee. I've had the Gold card before so they might not even give me the welcome bonus, though I checked while logged into my Amex account so presumably they would.

Probably would have to be more in the 60k MR points range to be worth it?


BTW, they also have a Platinum upgrade, though only offering 20k MR points and some Equinox credit. They must have plenty of Platinum customers paying that $695 annual fee, doesn't look like they want to entice other Amex card holders to upgrade to it, just new customers.