Originally Posted by
cornwall4000
this is sort of a general observation/opinion from an FT newbie - wasn't sure if if there was a more appropriate thread or forum to deposit it in, will take lashes willingly if someone wants to move it:
i've been using amex travel and fhr to book trips with my platinum card for nearly several decades. like many longstanding vendor offerings one encounters in life, the returns of keeping a platinum card seem to have been slowly dwindling over the many years.
I haven't had a Plat nearly as long as you have, but basically my attitude about it is: use it for what it's good for, and skip the rest.
First, I would never book anything except maybe FHR on amextravel.com. The horror stories of customer service disasters with them abound. The website is ridiculously bad, as you noted. Behind the scenes it is Expedia.
FHR and THC is *always* much higher than the normal price. The only reason I book FHR is to pay more for the upgrades and to use my $200 credit.
For anything else I always book direct with the hotel.
There is Platinum Travel Services which is talking to real travel agents. But they charge a fee for booking however they can often find rates better than publicly available for flights and they don't mess up bookings the way Expedia does.
The SkyClub membership is still an astoundingly great value, to me. Escape lounges are good when Centurion is not there or full.
Concierge started to go downhill when they tried to outsource it to India. Thank god that seems to have been a short lived experiment.
Return and purchase protection are the best in the business. I always buy things I may need to return, or expensive electronics, etc., with it for that reason.
Priority Pass is a joke in the US but generally nice abroad. So I use it abroad.
Emergency medical evacuation I have heard actually works.
Beyond that I try to maximize my credits and that's about it. I find the above benefits quite nice and worth the price of admission so to speak. Trying to use it for other things it doesn't do well (amextravel.com) is an exercise in futility IMO.