Originally Posted by gnomie

On of my colleagues just got of the phone with Amex - he has a biz and CS platinum cards and had a combined spend of $74,926 in 2022. It appears that Amex is being pretty strict about the $75K minimum spend because they would not bend the rules and provide him with guest access. He is annoyed (rightfully so) that he was not aware it was a combined spend because he could have very easily put another hundred on the card to meet the minimum requirement.

Anyway, according to the rep, guest privileges will be extended to members who have a combined spend of $75K on platinum cards and not just on one card - she read the "rules" which states spend on two or more cards in good standing qualify. He asked for written confirmation of this new benefit and the rep provided a link to the global lounge collection but we could not find any mention of spend on multiple accounts qualifying. Maybe they are in the process of updating the website or I wonder if this will be an "unpublished" benefit.

At the end of the day, I see little difference if one spends $75K on one card or using multiple cards with regard to crowded lounges - no matter how many platinum cards one may have, the limit is two guests. We the people of FT are a very tiny minority - most people have one platinum card, possibly two with a biz card but holding multiples of the same type of card seems bizarre to many but makes for interesting cocktail party conversation. A couple of years ago I was attending a conference and split my hotel bill amongst three different Amex cards to take advantage of all the promotions available to me - my colleagues could not understand why I would do this, claiming that keeping track of multiple cards is too burdensome just to save a couple hundred dollars or earn extra MR points. I am curious how many people qualified for guest privileges as a result of combined spend on multiple cards - my guess is the number is minuscule.