Originally Posted by
notquiteaff
This isn’t the kind of overnight news I want to wake up to here in Europe. I have had the CSR since it first came out. Having tracked the benefits used from various cards, the $200-$300 in annual restaurant expenses covered by the PP benefit for myself and my wife helped me justify keeping the CSR even as the annual fee increased. Is there any reason now to keep it vs. downgrading to the CSP? I have regular PP UA my Amex Plat, can get 3X dining on the CSP or CFU, can put hotel spend on my AA Executive (10X for AA Hotels) or hotel brand specific cards (IHG or Hilton Aspire), airfare on the Amex Plat, and whatever other travel spend I used to put on the CSR for 3X earnings would just earn 2X.
Only reason I can think of is if you fly through BOS (but not on DL) where the Sapphire lounge is much nicer than Amex's offerings through PP. Maybe AUS as well, but I've heard middling reviews of the Sapphire terrace. IAD seems to be fairly small and there are some decent PP lounge options there so not a huge loss either.
Most of the upcoming Sapphire lounge openings will be where Amex already has a lounge (PHL, DFW, PHX, LAS) with SAN being the only other outlier, so it may not be important even if the lounges are a bit nicer than the Amex counterparts.