Originally Posted by
GrayAnderson
My guess is that a lot of higher-spend customers have either two or three cards in the mix - at least one non-Amex (there are still places that don't take Amex), and at least one with a different bank. Generally "a Visa, a Mastercard, and an Amex" covers you (and the Amex is really optional), but the diversity is insurance against a card randomly getting locked because of travel (or a vendor not taking all cards). That's what I was taught, at least.
If you forced me to strip down, I'd probably have the DL Reserve (Amex), the CSR, the Hyatt card (both Visa), and the Amtrak card (MC). Almost all travel is going to CSR (because Amex's TI is crap), but then DL is bidding against the others for "normal" spend, and Hyatt and Amtrak are better uses for that after a certain point.
I suspect that most high-spend customers have a "favorite" card that gets 90% or more of their spend, and they only pull out something else for special circumstances like "this place doesn't take Amex". At least, these are the type of customers that Amex actually cares about keeping.
Originally Posted by
Minnyappleus
Posted from Reddit... Couldn't find this in my app or online.
Not that I would be in the running for 50k MQD anyway, but those do seem like rather steep thresholds to have a meaningful effect. AA and UA offer much more gradual benefits over top tier.