Centurion is a victim of its own success.

When it started out it was very good, you had some nice perks, you had excellent service and prompt response when you called them, it was indeed a special service.

As they pushed the service to more and more people in one country, and then into more and more countries some of the organisations with whom they made arrangements either decided they were now having too many people, or Amex couldn't agree to meet the costs with those people and as such diluted down some of the "perks" and made them into local ones.

Now they have quite a few people with the card across the world, and the card is no longer as special as it once was. So, in response to that, they up the card fee, either to get people to cancel the card, or because they know people will pay it for a "black card".

Everyone is different in why they have the card, and when you see the limits that Amex expect people to go to in the US to be able to get the card its almost incredible that you can get the card in other countries by only spending a tiny % of what the Americans are expected to pay.

I mean, seriously, if anyone spends 200k a year on a card thats a lot of spend (personal spend) and ANY bank or financial company would love to have such a person using their card or service, and yet Amex then have the cheek to charge you a fee on top of that.. its all very funny when you step back and look at what is going on. Its like the lottery really.

Stupid people pay stupid fees, stupid people play the lottery.

However, those people who are in control of their finances, are well off, invest wisely.. I bet you they pay nothing for any of their cards, just a single fee for a damn good accountant or investment manager.

Lets be honest here.. I would think its a fairly good guess to say that most of us here who have the Black card have it because.. because we can, because we were offered it, because we have it. No other reason.

The perks on the card are nice, but you can get all the benefits that are worth having on the Platinum card, the only thing you can't get on the Platinum card is.. a non colour.. BLACK.

Virgin Gold access for the Americans.. really? is that really that good? its a service to and from the UK mostly.. they would benefit from a local gold on one of their own airlines really.. plus most of you who do fly Virgin are likely to fly Upper class anyway, so what REAL benefit is that card? None.

Virgin Gold for the UK or Europe.. the same, its only good for one kind of trip, transatlantic... we fly a lot of other places, so why pick an airline that is very good, but only flies a very limited number of places.

Its a mugs game, and we're all playing