Interestingly I just picked up this thread as I'm looking for a replacement for my CommBank Platinum card.

True, the card is a good QF points earner up to $150K per year, but if you want to travel with the card then I'd suggest you look elsewhere.

Aside from an over-zealous card security area (I suppose not a huge problem - but frustrating when you let them know your travel plans but they still block your card every second day for 'suspect' foreign transactions), I had two major issues whilst travelling this month:

1. Despite obtaining a new 'chip' card and specifying a PIN, I found that the PIN feature did not work in any foreign locations. This often resulted in a complete inability to make purchases on my card as many locations (especially in the UK) no longer accept signature based transactions. My backup card (Westpac Altitude Mastercard) had no problems.

2. On two occasions CommBank decided it would be a good idea to take down their entire payment processing system for 5 hours. Whilst this was timed to be very early morning in Australia, that doesn't help when you're at the car hire desk in LHR trying to pay for a car using a card that won't go through. The CommBank call centre simply told me to 'try again in 5 hours time'. Not very helpful service - especially for a 'Platinum' card with a 'Platinum-level' annual fee.

I'm now contemplating changing to one of the AMEX cards that earn $1=1FF (or better) as the primary points earner and keeping my Altitude Mastercard for purchases where AMEX isn't accepted.