Fabo.sk

Really?

Well that makes it potentially useless for me. I spend a fair bit on personal travel, but rarely more than 500 at a time.

carnarvon

1. miles earning rate
2. travel insurance with very good protection even in the US
3. car rental excess coverage
4. FB platinum for 2
5. miles pooling (not sure this is specific to Amex Plat. Just listing things over the top of my head)

2 and 3 alone are enough if you travel a bit.

NickB

That is debatable, certainly from a UK perspective and I would struggle to justify it. Worldwide car rental excess coverage costs around £50 annually in the UK (and that is before the massive cashbacks on these from the topcashbacks/quidcos of this world) and you can get very comprehensive travel insurance for a fraction of the cost of an Amex Plat membership fee. When I last looked at it, I thought that I would need to put through something in the region of more than €20000 on the AF/KL French Amex Plat card to make it worth my while or at least break even, which is far more than I would be likely to spend on it so I decided against it.

As always: different strokes for different folks.

carnarvon

I was not aware that you could get such an insurance separately, so I did a quick check on the net.

For £50, you can indeed get excess coverage, but unless I looked at the wrong place the annual excess covered seems to be limited to around £ 6500/7500.

With Amex Plat, the excess covered is up to € 100,000 if this can make a difference.

Tavel insurance:

- up to € 2,000,000 for medical care and repatriation.

I don't know if it is good or not and how much one would pay separately to get the same coverage all year round elsewhere.

NickB

I think that what you are thinking of is not excess coverage, but primary coverage. Car rental excess assumes that you already have basic CDW coverage and all you have to pay is the excess ("la franchise" in French) that the car rental company still imposes in case of damage/theft. The excess in most car categories will typically be anywhere between €800 to €5000 so you would not need coverage much beyond that.

A coverage of €100,000 assumes primary coverage, i.e. you decline all insurances, including CDW (i.e. including insurance normally automatically included outside North America) and replace it with the Amex cover.

It is also possible to buy that kind of insurance separately (the cost would typically rise to circa £100 per annum instead of £50).

IME, unless you routinely go for high end SUVs, it is rarely worth it nowadays. It used to be the case that you could make very substantial savings by not including CDW/TP but, IME, this is less common nowadays as cover without CDW/TP is often remarkably close to cover with it (shockingly so sometimes).

That kind of level of cover is pretty ordinary in the UK even at the bottom end of the market. £10M for cheap policies is standard even for £25/year policies. Some very cheap policies even offer unlimited medical expenses cover. It is not so much on this but on other features that Amex travel insurance tends to be better than average, notably for travel incidents (missed connections, etc...).

carnarvon

Then I forgot one argument in favour of the French Amex Plat FB : simplicity. Everything is covered with the one card.

If I read correctly, there would be the need for one insurance covering excess, then another for primary coverage, then another for medical care, then for repatriation, then for delayed luggage, then for legal help abroad then what else?

When you add all them up, I don't know how much cheaper it will be. And you still don't get the other perks like mile earnings, Plat for two etc.

Regarding car rental, when I rent a car, I don't want to wonder if there is a need for primary or excess cover. I compare the costs with the minimum cover that the car rental company offers and I take it.


But this is me....

Other might want to handle 5 or 6 different insurance policies and forego the miles...

Fabo.sk

Every other credit card offers these insurances. Not to the AMEX level maybe, but really, CDW of a couple thousand is more than enough for 99% of cases. And I would very much expect the other 1% of the cases to be excluded from Amex policy anyway. Medical policies in millions are not uncommon etc.

Yes, this is all well and good, but... for those hundreds of euros? Not good value.

Even the second Platinum card - surely a good thing, but... is it good value? First, you need to have a Platinum of your own. Then, you need to have a partner, who travels on their own, but is not well travelled enough to have at least Gold of their own... Is that a common case?

Ditto

That will depend on your definition of a partner, as you could give the extra card to whomever you'd like, I know in my case, even though Ms. Ditto is STE+, I could have still saved roughly 300€ this year for EC seats for her, should I have decided to get the Amex Plat, with the 1st year @ 456€, that's not so bad either...

Masterfrog

I still think the French FB Platinum Amex is not worth the price (same goes with the normal one). If you compare with the US Delta one, you can feel how poor the card is for the price.

The travel insurance is pretty similar to what a free VISA Premier or even what the Gold Amex one would get you (the ceilings are more than enough). Amex subscribes a contract with AXA so at the end, you may have the same problems to get reimbursement as any insurer if they think the case doesn't apply to their contract. Having the shiniest card doesn't help.

I think it starts being worth it if you do a minimum of 50 000 euros of expense as you start getting a nice pool of miles.
But comparing to the gold Amex one, the difference in miles earning is not that big.
I would prefer pay an AF ticket with the difference of price (around 400 euros) which would earn some XPs and allow me to fly where I want to fly.

I understand AF wouldn't like a lounge access directly or with Priority Pass but at least they could add something worthwhile like free currency exchange conversion which wouldn't cost them a lot to make the card attractive.

NickB

It really does not make much sense to compare US credit cards to European ones. The markets are very different. The question is not whether it is better or worse that the US Delta one because cards like the US Delta one (or generally with comparable benefits to most US airline or hotel chain affinity cards) just do not exist in Europe. You might as well compare the price of Durian in Thailand and in Norway.

The more meaningful question is whether it brings benefits that make sense if you need those benefits and that work out cheaper than buying those benefits separately. For me that would not work and I suspect that for many other people, that also makes little financial sense but there may be some people for whom it does make sense.

Ditto

I think one important benefit (although it is a benefit that also applies to the Gold card, and potentially other Amex cards as well) is that it gives you unlimited 'credit' by being a charge card rather than a credit card, that is especially important when some car rental companies like to block a big chunk of money on your credit card.

carnarvon

Another thing wih Amex is that you can actually TALK to the card issuing company, 7/7, 24/24. In case of whatever issue, you can address it with someone responsible, unlike with Visa or Master Cards where you must talk with your bank (which needs to be open) who can object "it is not me, it is Visa (or MC)".

For example Amex will issue a new card and make it available the next day or so at the nearest Amex office (or couriered to your hotel I would expect). I don't think you can do that even with a Visa Premier or whatever up-scale bank issued card.

Ditto

Ohh don't even get me started on how ridiculous it is in NL, with ICS (the card issuer) being part of ABN Amro (the bank) when it suits them, and a separate entity when it suits them better.