lifeandmylens

I figured this was coming. Man Amex needs to add some new partners. All they seem to do is take away!

I do like these new bennies though:

# $200 Airline Fee Credit -- Cardmembers can check a bag or enjoy an in-flight meal on American Express. Every year American Express will cover up to $200 of incidental airline fees that are charged on the Cardmember’s enrolled Card on a selected airline. The $200 Airline Fee Credit can apply to fees such as baggage fees, flight change fees, in-flight food and airport lounge day passes.

# 20% Travel Bonus -- When Cardmembers use Membership Rewards Pay with Points to pay for part or all of their travel including airlines, hotels, cruises and vacation packages, they will get 20% of those points credited back to their account. For example, if a Cardmember redeems 30,000 points to pay for an airline ticket, American Express will credit 6,000 point to the Membership Rewards Cardmember’s account.

sbm12

The Pay with Points "credit" is nice but in most cases it will still not be a great value at 1.2cpm.

The $200 fee credit is a VERY nice touch. That's roughly 30 minis.

Okto

The same press release states that Platinum and Centurion cardholders will be getting:

$200 Airline Fee Credit -- Cardmembers can check a bag or enjoy an in-flight meal on American Express. Every year American Express will cover up to $200 of incidental airline fees that are charged on the Cardmember’s enrolled Card on a selected airline. The $200 Airline Fee Credit can apply to fees such as baggage fees, flight change fees, in-flight food and airport lounge day passes.

We'll see what airlines participate in this program, but it seems like a very nice benefit. Will the Plat fee remain at $450/yr?

mia

<yawn> This merely increases the value of Pay with Points from $.01 to $0.0125 per point. This isn't even competitive with American Express's own Blue Sky program which awards $100 for spending $7,500 = $0.133+ per point.

lifeandmylens

Agreed that it's still a dismal redemption ratio, but for people who use pay with points, it's certainly better than it is now. This guy would have gotten 13k points back.

I got a new idea for added benefits especially since centurion CO status is probably going bye bye - how about centurion cards earn 2MR points per dollar spent! Ok...I'll keep dreaming..

Okto

Maybe, if he used a Platinum or Centurion card. The new benefit doesn't seem to apply to other charge cards.

S.Bling

First of all the "benefits" are just empty PR to counter the bad-news of the CO drop. The "$200 credit" which is on "enrolled card" and "on a selected airline" is way too fine-print-laden to be considered an upgrade of any kind, especially 1 year before it's even rolled out.
Remember the "free business class tickets" for Plat/Cent or the bonus tickets if you enroll in their co-branded travel advisor service? It's just PR - nobody will give you 200 for nothing. Don't rejoice just yet.

Second of all as a Cent I am shocked you would even use the "pay with points" feature at all, until now. What would you gain by doing it - you get 0.01 credit per MR point, if you book through Amex? Just book yourself through whomever or wherever you want, and get the 0.01 statement credit instead...

Lastly, and I've said it before in other threads:
It's not so much that the loss of CO has been expected (seeing that they have been solidifying their connection with Chase, and slowly severing with all other issuers).
It's not even that MR or Amex is "losing CO" at all.
There's nothing "to lose", as it may.
Come 2011 (or 2012, depending how far along the process is) there will be no CO proper, anyway.
It is being merged into the new UA/CO behemoth.
And as "adding" UA to Amex's partners was never even on the table - it was obvious that in the event of CO being swallowed into UA (like NW was into DL or KL was into AF, or TW was into AA) then CO was going to be lost to the world as a whole, not just to Amex...

This was apparent when CCS explained last year (when CO and DL both added another tier above GL) that they would not be upgrading GL to PL (like USAir did) because not only wasn't an enhancement in the cards but "it's not certain that we will keep all of the domestic partners"...

:-)

Look for more instances of 1 step forward and 2 steps back with Cent, IMO.

lifeandmylens

Who said I use pay with points? I never have, and more than likely never will.

Vacation time

Wow 200 hundred dollars .... It better be per flight not year ..... Amex plat. Just keeps losing the extras Amex better work hard as this card is losing value quickly.....

mia

Annual fee is $450. Do you seriously think American Express is going to credit back $200 per flight? Most of the benefits offered by American Express (and other cards) are funded by the merchant, but if this offer isn't restricted to a small number of "participating carriers" the expense will be borne by American Express. It's effectively a prorata refund of the annual fee.

S.Bling

LOL - I hope so.

But you did (or implied that you did) by saying how much you liked the new benefit pertaining to "pay with points" (comment #3)

sbm12

The benefit is coming in December 2010. That's 3 months, not 1+ year.

lkar

Seem like a pretty significant benefit to me. I agree we need to know what "on a selected airline" means. I don't think on "an enrolled card" will be much of a burden. I have enough checked baggage fees on airlines where I don't have status, that, depending on the details, this could bring the effective cost of the platinum card down to $250 for me. Should just be a short time before we know about the details, since the benefit is effective December 1.

Xyzzy

The second half of today's Continental Airlines announcement (already being discussed here) is this: #1 -- This seems like it's a pretty good benefit -- as long as it doesn't require lots of phone calls to take advantage of.

#2 -- Even with a 20% kickback on the number of points required, most such redemptions for travel offer an extremely poor value

#3 -- Wt wt, yet another app. <yawn>

mia

In the parallel thread in the Continental section:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/conti...pt-2011-a.html

There is a link to this NY Times blog:

http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/...th-continental

Which offers this explanation: Starting Dec. 1, you can register your favored airline with Amex and it will waive up to $200 in fees (like those for baggage checking, in-flight food purchases, airport club day passes and flight changes) with that airline each year.

If this is accurate the key is to know if there is a short picklist of participating carriers or if it there will be a broad choice. I doubt most of us would choose our favorite airline, because many fees are waived with elite status.