roki

Yes, you do.

skibum7732

Well you do get 15k bonus for 30k spend annually and 2x at grocery stores, so getting 75k MR for 30k spend is not to shabby

Dieuwer

I don't get anywhere near $30k spend. And with the AMEX EveryDay you will get 2x at grocery stores for free.

FindAWay

With respect to the second sentence and your second point, I'm not sure that it is intended or is ambiguous enough to be so broad as to include non-personal cards...

They use the term "Platinum Card®" in this instance; but, in references to the small business and corporate products in other documentation, they are usually careful to use "Business Platinum Card®" and "Corporate Platinum Card®", respectively. With the differentiation of these products, they could easily either (a) have simply deleted the reference to "a Platinum Card®" so that the sentence read "This offer is also not available to applicants who have or have had an account enrolled in the Membership Rewards® program." or (b) included the non-personal accounts in the sentence to read: "This offer is also not available to applicants who have or have had one or more Platinum Card®, Business Platinum Card®, and/or Corporate Platinum Card® account(s) enrolled in the Membership Rewards® program."

I think that they are trying to restrict churning the same product...but, I do think the language extends to the MB version because that is typically presented as "a Platinum Card® from American Express exclusively for Mercedes Benz."

levander

Or, AMEX will continue their current policy of being terribly vague as to whether or not a successful applicant gets the sign up bonus. And the average Joe will apply for the card a 2nd time, only to be completely livid that he didn't get the sing up bonus. Then he runs around and tells all his friends what a shoddy company AMEX is, etc., etc..

To me churners in the financial industry are much like early adopters in some technology industries. Some of these technology companies will cater more towards early adopters, figuring that since these are some of the more excited customers, they'll talk more, brag about what a great company, etc.. Other technology companies will evaluate their situation and decide early adopters aren't worth the effort.

These bonuses the banks are giving out come out of the marketing budget. Having some proud and happy churner walk around talking about your product is exactly the kind of PR you want to purchase with your marketing budget.

Of course some of the churners will just be talking about free money they got, but others will know more about the product, etc..

It's like buying a commercial spot on a television show. You know that not every viewer of the show will give a flip about your product, you're just hoping enough of them will that you make some money.

AMEX has just decided it doesn't care about the buzz amongst the more aggressive users creates. They're probably planning on buying more television commercials and magazine pages and see if that generates more card sign-ups. They did that AMEX Sync thing, maybe they think that's all the social buzz they need?

sdsearch

Amex created Bluebird which is used (as a part of Manufactured Spending) by many churners to "work around" bigger spend requirements for signup bonuses on cards (among other uses). Maybe they figure they'll continue getting good enough churner buzz from that even if it only gets used mostly to "work around" bigger spend requirements for signup bonuses on competitors' cards?

linuxmachine

Amex doesn't like churners. Pro churners who preach the word of churning will create more churners.

'Aggressive users' do certainly attract buzz, but I think it's creating a growing class of consumers who are abusing the system, and Amex is following suit. At some point, Amex will have to decide whether the buzz is worth all that churn, and it looks like they want to cut this practice before it may get even bigger.

Whether this is a good move or not comes down to hindsight. Depending on how well Amex does after policy is enforced will determine whether Amex will loosen up again. In the end, IMHO Amex doesn't have much to lose. If they feel this is killing momentum, they'll slowly loosen up and consumers will be right back. A lot of people talk about how consumer is in charge, but reality is that people won't leave free points on the table.

I think Amex has a good reputation among most cardholders. I personally think Amex was never meant to provide the best rewards/points program as much as the best perks and customer service in the industry, although you could argue that other companies have given Amex a run for their money over the years. We'll see how they do once they enforce the rules, but seeing as how they are trying to bring out some interesting products, they might do alright. Also, I'm sure travel bloggers/sites will still push cards to users who can sign up for them. It may not be as lucrative, but it pays their bills

cfischer

Agreed. I am looking forward to Amex stopping this nonsense. That way they have more they can hand out to those who actually use their card products ... and this won't hurt them because I will be spending more if they reward me more.

drwilliams

I agree with you on this. If they stop giving out points to those that only take the points, meet the minimum spend, stop using it and cancel before they pay any annual fee, that should be good for long term cardholders.

I am surprised something like this was not done long ago.

lazard

What makes you think Amex would increase benefits to existing cardholders after they implement this change.

Joe1690

While no smart company would simply increase the perks for existing customers once they remove the signup bonuses for existing customers, they will instead gain access overtime to better data on what types of retention bonuses work as well as what is driving customers to cancel particular card products.

From my limited network of friends who do not churn, they are happy with their American Express cards for the superior customer service and benefits including extended warranty, purchase protection, etc. These friends of mine are happy to pay Amex the annual fee and use it as their primary card even though they know other cards offer superior rewards because they want simplicity in their life. As such, I am not so certain that Amex will increase the rewards on existing cards, but rather may use that money either to design new products or simply to increase their overall profits.

linuxmachine

Most likely the latter. I could imagine beefier signup bonuses maybe... but not much else

Adelphos

I'm late to this thread, but at the end of the day, American Express job is to deliver profits to shareholders, not benefits to churners. American Express is a Dow component with a record stock price and strong profitability. The company has done well in recent years. Chase has also done very well and has delivered strong credit card customers to certain customers. That said, in NYC, Green, Gold and Platinum Amexes continue to be ubiquitous, so a lot of customers still get value out of them.

mahasamatman

It will, in fact, improve their bottom line. Churners cost Amex money, so getting rid of them is definitely in the company's best interests.

sdsearch

Even on cards with high spend requirements?

Let's say I hold an SPG card for a few years, paying only part of the annual fee because I know about going for retention bonuses, and I put very little spend on it. Does that really cost Amex less than if I cancelled and reapplied a year later and spent $5000 (to get the bonus again)???

As a churner, I'm almost always chasing one spend threshold or another, so the alternative to not churning is not putting everyday spending on that card, it's putting card in a drawer while I direct my spend threshold spending to other (and now mostly non-Amex) cards.

See, Amex isn't getting rid of churners, it's getting rid of churning. That's a real difference. Churners don't necessarily churn every card they have, they typically hold some. Amex isn't getting rid of the churners that hold Amex cards, they are only getting rid of the churning of the same cards.