Survey re Platinum Benefits Enhancements - Pay with Points
 

Just completed a survey from AMEX regarding platinum card benefits and potential enhancements. Gist was if you use "pay with points" for first or business class tickets, the miles required would be less. Two options with a series of questions:
- 20% fewer miles for First & Business, so 167K instead of 200K for a $2000 ticket
- 40% fewer miles for First & Business, so 143K instead of 200K for a $2000 ticket

There was a quick what if question where it was tied to price - fewer miles to redeem ticket >$1000.

I don't really use pay with points - as think the better value is transferring miles - so not especially enticing for me. YMMV, so passing along the possibility.

I can see 40% being interesting in some cases, but you can already get 20% on all travel via Chase CSP.

I recently had a survey where all the questions were PRG vs CSP. It was an amusing way to tell them that they're falling behind and need to get rid of the FTF.

40% values them at 1.66c, which is not bad, and you save the fee for the transfer.

The question is, can you get the best fares this way? If not then the 1.66c number is inflated.

While I have faith that AMEX will bounce back from the recent devaluations, the above post is making me wonder who is thinking of these new benefits. They need to come out with something simpler to use that's easy to redeem/utilize. Coming out with a "benefit" that can only be used by meeting stipulations a, b, or c isn't a benefit at all.

Not sure how 40% = 1.66c in this case?

Citi Prestige redeems on AA/US for 1.6c so it's not novel.

As for best price, the UR travel site generally has flights for the same price as airlines (although not all inventory) and hotels are inflated.

We'll see what happens.

$1 for 60 pts values the pts at 1.66c each.

Not novel, but it would be better to be able to redeem points at $0.016x each on any airline, rather than only AA/US, but neither is a compelling rate unless there are ample opportunities to earn more than one point per dollar because 2% cash back cards are readily available.

The Everyday Preferred gives me 1.5% on everything, and 4.5% on groceries and 3% on gas (which I don't really buy a lot of) - I *will* hit the 30 transaction minimum every month.

With 1.66c per point, and 1.5% points, this is the equivalent of 2.49c per point, and that is a pretty good redemption.

I'd need to hold out for transfer bonuses of better than 40% to do better - or transfer to good partners where the J and F points redemptions are better than 40%

This sounds interesting--but it will also require me to use a calculator to book a flight. Toss in Amazon Prime for the Amex Plat and I might be more interested.

That's one strategy, but some may not wish to pay $95 per year for Everyday Preferred on top of the Platinum Card's annual fee, or might have trouble making 30 transactions each billing cycle.

Another strategy would be Blue for Business, no annual fee and earns a 30% annual bonus on all spending. 1.3 points per dollar at $0.0166 is a $0.02158 per point return. Better than 2%, but not as good as $0.0249 -and- you have to wait for the bonus points.

(All of this assumes that American Express would not restrict the 40% discount to points actually earned with the Platinum Card.)

I completed same survey.

Pay with points? I really struggle to see how it would EVER make sense to pay with points through Amex Travel.

Let's compare to an awful program, like Delta. To fly Business Class to Hong Kong is easily $6000 or more. If you want to use SkyPesos, and are lucky enough to grab the one single "saver" seat they offer per year, it's maybe not a bad deal. But generally it's 240K - 320K for a business class seat.

That values the points at $0.025 each on the lower redemption, and and $0.0188 on the higher. I'd never accept that.

Under the hypothetically improved Pay with Points, you'd need anywhere from 429,000 to over 501,000 points. This is just crazy.

Of course, I look at it through the lens of International Long Haul in Business Class.

OP says 143k MR for $2000.

Which seems more like 1.4cpp?

good point.

"143k instead of 200k" is not "40% fewer". 40% fewer would be 120k instead of 200k

Maybe he means, a 40% bonus, which is completely different.

It depends what market you are looking at. For example, you can often find pretty reasonably priced business class fares to Europe in the summer (when business travelers aren't filling those seats), often under $3000 roundtrip and sometimes even less than that.

I agree that for "normal" business class fares this isn't a good deal, but it may not be terrible, and for some booking profiles it may be very good -- those $3000 business class fare deals often arise at a point in the year when the low price award tickets are long since sold out. You would also earn miles on these tickets, unlike a real award ticket, which has some value.