So it's less "we don't take credit cards" and more "we do not wish to deal with the unwashed who do not care to have such a small sum as $500 on their person at any given time." Got it.

Funny.

We don't take credit. Sounds like you can simply sign up for their account and call in and say "Hey I need you to charge my AMEX."

I haven't read all 135+ post but would like to add my $.02. Amex needs to build a premium card geared toward Millennials from scratch. They should take what they learned from Chase and build upon the idea. They have a great brand but are trying to fit a square peg in a round hole with their Platinum enhancements. Someone in the Amex tower told Ken that millennials will really respond to the Uber credit because they use Uber. Probably wowed him with Uber penetration rates among the demo. What they learned was that the $15 per month wasnt enough to make people keep the Plat or apply. All the other enhancements are jokes as well since they will have relatively low utilization.

Put your heads together and come up with something new.

The benefit is worthwhile(Uber). It is just not levied properly. 200 is the credit. 15 a month plus 25 in December is just stupid. 200 dollars Uber credit. Ride in a nice car 1 time for 200 or take 10 cheap rides in a Kia. Once it's burned up it's burned up.

But that's the whole point - AmEx doesn't want to make it simple. Their rewards and benefits are intentionally setup to be as obtuse and as difficult to use as possible, so that people either forget to use them, don't bother to use them or don't use them correctly. The fewer benefits and rewards are used/redeemed, the better for AmEx.

That probably worked decades ago when they were the only game in town. Nowadays there's plenty of credit cards that give much better rewards and have many of the same benefits. People have choices and they will vote with their wallets. As the NYT article correctly points out, AmEx is behind the times. I think their management doesn't even understand what's happening to them.

As I understand it, the different tiers of Visa (Infinite, Signature, etc) have different merchant fees. How does Visa Infinite compare against Amex in terms of merchant fees?

Do you think they don't want to? Or simply can't? Uber wouldn't agree to simple? Or something else going on?

I agree with you but wonder if it's AMEX can't or doesn't want to.

...and the problem (at least for Amex) is that since there's so much information available, people can do comparisons in a matter of minutes. The majority of people aren't loyal to any one airline, hotel chain, ride share service, etc; they choose what is the best deal at the time. Directly comparing the expense refund benefits between the CSR and Plat can (not incorrectly) give the impression that Amex is trying to "get one over" on you by making it more difficult to get the full benefit.

Amex needs to realize the impression that they're putting off and change things pretty quick, lest they go the way of Diners Club.

I think they can't, but not due to Uber. I think the issue with AmEx's benefits in general is that they can't afford to provide too many of them.

Most credit card companies mainly make money off interest from the large number of customers who don't pay their bills in full. Unlike those credit companies, AmEx gets their revenue mainly from annual fees and interchange fees.

Interchange fees are on the decline and benefits are expensive. The only reason why it even works is breakage and the spread between the cost of miles that AmEx buys in bulk and the cost at which AmEx sells them to customers.

Many customers choose to not take full advantage of the benefits their cards offer them, but they still pay the annual fee. Second, many customers either don't redeem their rewards or redeem at suboptimal value. Anything AmEx can do to make the customers not use their benefits or rewards means more money in AmEx's pockets.

Their ideal customer is the rich person who spends hundreds of thousands on their Centurion card, paying the hefty annual fee and never bothering to redeem any of the points they accumulate.

To increase their revenue, AmEx has tried a number of things.

First, they increased the annual fee on the Plat because they have no choice. They had to throw a bone to the customers to try to convince them to keep it, so they offered a couple of non-benefits that they tried to dress up pretty. Only time will tell if that will work. My prediction is, it will not.

Second, they also started to push their Pay Over Time feature to try to get some interest out of their client base.

Third, when they do add additional benefits, they make it so that you have to jump through hoops to make use of them. This way they increase their chances that you will not use the benefit. Here's a couple of examples:

• Delayed rewards point posting
• Excise fees on miles redemptions
• Drip-feeding the Uber bonus
• Only very specific charges eligible for airline fee reimbursement
• 5x points on hotels, but only on prepaid hotels and not on FHR
• Bonus points categories can be obtained by pairing with a different card, but those cards carry their own annual fees
• Long list of small print with many exclusions and exceptions on AmEx Offers
• Paltry value of MR points when redeemed for statement credits

AmEx is between a rock and a hard place. Without major changes, they can only keep increasing the annual fees and decreasing the benefits, which certainly won't entice new customer to signup for their products.

The problem with this is that there are still many types of transactions that are NOT posted right away: automatic recurring ACHs, and manual ACHs that you might have scheduled for the future or even done within the last day or so but have not posted. If you don't have an accurate balance independent of what the bank thinks your available balance is, it's not that hard to become overdrawn or bounce transactions, unless you have a high balance relative to your spend.


I think a great many people are missing something important about the Uber benefit. Consider other benefits like the airline credit: they don't rely on the merchant doing anything, and result in statement credits. But with Uber, the available credit appears right in the Uber app, and Uber does all of the accounting. This means Uber is involved. And when I say "involved," I mean it more than one way: I'm willing to speculate that there is a partnership for this program between Uber and Amex, and that part of it is that Amex brings to Uber a set of premium (dare I say platinum?) cardholders in return for not having to pay for all of the credits themselves. Even if a cardholder redeems all $200 of annual Uber credit, I suspect that Amex isn't paying anywhere near that amount to Uber. From Uber's point of view, getting people into the habit of using Uber regularly is important to them.

I agree on this.


Took out some comments to make it cleaner.

On the interest fees wonder what AMEX sees on their 'regular' cards? IE DL AMEX Plat and the like that can carry a balance? The people I know that have ANY AMEX know it is a 'pay it off in full' card. Even if you can carry a balance. So I suspect you are correct in they don't see a ton of interest payments like VISA/MC see.

I can tell you on the DL AMEX Plat I was offered a 6% on any purchase until the end of the year. Literally my entire account is 6%. So clearly they do want to try and get some interest money.

In terms of the Plat card. Why didn't AMEX just market it as 'pay over time' with a set rate and roll that out with the new metal card(and new benefits). I pay in full(on both cards) but it would seem that would align them to the other cards in the market.

What cards are 'charge' cards in their collection and which are credit cards? I haven't truly looked into all of them recently. Is the standard Green, Gold and Pla all charge cards?

It's a horse race, you know.

At no time are the horses eaten.

Vegan friendly! :)


As the NYT article (correctly? I do not know.) points out, many senior executives at other CC companies are former AMEX leaders.

Not sure what exactly this means?
- did the best ones leave? (take best practices to other cc companies)
- will the AMEX execs who left bring their old habits to their new companies? (The experiences that make AMEX what it is today, for better or for worse.)

Or can they somehow bring the best qualities with them and none of the lesser aspects of AMEX?

Yep, all charge cards. The rest (cobranded, Blue, etc.) are all credit cards.

I disagree. Back when I had an Amex Gold (not co-branded Gold) it was definitely a credit card. Now, but it may have changed (and I now have a Plat card), but just saying.

Feel free to disagree, but also feel free to double check on their web site. Go here and click on "Filter Cards" and select "Charge cards". It will show you the Green, Gold, Premier Rewards Gold and Platinum.