Low Roller

Although you plan to keep the personal platinum, the biz platinum has most of the same benefits, so unless there is some specific difference that is important to you, you could cancel the personal (after self-referring) and switch to the biz platinum so that you're not doubling up on annual fees. Then you could self refer from the biz platinum to the biz gold for an extra 10K referral bonus.

grandgourmand

Biz Gold is definitely the better deal. But if you're willing to get the Plat Biz and can spend $10k on Amex cards over the next 6 months (to meet min. spend requirement) you should probably go #1 biz plat then refer from biz plat to biz gold. You get 25k referral vs. 15k. Not much, but if you also happen to have other referrals (friends families) picking up an extra 10k/referral is great.

CAVEATS: there's some speculation the 25k referral from Biz Plat will be reducing at the end of March AND the FYF Biz Gold could go away at any time.

I'd also enter your SPG Amex card # instead of your Plat Card on your application.

ayking

The personal plat is not due for renewal until November, so it'll be a while before I need to make that decision. Will see how the benefits are at that time since $699 - $200 travel credits = $499.

emilio911

Yeah, I guess it will be known a few months before if AMEX is really not renewing the contract. But what I'm thinking is that AMEX is maybe looking for something better than Aeroplan since even Air Canada dumped Aeroplan.

emilio911

For any French-speaker out there: AMEX's French CSRs are really incompetent. If you want quality customer service, call in English.

For example, the replacement cards are sent by Canada Post Regular Mail if you speak French with them. However, if you speak English, they give you the choice between FedEx Express and Canada Post Priority.

SOWK

I'm sure by now we've all seen the new language on the Business Platinum referral page indicating a change could be coming on March 21st, but interestingly I just received a referral bonus of 20,000MR points when referring someone from by Business Platinum.

On one hand, I'm saddened by the missing 5,000 points, but on the other (if this is the change), I'm relieved.

Any other data points on recent referrals?

gonebabygone

I have an interesting data point, but I don't know what it means!

I'm waiting for points from a recent referral, but this is what appeared today:



What are 'bonus points'? I've had the card for ages, so this isn't related to meeting any minimum spending.

And why do I have two of them?

Not that I'm complaining But definitely confused!

JJonahJ

JJonahJ

gonebabygone

Nope, I think I figured it out! I have two recent referrals from my BizPlat, and yet each gave me only 10,000 points. So each 15,000 bonus appears to be a top-up to make the full 25,000.

Which makes me a bit afraid that the March 21 referral point deduction might be all the way down to 10,000 points...

Anyone else experiencing something similar?

JJonahJ

reclusive46

At certain times of the day your also getting CSRs based in France (Or the UK) as well, who aren't overly familiar with the Canadian products.

SOWK

I referred someone for the Business Platinum Card when the 20,000 points posted. Referred another person the next day, and the full 25,000 points posted this morning. I will send a secure message to Amex to see what happened.

JJonahJ

Good to know, thanks for sharing.

So we are perhaps seeing indicators that the Business Plat referring bonus may be dropping, and as you mentioned previously, if it's from 25,000 down to 20,000 then that's not as bad as dropping it back to its original (prior to Mar 2016) bonus of 15,000 per approved referral.

I can already see that we will be in for a stream of datapoints where the Business Plat's referral bonus will be 'missing' or delayed for several weeks, much like when the Personal Plat was pushed back down to 15,000, after the 3-month experiment of giving it 25,000 powers. After that happened, throughout the summer and even into the Fall, Amex were delaying many Personal Plat's referring bonus from posting by as much as 8-10 weeks, and I surmise it was due to pulling aside these applications and feeding the referrals through a manual review, to ensure only 15,000 were awarded, instead of the briefly gifted 25,000.

What a revolving world we are seeing in the Amex Canada scene.

jcaeih

My Personal Gold is untimely expiring just ahead of some travel I have to book soon and as I'm planning to change to personal Platinum anyways, I called the customer service to check if travel coverage afforded by purchase with Gold would voided with the switch (based on what I've gleaned here, MR transfers isn't a problem). Here's what they said:

1. If requesting upgrade from within account, the coverage of travel purchased with the Gold would continue to be valid (at the Gold level not the Platinum).
2. If obtaining the Platinum by a referral, i.e. such that the ex. Gold and Platinum would be active for a short time together and the bonus referral points applied, the rep. indicated that the coverage of travel purchased with the Gold would not be recognized.

Wanted to see if anyone has been in similar case, or received the same answers as I did from Amex (just worried it's variable depending on which rep. one speaks to). Thanks in advance!