farwest101

? $250 fee is a money loser for Amex for those who MS. 100K MRs a year is worth $1250 cash via Schwab - and quite a bit more if you can use transfer bonuses. $250 AF less $100 airline credit less $120 food credit. $30 to earn $1250+. And you cancel the best MS card in the market? SMH.

I plan to get as many Gold's as I can.

Happy

The argument has some serious flaws.

1) not everyone engages in MS.

2) even someone engages in MS, his grocery stores may not sell any high value Gebit, or even the chain does, may not take CC. Off the top of my head, locations in this country incl South Floirda (no Gebit at $500 is available), SoCal, either no CC purchase or very serious fraudulent issues on tempered Gebits that makes it high risk, plus the liquidation avenues are extremely limited (both North Cali and South Calie, as well as a good part of NY)

3) The Schwab translation is just a gross amount, without taking into the costs associated with MS activity - even just the actual cash outlay, not counting the time / effort / gas running around. And that is contingent to the MS activity per your post.

The transfer to partners all depends on how much the balances in the corresponding FFP accounts. As an example, in our household, we have not taken any transfer bonus to BA the past 4 years when our BA household account still has over 400K with our usage rate at less than 50/60K a year, often only 20 to 30K, for the intra Japan/Asia/Australia that at 4.5K to 10K a piece.

4) The airline credit is hard to use because the GC routes have been dead as a nail, plus you can only use it on one airline for the calendar year. Unless you incur incidental charges all the time on the chosen airline you fly during the calendar year, this benefit pretty much is useless, if not worthless, to many people.

5) Same thing can be said to the dining credit with the very limited options. Grub / Seamless not working well in where I live. I would drop by Cheesecake once a month when it is convenient on our errands route to buy a low value GC, then the next month on the similar errands route I order lunch pick up, paid partly with the prev month GC and balance on the Gold card. Still it feels out of our way because we normally dont eat at Cheesecake factory.

For the above reasons even my Gold card only has $195 fee (grandfathered on a target offer first year fee waived), I have no desire to keep the card, but a $150 dining credit retention offer kept me for the 2nd year even though I may end up only "earn" $100 dining credit versus the $150 cap due to we only have 2 months to "earn" it as the credit only works on US restaurant and we would be out of the country on the last 30 days out of the 90 days earning period.

mia

Bear in mind that the credit now also applies to Boxed.com. While the product assortment is limited, and their warehouse needs to hire someone from Amazon to teach them how to pack, I manage to place one order per month for things we do consume, and collect the $10 credit without going out of my way.

Happy

Thanks for the reminder. I did look at Boxed.com a while ago but did not find stuff that interest me. Lots of the items offered are just to big in size. Will take a better look when I have more time to go over the site more thoroughly.

kdm31091

I think the credits are, at this stage, just too limited. If they add more dining/retail partners I think it would have a broader appeal, but if you're going out of your way to shop at Boxed or Cheesecake just to use the credit, I would think you're better off not paying the AF in the first place and not having the card.

mia

The credit is not important to my decision to keep the card. Previously, I was going out of my way to buy Whole Foods Market gift cards at Staples with Chase INK Cash. This earned 5 UR points per dollar on the WFM portion of my shopping, and I earned 2 points per dollar at the other supermarket. Now I earn 4 points per dollar at both supermarkets, and only go to Staples when I actually need office supplies. The simplicity and convenience is worth the fee, for me.

trikotret

I kinda slowed down using this card since all of my experience ...h wrong restaurant codings. It became annoying to keep chatting and getting it fixed. Plus I don't travel very often. That's why I stick to cash back cards. I do go out of my way to get the $10 dining credit. That's why I'm hoping the green card refresh would benefit me so I can downgrade. I got a retention offer last year but I didn't get one this year. I also don't have the guts to cancel this card since it was my first college credit card in 93.

Explorer789

Unlike some delivery services, Grubhub does offer pickup for some restaurants. Using the credit to cover one carryout lunch/dinner a month is still very easy.

trikotret

Yes but I noticed the prices on GrubHub or more than when buying directly from restaurant.

Happy

Yet the cardholders will still think they have saved $10.

All those hard to use credit is really marketing ploy to make the cardholders feel like they are getting something for free...

In fact the most successful strategy is the Chase CSR with its $300 easy to use Travel Credit - that got many feel really good about it. Some even feel they are getting free money and forgot that is actually a form of rebate to the $450 AF. The card would not get so much hoopla and talk about if it is just a plain $150 AF card with the other benefits...

That said, for our household the CSR is a "negative AF" card because we definitely get more than $450 value back in the course of a year. $150 is very easy to recover with the PP usages particularly come in handy at some international 2nd or 3rd tier airports. Now, if the restaurant benefit is taken away like the AMEX PP, then it would be another story. The occasional opportunities to use the UR pts for independent lodging / cruise bookings also are welcome.

True the card only earns 3x dining and the TD card we use for grocery only earns 2x - but then it would take A Lot of additional category earning to even breakeven on the Gold card's $250 AF.- if the spend is evenly distributed between dining and grocery shopping - the differential would be 2x4 on Gold and 3+2 on CSR+TD with just 3pt difference - use the standard 1c per pt value it would take a $8300 Additional spend in these 2 categories to just breakeven before earning any extra - that is just too much additional spend in these 2 categories for our household. Hence I will not keep it come next year's renewal. Numbers dont lie but you would need to do hard calculation to find the concrete answer. Of course there are the other factors of simplicity and convenience that mia mentions. For how much to pay for those factors, it would be each individual's own measurement.

Explorer789

True for some restaurants but not all, so I would be careful about making blanket statements. For example, there's a really great thai restaurant few blocks away from my home and the prices are the same as what you can order directly from their website. If the pricing is inflated, it's the restaurant to blame for trying to charge more to cover the fee they need to pay grubhub, and you should report it to grubhub since it violates policy to have higher prices than the normal menu..

tempting

Hello, I'm new to AMEX and new to this forum. I recently got approved for the AMEX Gold and was wondering how the $120 ($10/month) dining credit worked? Can I make just one transaction per month from one of the participating restaurants and get my $10 credit from that or is that $10 like a cashback kind of thing where I have to spend a certain amount and get up to $10/month.

Diplomatico

You use your AMEX Gold Card as the method of payment for a participating restaurant/delivery service. Once the charge posts, you'll receive the statement credit 2-3 days later.

There's no minimum - spend $10, get $10. Spend $20, get $10. (And it's $10 per month credit.)

trikotret

Yes you can make one transaction at a participating restaurant. Just make sure it's above $10 to get the max credit. You'll get a $10 statement credit

barrytuneup

still the card is not worth it to me as my wife and I have a number ofOBC cards to get 5% at groceries..and my groceries in my areas (6 S&S and 4 Acme) do sell 500.00 VGC. Plus CVS/WalgreensI I maxed out the 25k groc. cat months ago on the gold. Got the card 10/19 and paid fee. Fee begins again 10/15/19. Will get the 10.00 seamless credit on 10/1 and cancel. Points are not worth it to me when I can get cashback on BCP (2) and OBC (4). Do not travel and my only option to get cash back on Gold was to get Staples GC. at full value..50.00 for 50.00 card.and sell them to card cash for 42.50 cash. After VGC fees and annual fee its crazy to keep. Did get the 50k bonus points that made it worth it. Plus keeping track of all these cards plus Chase and Disc 3% is quite time consuming.