EverGreen7230

Agreed that it isn't a true competitor to Chase's offerings. It sits in between the $450 luxury card and $95 generic travel card. My primary gripe with it is that while the $100 airline credit is actually useful outside of redeeming for an airline gift card, the food credits and dining category bonus annoy me. They seem intentionally implemented in a way and scope that's more limited than any other dining reward card on the market. Same for the Platinum, with it's annual fee hike in return for crappy Uber and Saks 5th credits. It just comes off as Amex trying to find an excuse to increase the upfront cost of cards that already are some of the more expensive ones in the US market.

Also agreed that the UR portal is pretty poor in most respects. I've had successes with it with both hotels and cruises getting the list price I could otherwise book at, and I've also paid above the cash price in order to use UR points for aspirational stays I wouldn't otherwise be able to use points for, though still at a better value than straight UR to cashback. I've never actually used the Amex portal, as I prefer to send my Amex points to airline programs for redemptions, so I don't know how their portal stacks up. The lower individual point value and more limited bonus categories of their cards has always turned me off from redeeming on it.

keyjey

I would agree that I have always find UR redemption to be more convenient due to United award chart and ease of booking United award flights. But now with today's news UR and UA mileage value took significant hit IMO. This just makes MR more useful now even if it would require me to do bit more legwork to redeem them.

krazykanuck

You thinking pissed off /=/ disagreeing with you. I'm not pissed off at you, if you don't find value in the Gold Card that's fine. No card is the ideal for everyone.

Happy

It literally takes out UA as one of the only two worthy transfer partner with today's major devaluation move.
For the time being the redemption on partner flights has not been affected, but the partner charts have been removed from UA site - so the days of it stays intact is numbered.

EverGreen7230

I've never actually used UA as a partner. All my transfer with Chase have been to either Hyatt or Southwest. Chase does still have Virgin Atlantic and AirFrance/KLM as good value partners as well, even if United is turning into Delta. And I've never found MR to be difficult to redeem, just difficult to effectively accrue outside of sign-up bonuses and MS.

jags86

surfmonkey89

How do you get 2x everywhere?

Happy

AMEX Business Plus, no annual fee, flat 2x earning on everything. Occasionally has some good AMEX Offers.

sethMCOflyer

Virgin Atlantic is a strong transfer partner for both UR and MR that rarely gets talked about. I've probably used them the most as you can find some random Delta on there for way cheaper than Delta (I recently booked a domestic F award for 17.5k VS points compared to 50k on Delta's site or $550 cash). I've even paid the fuel surcharges to fly into London, it was still a good deal compared to cash or the other options.

United's award availability has been going to crap lately aside from longhaul economy, everything else has been really hard to find.

snowmt

if Virgin is your preferred program then both MR and thankyou are better options due to 25% transfer bonus they offer each year.

mhdena

It seems the most content people are those who know how to utilize the different miles/points programs. Occasionally a poster starts complaining about an Amex card and why isn't it like a Chase card, another poster with a Hard On for Amex comes to mind.

I like em all and am happy to accumulate and use MRs , URs, and TYPs.

yugi

Altitude Reserve is much better. You can book directly with an airline, earning 3x (4.5%) and redeem points at the same time via Realtime Mobile rewards, and if you still have $325 yearly travel reimbursement, you also get that.

yugi

I think OTAs are not included in 3x travel category of AR. I didn't try it myself, but my coworker tried and he didn't receive 3x on hotwire purchase.

jags86

EverGreen7230

It's the inconsistency of Amex's 4x category for dining that kills it for me, and unfortunately I do not have a Blue for Business Plus due to already being at the CC limit. I plan to get one to use as a daily driver once my second Hilton card's annual fee comes up though, but I have about 8 months until then. A vast majority of my spend is either travel expenses (hotels) or dining, with airline spend usually being taxes and fees for cheap Southwest flights, so the 3x with no airline travel protection is not attractive to me versus the CSR. Re: Amex offers, I find them very hit or miss. I've taken advantage of several, but mostly they require me to buy gift cards from a vendor I've never shopped with and have no intention to shop with, and resell the gift cards at a loss. Occasionally there's useful things like the 15-20% off an amount spent on specific hotel stays, cruise spend, or airlines, but those are very hit or miss depending on where I happen to be staying. It's nice when it happens, but I'd never consider it a truly reliable money-saver or source of MR. Likewise for Ebates, I've used the Chase portal for an extra 3%-15% back on rare online department store spend, and ebates looks to be similar, but I've had issues with these sorts of things tracking in the past and don't really bother with it anymore due to how little of my spending it makes up.