kdm31091

I think it seems likely they would drop Grubhub. It doesn't make much sense to offer both Grubhub and Uber Eats. Hopefully if they do drop Grubhub they will replace it with something (or several restaurants), because the remaining ones are not a big selection.

mia

If Grubhub and Uber Eats are both content to offer discounts to American Express cardholders, why would American Express send one of them away? Would Grubhub do better to partner with Citi?

LAX

I think the question is more whether Grubhub wants to keep going with the Amex partnership, but I am not sure if it can strike a more beneficial partnership with another bank, though.

LAX

cfischer

is that confirmed? I would hope that is how it works, but regardless ... it will become more difficult to use. I would have rather wanted Amex to offer an orthogonal benefit ... they must realize they have several members who have more than1 premium card.

How about a choice? Here are 3 options to choose from. Probably too much hassle for Amex.

Diplomatico

Tough to confirm when the benefit since the "benefit" doesn't begin until next year.

However, the way "Uber Cash" currently works, it's a pool of money.

I despise Uber (they consistently overcharge customers, they have no "customer service", I could go on) but under the current Uber business model, the credits should merge and become a single pool of credits.

vincewy

Regarding $10 credit, sorry if this has been asked before, if the Grubhub transaction statement showed up as Oct 30th, but I received credit Nov 1st.

Does this $10 credit count as credit for October or November?

Diplomatico

Should be the October credit. (You can double check by going to the Gold card homepage, click on benefits, and see if the monthly tracker still shows $10 remaining for November.)

Gasolin

That would be a shame for the Platinum, I thought the whole point of the card was to be for travelers. I always use mine to fly with our dog...

eponymous_coward

They have to replace it in more than one place though (note that AMEX is replacing the credit, not just dumping the benefit altogether)- for instance, the Hilton Aspire card isn't such a hot screaming deal if it's $250 at a resort/Priority Pass/weekend room night/Diamond as the major benefits minus $250 airline reimbursement that's still got value even if it's not gift cards. And if AMEX is funding it, that means asking Hilton to chip in something like "make your weekend night an any night" or "make it $300 at any Hilton" similar to Marriott Brilliant might not be an option.

asdfghjk

It would be much more useful if Amex combines the two credits to a single credit, of say $15.
With all the fees that Uber Eats charges for each order, and the inflated price, even with the $15 Amex platinum credit, the out of pocket costs for 2 person lunch would be the same as if I order directly.

Super Mario

If you ever talked bad about this benefit on any AMEX card, you were normally attacked for not understanding its value. I agree it's often annoying. It takes some work to get near my $250 on my Aspire. But flying with an airline like Spirit, buying their $9 fare club and baggage all work well together to get things I was already buying. Minimal airline spend out of pocket without having to buy drinks and other stuff to feel like you are getting something.

Now that it's gone, people act like that's what they wanted the whole time. We all knew the credit would be $10 per month without even having to read the article. Good that it can be used for Uber and Eats though. The pass is nice if that's your thing.

sdsearch

Order out by calling the restaurant and ordering over the phone! In that case, the charge is done on the same register that you would use if you were dining in. And thus 4x for order over the phone, but not for order online.

Or use an Amex-affiliated service like GrubHub, if the restaurant is on there, to order online. Amex definitely gives 4x for GrubHub.

I do this all the time for a different reason (to earn airline miles through Rewards Network dining programs, which only work if the charge is billed directly to the restaurant).

I've noticed that most restaurants outsource their online ordering to random third parties, and who knows how those random third parties are coded. So if it's not a well-known delivery/pickup service like GrubHub, I wouldn't surprised that you might not get 4x from most of them.

So with most restaurants, ordering online is not billed to the restaurant the same way that ordering over the phone or paying for dining in is.

And in any case where earning for your purchase matters (4x on Amex Gold, airline miles through Rewards Network dining programs, etc) it's far better to order by phoning in than by ordering online. (Also, I've noticed that some restaurants have higher prices on their online ordering than on their normal menu, while their normal menu is what's used for phoned-in orders.)

billatq

I've found that most of the restaurant online ordering that I've done via third parties (even smaller ones) tend to post correctly, but there are occasionally ones that do not. When this happens, it's often puzzling as to why that is the case. For example, Olo is a fairly common vendor for online ordering. Some merchants using them, such as Five Guys, code correctly. Others, such as Wahlburger, do not. Olo's entire business is providing ordering for restaurants online, and they provide the back-end for some fairly substantial chains: https://www.olo.com/customers. I'm surprised that Amex would allow them to incorrectly code transactions just from a business perspective because restaurants pay higher fees than retail. This is the same story with menudrive, but they are a much smaller processor comparatively.

I agree that phoning it in does solve this problem (especially if the menu prices don't match), but it's not perfect. For one, some businesses don't want to deal with taking cards over the phone and ask you to just do online ordering. I've seen this both at higher-volume fast food chains (e.g. Chipotle does this in some areas) as well as mid-range smaller restaurants that prefer to use off-the shelf online ordering.

As far as the experience of calling vs online goes, it tends to be subpar. At some fast food places, I can literally tap my phone a few times and have food brought out to my car shortly after arriving. For a nicer restaurant, ordering over the phone at best is giving them a card number and hoping that it's not written down. In the worst case, you might have to schlep through a busy restaurant to have the card run and sign a slip. And that assumes that it's just as accurate to take the order over the phone versus online. The pandemic is starting to get bad again, so my preference is to reduce the time I spend around a bunch of other people, and that doesn't make that easy.

While having the restaurant run the card locally does yield the best result for getting it coded correctly, I think it's sometimes less of a hassle to just use another card. It's just a bummer that this is all so complicated.

dw

I’ve noticed that the $200 airline fee credit is no longer prominently advertised as a benefit for new Plat applications. Perhaps a sign that it will be either changing or going away as well shortly for that card.

sdsearch

I don't know if this a regional thing or type of restaurant thing or individual restaurant thing, but here in SoCal, it's been many months since some restaurant (I can't remember which one) asked me for a credit card over the phone for a pickup order (not curbside). At least 95% of the restaurants I order pickup from just ask me to present the card in person when I come to pick up the food. (They're all indie restaurants or at most small local chains.)