Doppy

I'm not sure what people want here. The fee is not high because of the "couponing," it's high because that's what the market will bear. You either get your AF's worth of benefits or you do not - it really makes no difference if you get the benefit from Equinox credits, perceived prestige, centurion lounges, or whatever you think adds up to sufficient value.

Personally, I use all of the benefits and coupons, minus Equinox, organically so I don't complain, and they could raise the price some more (and thus decrease the number of cardholders competing with me for benefits or service), and that would be fine with me.

nmenaker

I think it’s pretty much safe to assume that we’re all somewhat travelers on this forum.. MAYBE people come here just to discuss technology topics or credit card topics, not related to travel but I’m guessing those numbers are low

As a travel, let alone FREQUENT traveler, it’s really not hard at all to get all the credits and bonuses that the card offers and not even diving into “couponing” or coming up with some soft dollar calc for lounge access, extended warranties, FHR benefits, etc.

For me, a traveler and quite a bit less than in past years/decades I can easily calc the cash benefit this way:

$200 Annual travel credit (thank you United TB)
$200 Uber credit (I use Uber for any back and forth to airports and in months that I’m not flying, we’re buying at least ONE meal with Uber Eats, for pickup or delivery
$240 Streaming credit (this was a new one last year and has really boosted the what I’ll call BASE value that the card offers relative to the AF (was $495/550/ now $695)
$189 Annual reimbursement for CLEAR screening (I don’t actually need the whole nut for us both being UA MP 1MM so it’s a tad less)

That’s $830 EASY without any couponing. I could easily add $20 for Global Entry which is $100 every five years. The $100 SAKS credit which my wife uses EASILY. Etc. Etc.

But the ease of checking the OFFERS and keeping that in mind when doing normal purchasing added over $650 to my cash back last year which makes it much easier to justify.

I’d be surprised if a TRAVELLER in a typical American household (with apparently an average of FIVE STREAMING SERVICES) that the majority of card holders can’t easily get the top FOUR items I listed above.

Super Mario

Anytime someone says they get $240 in value out of the entertainment credit, that is an easy indicator of overinflated value. I stop reading the rest of the justification.

I wonder what a "couple of times per month" is defined at. If that's your primary mode of transportation, I doubt the $15 a month is a game-changer. Depending on the math, CSR's 10x Lyft points could be a better offer.

TravelingZoomer

Just because you don�t get value out of the Disney+ Hulu ESPN+ bundle (19.99 a month, no annual discount available), doesn�t mean there aren�t millions of households who do. This threads inability to understand their personal situation is not equivalent to another�s is always great for a laugh when I need it

bpc3qh

Except that I use Disney+ numerous times a week, and Hulu without commercials are a substantial upgrade for me. I also use ESPN+ frequently for content and videos. So I actually do get the full value, b/c I'd otherwise be paying for all of this.

SpaethCo

Disney+ and ESPN+ are available individually as annual subscriptions for a ~20% discount, and if you are already subscribed to those services before signing up for the Disney bundle through Hulu your monthly Hulu bill is reduced by the full monthly price of each of those services in addition to the bundle discount being applied. It's the same deal with services like Audible where you get a pretty substantial discount for annual billing.

Basically the credit being limited to monthly increments encourages you to subscribe to these services in their most expensive form.

bpc3qh

Okay, but why should I care? It's the most expensive form, sure, but it's still free for me.

TravelingZoomer

Except, there is literally no way to get Hulu Ad Free except to sign up monthly. Hulu ad free is 14.99 and something I would be 100% happy to pay for, and was paying for, out of pocket full price prior to being an Amex option.

And why in the world would someone pay for an annual subscription for Disney+ separately to �save� at 109 a year when getting Hulu + Disney is 19.99?

Admit it, the credit doesn�t work for you, sorry you�re on the short end of the stick but you�re none the wiser than those who actually do pay the Disney/Hulu bundle �organically�.

The OP is just pulling information out of his behind at this point, because the Disney bundle can only be purchased monthly anyways

SpaethCo

It's only "free" if you were willing to pay the full freight $695 annual fee for the Platinum card and would keep the card even if there were $0 in credits. The instant you start using the credits to justify the annual fee that's not free anymore - that's your dollars you're getting back if you spend it in very specific ways.

SpaethCo

Only the Hulu portion has to be billed monthly.

I actually cancelled my ESPN+ annual sub to allow that to bill monthly with Hulu because of this stupid credit.








Here is from last year when I still had both Disney+ and ESPN+ as annuals:

TravelingZoomer

Yes, Hulu cannot be billed annually. Which is what we�ve been saying for the past 20 or so pages this credit has been around appreciate you finally coming around

mia

The discussion is drifting toward personal characterizations. Please discuss ideas, nothing is personal.

notquiteaff

I am not sure I understand.

I pay $695 and Amex gives me $200 in free UA airfare that I would otherwise pay for.

if Amex eliminated the credit, and I would keep the card for $695, I would now pay an extra $200 to get my airfare. And my total cost would be $895.

Same with entertainment credits if I would buy them independent of having the plat card. Which in my case is the case. I have had NYT and Sirius XM subscriptions for many years. So I value them at full price. I also got Peacock for $0.99 a month on Black Friday. I would have paid that for it anyway, but the Plat makes it free.

SpaethCo

My point is that the other two services can, and you get the full monthly credit because the annual subscriptions still count in the bundle.

So I can pay $109.99 for the annual Disney+ subscription and get $10.99/mo off the $19.99 Trio premium Hulu package price for the full 12 months bringing that cost down to $9/mo. Since that doesn’t take “full advantage” of the credit, that tends to make people choose the more expensive path and bill all of the services as monthly so they can nail that $20/mo max out.

At the end of the day this example is only overpaying by about $20/year, but all of these credits have a tendency to have some sort of implicit mark-up. (ie, Saks rarely has the best pricing, if ordering UberEats to use up the Uber credit that often has a mark-up over just ordering direct, etc)

This can all still be worth it for the other benefits of the card, but it’s important for me to at least be aware of the concessions I’ve made to make a card (the Platinum, or any other card) “fit” when credits are involved. I only commented on this because Amex markets the living crap out of this card enough on their own, we can at least be honest amongst ourselves about the tradeoffs we’re making for some of these credits.

$200 in Travel Bank credit is not the same as $200 in cash for use with UA. It’s pretty liberal, but there are still more restrictions with how Travel Bank funds can be used compared to straight cash paid to UA.

Just to complete this thought exercise: If you dropped the Platinum card, would you still put $200 in the UA travel bank every year?

notquiteaff

It comes with restrictions, but for many frequent UA flyers they are are not a huge concern. The biggest one for me might be that if I buy a ticket with TravelBank cash, I don’t get credit card travel insurance protection. I have the same “problem” when I buy AS companion pass tickets (requires use of AS wallet credit or AS credit card).

So how much value should I subtract from the $200 to accurately account for it? Frankly it’s not worth the time to think about it (I have never used credit card travel insurance).

And no, I would generally (*) not funnel money through the travel bank to buy $200 of airfare if I didn’t have the Plat credit. It would be an unnecessary step. But I would still spend $200 on airfare.

(*) One exception might be if I was working on a SUB and needed to create some spend by prepaying for future services.