chino1127

This was for the 2nd year. It is worth noting that I had a legitimate "complaint" albeit minor, and that I did not just call asking for an arbitrary fee waiver. That being said it was a 5 min call and I saw the statement credit appear.

No way to know really, as it is not communicated by BC management. I meant to say it as a general statement, i.e. if you've generated finance charges that are close to the annual fee, I would assume it's even less of an issue, but perhaps not even a prerequisite.

chino1127

Was on hold with AMEX Platinum Concierge for 9min before I gave up. Black Card Concierge picked up right away for a dinner reservation I was trying to make. They said the restaurant was closed today and that they would either call or email me (my choice) tomorrow morning - we'll see how that goes.

Being new to AMEX, are the hold times typically this long during say 430PM PST on a Monday?? How can all you busy folk stand to wait this long.

Gonna try them again - need to give them the benefit of the doubt, especially since I've moved a lot of my spend onto the card to rack up some points.

chino1127

I've been spending more time on AMEX Platinums MR site. I've checked several carriers (Delta, Virgin, JetBlue) and the point redemption appears to be 1cpp for Economy or Business/First Class.

Here's the points redemption required for a Round Trip Airline Ticket at similar times (7/4/14 - 7/6/14, LAX to NYC) for three carriers:

Delta (SkyMiles) - 42,500 + $5.00 or $440.00 if booked without points.
Virgin America (Elevate) - 21,489 + $5.00 or $484.00 if booked without points.
JetBlue (TrueBlue) - 45,900 + $5.00 or $576.00

1,000 SkyMiles® =1,000 Membership Rewards® Points
100 Elevate Points = 200 Membership Rewards® Points
200 TrueBlue Points = 250 Membership Rewards® Points

I've also tried switching to Business/First Class fare with similar results.

So what gives? This looks very similar to 1cpp or less with JetBlue. Am I missing something? Can someone help shed some light on this? Wouldn't I be better off with a 2% rewards card like the Arrival Card or my Black Card?

Also, there's an interesting article (http://www.ideaworkscompany.com/wp-c...eat-Report.pdf) that hints that seat availability and the resulting selection of flights for reward points can be significantly less when compared to regular full fare travel. If that is the case, a 2% redemption model that just books at full fare will produce the best selection of seat availability since it is not relying on the rewards system of the respective carrier.

P.S. I still can't get around the extremely long hold times for the concierge service.

MDtR-Chicago

Are those the point totals booking directly with MR on the site, or the totals when you first transfer MR to each program's own currency and then book directly from that airline?

The value to MR is from transfer, not from direct booking.

mia

It shouldn't "hint", it's not a secret that award ticket availability is capacity controlled. It's also not a surprise that Virgin America and JetBlue award ticket redemptions rates closely track published fares because that is the way those programs are designed.

To fairly compare award tickets to paid ticket reimbursement cards you would need to look at a range of dates, not just one peak demand holiday weekend. You should also look at redeeming BA Avois for LAX-NYC flights operated by AA, and redeeming through AC, NH or SQ for travel on flights operated by UA.

If you conclude that you would be better off with a program which reimburses paid tickets you should also investigate Citi Prestige card (2.66% if you fly enough to utilize the Flight Points feature), Bank of America Travel Rewards (2.1%) and CapitalOne Venture card (2%).

chino1127

Those point totals are when booking directly with each carrier (after the MR points have been transferred). I listed the equivalent transfer formulas for each one of those to also demonstrate the value of the AMEX MR points when converted over to each carriers proprietary points system.

Okay, fair enough - maybe it's widely understood and published, it further supports my point about the diminished value of certain airlines' reward points. The best condition would be that they are identical in value and availability to a full fare ticket, which is the case if using credit card points directly to apply to any flight available in the booking engine.

Regarding the range dates - your statement would imply that there are some dates that offer better value for points vs full fare (i.e. non peak season, when there demand is lower and airlines can allow points to redeem more mileage). While that does add value to these so called points, it simply means that in order to get more than 1cpp equivalent, you would have to meet special non-peak date window conditions. Other cards allow 2cpp or more, regardless of airline, regardless of seat, regardless of date with no restrictions on availability. This is a critical fact around real world usage against what is generally regarded as a reasonable airfare perk with AMEX Platinum. Am I missing something here? Many other card review sites tout the value of the AMEX Platinum MR points, especially when transferring to other air carriers. It seems like at best, there are just SOME carriers that may allow for favorable point redemption.

I will check out the other partner carriers as you've suggested as well, but I won't be surprised if most are 1cpp and a few are 2cpp if I'm lucky.

BofA Travel Rewards is only 1.5%. Citi Prestige appears to be only 1 points for every dollar spent unless used for restaurants and the 1 point for every mile traveled means just a couple thousand points for a cross country flight in the U.S. Barclay's Arrival Card seems to be pretty decent with 2% also, and an additional 10x return for points use to purchase air travel (2.2% equivalent).

bribro

I don't know a lot about the MR program, but from my limited understanding those three airlines are among the worst MR travel partners (especially Elevate which transfers at 2:1 and miles are redeemed at ~2 cpm). So those are very poor examples if you're trying to justify the value of AmEx MR. Of course booking award tickets takes much more strategy than booking with cash using a card like the Visa Black Card, no one is arguing that.

If you're happy with 2% cashback, that's fine, and it works for a lot of people who want to keep things simple; however, let's take a real world example that shows why MR/UR can be vastly superior to a cashback card like BC: You have a last minute trip that comes up and you need to fly SFO-LAX today. The cheapest flights are ~$200 in coach according to Hipmunk and Kayak. If you paid with your BC you'd get your 2%, or $4 in cash back (and you'd accrue a handful of airline miles for the short trip).

Alternatively, you could transfer MR points to BA Avios and book a nonstop SFO-LAX flight on AA for 4.5k miles, which gives you a redemption value of ~4.4 cpm. If you were transferring with a 50% MR to Avios transfer bonus, your redemption value would be ~6.7 cpm. And if you were using PRG bonus categories to get as much as 3x on spending, your cashback equivalent would be as high as 20%, an order of magnitude better than the palty 2% the overpriced BC gives you.

And that's why many people who play this game prefer real airline miles, not the fake "miles" offered by BC and others.

mia

As bribo illustrated, you need to look at more examples to understand the value of frequent flyer miles. Some programs are based on zones, some are based on distance, some are based on ticket price. The benefit of a program like Membership Rewards, Ultimate Rewards or Starwood Preferred Guest is flexibility - the option to transfer to the program which delivers the best value for a specific trip. There's no one program that is best for every person or every trip.

When comparing credit cards I look at the amount of spending required to earn a reward, not merely the value of "a" mile or point in isolation. Let's say I want to make a transatlantic business class roundtrip for two people. Such tickets typically cost about $4,000 each. To earn that reward with a 2% card I would need to spend $400,000. To earn it with Citi Prestige I would need to spend about $300,000 (explained below). However, those same tickets can typically be obtained for 100,000 airline miles each. To earn 200,000 miles with a Starwood Preferred Guest card would require spending only $160,000. The tradeoff is that award seats are capacity controlled.

An intangible benefit is that the airline miles for a trip need not come from a single source. I can combine miles earned from one credit card with miles earned with other credit cards (often from more than one issuer), from flying, banking, shopping, etc. This makes it pretty easy to accumulate a few hundred thousand.

There are (or were) two versions of the Bank of America Travel Rewards cards. If the second version is still available it awards 2.1%, see this thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...l-credits.html

Citi Prestige has a feature called Flight Points which can increase the earnings by one additional point per dollar, meaning that I earn a minimum of two points on every dollar. (I earn more with other Citi cards in specific categories.) The points are worth $0.0133 each when redeemed for airfare. Therefore the return is 2.66% if you travel enough to utilize the Flight Points feature. Try this new thread for a succinct explanation:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...s-program.html

The point I think you ought takeaway from this discussion is that 2% (and better) travel rewards cards are readily available at much lower annual fees. Only you can judge which is the best fit for your travel pattern.

chino1127

I appreciate the reply guys. I will do a little more exploration to see if I can convert the AMEX MR points to meaningful airline miles.

I just checked a quick flight one-way, last minute flight (departing 5 hrs from now) from LAX to MIA on Kayak and found a flight on United for $252 + $20 taxes = $272.

I went on the BA site and used the Avios Reward Calculator and found a partner airline valued at 12,500 Avios + taxes, given the same one-way travel.

At 2cpp the United flight works out to 13,600 points.
Avios would be the 12,500 plus another 2000 MR pts at 1cpp (AMEX Plat) for the $20 in taxes.

Sounds like using the MR points would actually be more expensive than booking at 2cpp with any of the handful of travel rewards cards out there, BC included.

I concede to the fact that there are certainly at least a few cases where using points would be a better deal, but in most cases, when you're at the mercy of whatever plans you've made, you really have to pray that the stars align so that the MR points beat a 2cpp rewards card like BC.

I'd be pretty worried about racking up 100k in credit card charges and equivalent MR points to find out that the seats on a flight I've planned are not available for MR point redemption as a result of being capacity controlled. If you have the luxury of working backwards and finding flights with open rewards seats and planning your schedule according to that - then it might work. But in the real world we have schedules, jobs, planned vacation days, traveling with friends and family, etc., it could be a tough sell.

The Citi Prestige only gives you the extra point per mileage flown and paid with using the card. As mentioned, you've got to fly a lot and pay with that card alone to reap the same level of benefit. It may work for some people, but again, more special rules and conditions to follow to get that perfect alignment of stars.

If there was a card that just gave 2% statement credit for all purchases with no annual fee, that would probably be the best. The closest I can find is the Quicksilver Card by Capital One at 1.5% or the next best thing appearing to be the Barclay Arrival Card at 2.2% for flight redemption. Both cards allow for indiscriminate spending with no caps on points earned. This is good for people that can spent quite a bit for a lot of different things without having to be pigeon-holed into specific categories with quarterly or annual caps.

Now for a travel oriented card with grade-A concierge, lounge club card, hotel VIP treatment and 2% towards airline travel with no point caps, no requirement to align celestial bodies with special conditions - I'd argue that the Black Card is very hard to beat. Again, the Barclay Arrival Card which is run by the same bank as the BC, is very close, beating the point accumulation by 10% but sacrificing the concierge, lounge club, and hotel VIP treatment - all of which I can use enough to justify the $495 annual fee.

I also wanted to take a moment to discuss a real world use of the claimed "VIP Hotel Treatment."
Just over a week ago I stayed at the St. Regis in Bal Harbour. Because I booked through Black Card's Concierge, I was able to get a daily breakfast for two, free internet, $100 spa credit, late checkout and a welcome gift. I also had the Gold SPG card, courtesy of AMEX Plat, which had some overlapping benefits such as the late checkout, free wifi and some other perks such as 3x point accumulation - but only because The St Regis coincidently falls under the Starwood group.

Those "VIP Treatment" benefits may not sound like much, but they add up. Each daily breakfast for two with the included 18% gratuity is worth about $87 per day! We used them both days we were there so that was $174 in f&b that was comped. I also made use of the $100 spa credit at Remede, and if you factor in free wi-fi, we're looking at nearly $300 in comped perks for a two night stay. The welcome gift was an arrangement of quality chocolates, but I won't assign a $ value to that since it's rather nominal. I chose not to use the Lounge Club in favor of the more accessible AA Admiral's Club using my AMEX Plat, but had I used it, the amount would have increased by at least $50.

In comparing AMEX's relationship with Starwood Hotels vs the VIP Treatment at over 3000 properties that comes with Black Card, I will have to lean on the side of the Black Card for the better card for hotel perks.

Now bribro, I see your posts alot in the other credit score oriented forum, so you must appreciate that the Black Card adds to your available revolving line of credit in a way that charge cards cannot.

bribro

I'm guessing that flight has a stopover since taxes are $20 and United doesn't have a hub out of either LAX or MIA (and I, like a lot of people, hate stopovers on domestic flights, even transcon). LAX-MIA is also a hub to hub for American, so it's probably not be the best candidate for an award redemption.

As everyone would agree, award redemptions have restrictions and only make sense in certain situations; however, when they do make sense, they can make a LOT of sense, like when you're getting 20% cashback equivalent on your spend in the previous example I gave.

Instead of putting my spend on a 2% cash back card, I'd rather put that spend on a 1x, 2x or 3x MR card and wait for the right opportunity to use those points. Personally, I won't use points unless I'm getting >3 cpp, and personally I'm averaging close to 5 cpp. If patience and/or flexibility aren't your thing, go with a cash back card and keep it simple.

That credit card exists: the Fidelity AmEx. Only caveat is that you need to have a Fidelity account.

Make sure you check out AmEx FHR with your Platinum card, which offers similar benefits (that hotel program is in addition to the automatic SPG Gold status you get). I'm also suspcious of that "over 3000 properties" claim from BC since I showed earlier in the example of the Andaz West Hollywood that those "VIP" benefits listed are offered to every single guest at that hotel. So it's not really a benefit at all.

You also have to be careful when assigning "value" to perks in general. Lounge access is a great benefit, but it's not worth $50 a visit unless you would otherwise pay $50 out of pocket to get in.

It can definitely a positive for people still building credit that could benefit from larger credit limits. It's a double-edged sword though; for people that already have a lot of open tradelines and plenty of credit, a charge card or hidden TL (like with the Palladium card) is often preferable because you don't need to worry about utilization and the credit score swings that accompany them.

chino1127

I thought I had selected non-stop only, but in hindsight you may be correct. If that is the case then your argument still stands as I've checked again the cheapest last minute non-stop was in the $300-500 range.

Forgive my ignorance - besides the last minute flight example, what are the other ways in which you've seen the MR points translate to more than the standard 2cpp? I'd like to learn more about this since it is clear that I may just not have enough real world usage and experience to understand how to maintain a 5cpp average spend like you. Is BA the only carrier that seems to have fair conversion and redemption values?

I suspected as much but it was definitely not the case during my stay. In fact our server said that she was not able to see that we had a comped breakfast and said that we would either have to pay by credit or leave our room number on the bill. I knew for sure it was covered in our package so I opted to bill it to the room. Sure enough we got a credit for it. I can't say for sure about the Spa credit, not having any other person to compare with. I would assume they would not simply give that out, but at over $1000/night that weekend, maybe I'm wrong. I will check out FHR to see if there are any interesting perks.


Fair enough.

What the other edge of the sword for someone who pays off their balances in entirety between statements? I want to engage is some more discussion on this, but this is probably not the appropriate thread or channel.

CaroPalms

Here are my last three AMEX MR Redemptions:

AMEX - Delta: 40K points for business class BOS-SLC/SLC-LAS/LAS-BOS - I needed a 2 day layover in SLC
AMEX - BA: 25K points for two business class tickets PVG-HKG for next Fall
AMEX - Delta: 78K points for one business class ticket BOS-FCO on AZ for next weekend

One of the things to keep in mind is that AMEX (and CSP) can be a complement to some of the other travel that you do (as in the example of the last redemption as I already had some Delta points and didn't need the full 100k). I use the Citi Prestige for my fixed price redemptions since I bank with them as well, and I've found some good value there.

I can list out all of the redemptions I've had over the past year across all programs to prove a point. However, to Mia's comment up above, it's always good to have a few credit card/miles options as opposed to just having one system. If all you have is one system, you'll feel like you can never use the points or get as good of a value (if you're only using fixed price).

bribro

In that case, your redemption value at a bare minimum would be 2.4-4.0 cpp, still better than the BC. And that doesn't include spending multipliers and MR transfers bonuses, so it could potentially be as high as 18% cash back equivalent.

As I said before, I'm not particularly knowledgeable about the MR program. I'm sure you can find plethora examples of excellent redemption opportunities in the MR forum. I plan to use MR for BA and HA, but I'm sure you could get some good redemptions with Aeroplan, ANA, and Singapore too, especially in F.

AFAIK, paying off balances before the statement hits always has to be done manually. It's nice not having to even think about it.

United747

Sorry to rant, but I just closed my account because of the lack of flights available through the Visa Black portal. I was able to get my annual fee waived just by asking, but I still could not handle the fact that I could not redeem the rewards for the flights I wanted. Supposedly, they cannot book mixed-cabin flights even though they are available through every other travel website I looked at. So buyer beware, this card is probably right for some, but not for me.

Please American Express, forgive me for not using the Platinum Card!

WatchTimes

I had a weird situation last night
I got a call from a toll free # so did not answer, when I check my VM later it was Barclays Security Department (verified the call back # online before calling to ensure it was not a scam).
Seems someone applied for a Black Card in my name but the application sent up some flags so they called me.
After confirming my identity and all they promptly cancelled the application and sent it to their fraud dept. (application was filled online so they are going to track it).
Anyway the lady ended up asking me if I was interested in the card (they already had all of my credit info up on the screen) and I said thanks but I am very happy with my Amex Plat so I did not see the need for another high dollar annual fee without many other benefits I don't already have... She kept listing more and more benefits (all the stuff on their site) and I still declined. She asked if I would hold for a minute and came back offering to waive the fee based on my Credit Score and the fact Im a Amex Plat and Reserve holder so I said sure... It will be here in a few days, I will give it a try but odds are will cancel when the next years annual fee comes up.