Donna49

The AmEx MQD waiver for 2015 remained 25K, while the individual level MQD spend requirement increased across the board by the same percentage.

I"m curious as to what FT members think about the future of this waiver.

Will it still exist and if so, at what spend level?

HongKonger

It will exist but the level may increase.

turnpike17

I'm hoping $50k

davetravels

Why?

Navig8R

Whaaa? AMEX shareholder, eh?

GRALISTAIR

Agreed.

EXACTLY - why 50K?

It will be like MQD - it will not get jacked up massively. It will get nudged. Sometime in the next 12 months I think the waiver will increase to 30K. I think they will see how that pans out then it may get another nudge - but NO WAY (and I will bet money on this) will it get jacked up to 50K.

Saidoh

Any thoughts on whether the miles boost thresholds on the Platinum and Reserve will also be adjusted?

HongKonger

Because some people measure their self-worth by whether they have elite status and want fewer people to have that status so they can feel more special. And they are under the sorely mistaken impression that their experience with the airline will improve if fewer people have their level of status. They have not learned from the failure of the T-72 rule to result in more award availability closer to flight time, or the failure of increased paid loads in F via FCM to improve the offering of food and drink in F (it's actually getting worse), or the failure of any number of recent changes to result in the promised better experience. They sure do feel special though!

MSPeconomist

Raising the level is most likely to benefit those who do lots of MS. These might not be the customers DL wants as they're likely to also use extremely cheap fares, versus a bigger population of people who buy more moderately priced fares and might be close on MQDs but use the AmEx waiver to qualify.

Ben and Jerry

Let me guess: you spend $51K on it?

KKinLA

Considering the major loss of business as a result of the Costco fiasco I don't think American Express wants to piss off any more card holders and will make it attractive for Delta to keep things as they are for a while.

jrmoore

I'm not so certain of this. The benefits of the regular platinum AMEX have been so drastically watered down that it wouldn't surprise me if they did the same to the DL Reserve and perhaps even other DL cards. I, for one, would love to see the zone 1 board removed from at least some of the AMEX cards. After following some of the threads on boarding enforcement it becomes apparent that the "everybody gets to zone first and sit in the captain's lap" nonsense has gotten fully out of hand and is causing problems. Problems exacerbated by checked bag fees.

The DL reserve has a miles boost at $30k and $60k spend. I could see a move to an MQD waiver for silver-gold at $30k and plat-diamond at $60k as a reasonable move that would put the MQD waiver in step with the miles boost.

xliioper

I haven't held the AMEX Plat card in a few years and don't really follow it's benefits that closely. Curious which benefits have been watered down?

MSPeconomist

Lounge access on other carriers.

PTS quality has gone down drastically even though they charge ticketing fees. They don't permit you to use a personal agent. Their best people seem to have moved to Centurion. Now when you call, some random inexperienced travel agent answers who doesn't want to do anything beyond making bookings that can be done with a few clicks, such as booking smaller hotels, contacting the hotel with questions, or making a dinner reservation in the hotel's restaurant when they are booking a room.

At one point, you had guest privileges in a network of private clubs.

Free FexEx/DHL overnight delivery of foreign currency (that of almost any country was in stock and unusual ones required a couple days to special order) at bank-type exchange rates.

Customer service generally isn't good as it once was, back when the Platinum card was invitation only.

OTOH there is the $200 airline credit, PP, and the GE application fee.

I haven't used their fine dining reservations program recently.

houserulz77

I would expect any change in the MQD waiver threshold would coincide with a change in the MQM bonus thresholds. I'm sure the BIS crowd would applaud while the "gamer" crowd would be dismayed.