gkbiiii

Question, do you get the comp companion certificate, in year one of card membership?

Zorak

The offer terms on the AMEX web site say: "Receive a Domestic First Class, Delta Comfort+® or Main Cabin round-trip companion certificate each year upon renewal of your Card."

gooselee

This. And the way Amex interprets is, this means you get the first cert after your first renewal - roughly 12 months after opening the account.

TheHorta

daloosh

Well, technically, you'd have to valuate and prioritize the the other benefits of the card as well, and then apportion the fee based on your habits and wants. For example, if you don't otherwise have SC access, what's that worth of the $450? And if you have SC as a Diamond benefit, then it's worth nothing. Similarly, do you need the MQMs? (Well, not anymore to make DM, so if you're otherwise making PM this year, then you don't need the MQMs). And so on.

If, in the end, all you value is the cert, then okay, it costs you $900 if you keep the card two years. But if you keep it three, then it's down to $675, and so on. If the cert is the only reason you get the card, then just pay for your companion's J or F ticket and be done with it. Or maybe the Platinum Amex makes more sense than Reserve. For me, I rarely buy F, so the cert is usually worth no more than the Delta Plat cert, and it's a less important part of my consideration in having the Reserve card.

trek87

Is this still the case? There are a few mentions of this threat up-thread, but no follow-ups to report that it actually happens.

Gig103

That's one way to look at it, but you could see year #1 as "buying" the enrollment bonus of 40,000 Skymiles and 10,000 MQM for $450. Then years two+ you're getting that $450 F ticket. Both rationales exclude the value of the Skyclub too.

TheHorta

Or, better yet, since I have two AX Reserve and two AX DL Platinum cards, my $1,500 in annual renewal (including my wife's AXR) fees nets me:

1) 2x SC memberships / access (diluted because we'll both be DMs this year)
2) 4x Companion Certificates -- 2x F and 2x Y
3) 100,000 MQMs and 100K bonus miles, because we well exceed the $220K required to max-out MQMs
4) $250,000 DM waiver -- diluted because we each spend well over $15K in actual fare spend annually.
5) Other AX benefits like insurance, double miles when making DL purchases (like $60K+ in airfare purchases)
6) The exceedingly rare upgrade tie-breaker of holding the Reserve card.
7) The headache of remembering which card to switch spend to each month.

So, scratching #1 and #4 off the list, and the fact that we don't actually need the MQM boosts to make status (though it is a nice "insurance" against future status where we may have future down years in flying and the rollover MQMs and $250K waiver might come in handy), the primary benefit for us is are the companion certificates -- I guess.

355F1

Bullchan

locked

hmmm... I wouldn't have made the move to blue but you may be ok. You just scored what 50k MQM total? That's worth a couple hundred bucks in AF so not sure I'd risk it.

Spec1alk

I apologize for responding to an old post, but can someone clarify this to me?

Does this mean you start the year on the DL-AMEX Platinum card, spend $25k, get your 10k MQMs, then upgrade to Reserve, keep spending until you hit $30k, get the 15k MQMs for reserve card?

Could you then downgrade back to platinum, spend until you hit $50k, get the 2nd boost 10k MQM from platinum, flip back to Reserve, keep spending until total spend is $60k and get the 2nd boost on the Reserve card of 15k MQMs?

So you could get all 50k MQMs from both Platinum & Reserve cards with just $60k in total spend across both cards?

I currently have both Platinum & Reserve cards. I will hit boosts 1 & 2 on Reserve, and boost 1 on Platinum. Not sure if I can make 2nd boost on platinum.

The way I read this, I would be better off to flip/flop between programs through the year so that I ensure I get all 50k MQMs?

CKDGM

Nope. The criterion is "spend since last bonus", not "spend since start of the year".

If you spend $25K on the SkyMiles Platinum and then switch to the Reserve, you'd need to hit a total of $55K to get the first Reserve bonus and you wouldn't get the second one until $85K. The max you can get off of the two cards (ignoring the possibilities of holding both personal and business versions, having a spouse/family member gift you Reserve MQMs, or a return of the third bonus promo that some people got last year) is $110K of spend for 50K MQM.

That requires you to spend $60K on the Reserve (getting 30K MQM) and then $50K on the Platinum (getting another 20K), or to do it in the opposite order. (Or just hold both cards all year and balance the spend; when you're pushing 6 figures through them, the extra annual fee starts to look like a rounding error compared to your total spending.)

Spec1alk

Thank you for the clarification CKDGM.

It is a bit obscene, but we will likely be close to hitting both boosts on both cards this year. But we run everything through our cards (except Mortgage, and we looked at doing it, but the fee negated the value imo).

Can you clarify a bit more what "third bonus promo that some people got last year" is? Anything I can do to increase my odds of getting that? If so, that would be a much better value for me to reach for rather than boosts on the platinum card.

As a side topic, yes, the fee at that amount of spend isn't as big of a barrier. The challenge I find is using the companion certs. We really struggle to use them on expensive flights. Most of the flights we try to use them on are not that expensive, or are not eligible due to fare code. I wish there was more flexibility in how I could use the companion cert, specifically the coach one that comes with the Platinum card. We tried to use it on a trip to Palm Springs last year, but couldn't due to the fare classes available.

Zorak

There are a couple FT threads:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delt...rve-cards.html

Amex Delta Reserve 45k MQM and Platinum 30k MQM offers