ElitePlus Card
 

I came across an ad for the ElitePlus card, which offers a 12-month free trial (normally £469/year). It sounds almost too good to be true, so I wanted to see if anyone has experience with it. Here’s what they’re claiming:

Key Benefits:
1. Unlimited Airport Lounge Access2. ​​​​​25% Off Flights3. Fast Track & Priority Boarding4. 2 Complimentary Seat Upgrades5. Complimentary Hotel Perks6. Automatic Elite Hotel Status7. Worldwide Travel InsuranceIt seems to be linked to Founders Club, but details on their website are limited: https://www.mypluselite.com.

Is this legit, or should I steer clear? Would love to hear if anyone’s used it!

Bonvoy (Marriott) Gold is not a high tier. It only requires 25 nights per year (15 of which can come from having a Marriott affiliated credit card) and doesn't give lounge access or breakfast. Bonvoy tiers in increasing order are Silver, Gold, Platinum, Titanium, and Ambassador (at 100 nights and $23,000 spend).

OTOH Hilton Diamond is a top tier, IIRC 75 nights or a premium Hilton-affiliated credit card, It gives lounge access or breakfast and possibly upgrades or late checkouts if available,

I suspect the lounge access is only applicable when flying the airline that operates the lounge.

Note that this should not be confused with SkyTeam ElitePlus status.

That does look pretty impressive on the surface.

ETA: After posting the above, I tried to do a bit of rudimentary DD (i.e. googled the name plus words like scam, review, and reddit) on the website/company. There isn't a lot of chatter about yet, though, presumably because the domain is less than a month old. That having been said, the age thing itself is a bit of a red flag for me. And, the one actual review I was able to find claimed that they hit his card with a £400 charge even though the terms explicitly state that they won't do this until 363 days later, assuming you forget to cancel before then.

In spite of this, I remain intrigued because even if the stated benefits are only half true, 0 is a pretty good price.:D

I guess I'd like to wait a week or so (to watch this discussion and any others that emerge) before deciding whether or not it's worth the hassle of possibly having to initiate a charge back. I would obviously grab and timestamp many screenshots as an insurance policy.

The 25% discount is curious. What does that mean? 25% off the base fare? Off of a full fare class? A closer look says you have to pick one "preferred" airline.

The website misspells Bonvoy ("Bovoy") and offers "Hilton Honours Diamond Status" and "World Hyatt Globalist Tier". The early checkin/late checkout options listed include both broader brands (Hilton) and sub-brands (DoubleTree), which is sketchy.

The "business class boarding" and 2x business class upgrade list Easyjet and Ryanair as options.

The "Emerald Card", which is available for €689, offers "Marriot Ambassador Elite", "Hilton Honours Diamond", and "World Hyatt Lifetime Globalist Tier". The site also says "​Your hotel rewards status is only active during your membership period with us," so I'd be very intrigued to see how they offer Hyatt lifetime status for a temporary amount of time.

The terms and conditions seem to alternate between FoundersCard and ElitePlus. Which leads me to believe that they just cut and pasted the FoundersCard terms and did a global find and replace.

Everything about this suggests it's a scam.

If you read the t&c’s it mentions Founders Card. I imagine that they just cut and paste from there. Also it refers to Hilton Diamond Elite and, of course, there is no Diamond Elite. Finally, they ask for a payment of 40gbp (or so) to get the free trial which is refunded as a “loyalty” bonus after 3 months. Why do they need to reward my loyalty for not canceling something free.

I’m going to say it is a scam.

Yeah, this is screaming scam. Even assuming that the above were mostly just typos (e.g. "Diamond Elite" with Hilton just meaning Diamond status), I can't see how they would wrangle e.g. 35% off with Delta, Virgin Atlantic, and BA. If you apply that to a single paid F booking on a round-trip from BA, that'd be like $1000 off. I don't see BA cutting that discount.

I did a little more digging into the terms and conditions (those that are made available prior to signing up, at least), and discovered that this seems to just be a sloppy rebrand of the Founders Card, which has been discussed several times on FT (e.g. they managed to link up with JetBlue Mosaic somehow).

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...1f40a635ac.jpg

While I'm personally unable the categorically declare it a scam (because I haven't taken the bait myself), I'm definitely going to pass on it.

It definitely feels like they've ripped off Founders Card (which isn't a scam, but is a bad deal). The misspellings are a big red flag. If it could be done for such a cheap price, don't you think someone like Amex would have offered it by now, instead of having to have a bunch of different cards for just some of the benefits?

Could you buy it on a credit card and test it? If it's a scam you can do a chargeback?

It's not about the money - it's about the data they'll need from you to give the supposed benefits - that's more difficult to deal with.

How about a credit card that you pay an annual fee for and get lounge benefits ?

Those cards typically deliver their promised benefits...or get tarred and feathered out of existence.

In the instant case, odds are high that we're dealing with complete vaporware.

There's also more regulations in the credit card industry, vs whatever subscription this is.

I think it’s a scam
 

I sent them an email requesting more info and it bounced back to me with address either invalid or cannot accept incoming messages

There is a one time joining fee of £46.00 for the PLATINUM Tier Membership 12-month free trial
There is a one time joining fee of £73.00 for the EMERALD Tier Membership 12-month free trial

So, most likely this is a money grab!