That's because the card ONLY offers 1x Membership Rewards points. There are not bonus categories, not spend thresholds to encourage more spend. So while you may look cool at dinner with your Platinum card, you'd be WAY better off paying with your Chase Sapphire Preferred card earning 2x points on dining and 3x if it's the first Friday of the month.
We keep a Platinum card in our house ($450 annual fee) because of these three primary benefits:
1) $200 annual airline incidental credit - this reduces the annual fee by nearly 50%
2) Centurion lounge access - we have trips to New York, San Francisco, and Las Vegas nearly every year - that is 3 lounge visits for 2 people. Easily worth $50 a visit in my book. That's $150 a year.
3) Access to American Express Fine Hotels & Resorts (FHR) rates - these can be super lucrative in terms of the benefits ($100 property credit, breakfast, late checkout, upgrades, free wifi) when you don't have status or stay at a non-chain hotel
In terms of the incidental credit, we select United each year and purchase four $50 e-gift cards. We've never had any issue getting the credits reimbursed within a couple of days. Our credits just posted for 2015 purchases (although the fourth transaction didn't go through for some reason).
This definitely softens the blow of the annual fee. We're going to fly and we're going to fly United so the gift cards are basically a cash discount on the annual fee. The process of purchasing the gift cards takes all of 10 minutes a year. If you don't leverage any of the other benefits, it's probably not worth keeping the card. But for the lounges, FHR access, and $200 annual credit, it's not that hard to get your money's worth.
No comments:
Post a Comment