In case you’ve been living under a rock, American Express have announced changes to their personal Platinum & business Platinum cards. I’ve been critical of some of the changes, so I thought I’d try my hand at making some realistic changes instead.
Contents
My Changes
- Annual fee to stay at $450
- Remove $200 Uber credit benefit
- Change airline credit to a general travel credit (similar to the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit). I don’t think this is that realistic as American Express likely sees huge breakage on this benefit. If not possible update airline credit to include Uber rides, make the credit available for all purchases that code as an airline/Uber.
- Advertise the improvement to the Priority Pass (two free guests) properly
- Replace 5x on amextravel.com hotel bookings with 3x on all purchases made directly with hotels.
Why These Changes
The main reason that I think the Chase Sapphire Reserve was/is so popular is the fact that the benefits are easy to understand and use. American Express’ benefits are significantly more complicated and the new Uber benefit just makes things worse with the monthly credits instead of an annual credit.
It also alienates cardholders that do not have Uber in their market (American Express claims that their Platinum cardholders travel to areas with Uber operating, but I’d argue that doesn’t help when it’s a monthly credit). A lot of these cardholders already feel they aren’t get equal value as they don’t have Centurion lounges at their airport either and poor/no Priority Pass lounge.
American Express’ lounge access is significantly better than Chase’s/Citi’s and the fact that they didn’t properly advertise the improvement to their priority pass defies all logic. I’ve blogged about it before, but the 5x at hotels booked through amextravel.com is useless. I’d much rather a lower 3x category that could be use when booking at hotels directly.
What would you have added/changed?
