Comments on: American Express Platinum Card

By: Dan415

Dan415 — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:57:30 +0000

Ive had it for years……….Platinum is useless unless:

1) You travel weekly and 2) You travel weekly

- Any one of the airport lounge access membership fees is the same price as the Platinum fee. ( Wish they would get United )

- Companion pass is worthless unless you are flying last second and plan to pay full fare anyway, then the companion is nice because your tickets are outragious anyway…I bought 2 econo+AA points upgrade to business… CHI – FRA for 499 round trip (1000 total)… they wanted 12,500$ for First class plus companion. Not all Flights are covered… only select flights on select carriers… the fine print doesnt actually let you know if the flight is ‘eligable’ you have to call.

- Extra baggage insurance… (lost my bag 3 times BEFORE) i got the card, never after.

- Medical Travel Coverage (Fly you to the best Hospital very useful outside the US… not so much in)

- Points sucks, I have spent over 500k on this card and if I had a citi platinum plus or something with more points purchase bonus I’d be at millions.

- Concierge sucks, its virtually the same service as Centurion and 10 times more expensive than handing a bouncer 50 bucks in vegas. But when i try and book limos they will charge 150$ for something i can get online for $50, or if I want to get tickets to a game they charge double what I could scalp. The ONE thing that you HAVE to take advantage of is the ability to pre-purchase tickets before they go on sale through AMEX… then you get great seats for the same price as everyone else.

- Purchase Protection, this is awesome… I love this… can I tell you I love this??? Bought a pair of skis, broke them on a jump replaced them the next day through AMEX. Bought tickets to a private halloween ball… party was missmanaged and got shut down… AMEX credited me back… they double your manufacture warranty and cover pretty much anything up to 90 days…

- Can you buy shit like a car… no I tried… no retailer wants to pay the 1.75% CC transaction fee Amex will charge them

By: My First Credit Card | Ask Mr Credit Card's Blog

My First Credit Card | Ask Mr Credit Card's Blog — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:12:04 +0000

[...] I guess Amex have hooked and a couple of years back, I upgrade my card to the Platinum Card. Part of reason was to check out the concierge service and the companion ticket features (which has [...]

By: Don

Don — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:45:03 +0000

This is not a very helpful review. The only reason to buy this card is because of the perks: companion tickets being the most notable. But are there other perks that this card has that one really can use that might justify the $450 annual fee(according to today’s info at the Amex site)?

By: dirk_nathers

dirk_nathers — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:59:36 +0000

I agree with Brett Jaffe. The so-called “two for one” complimentary business class ticket for international flights is a complete scam. I’ve had two experiences where I went online to find the cheapest business class fares on approved airlines in the AMEX program (here too , however, be very careful because many sites such as kayak.com give “cheap price” quotes only to give you a “flight currently sold out message” after actually selecting those cheap flights–which is another scam in and off itself). Thinking that the two-for-one deal quote given to me by the AMEX rep would be similar to the online quote, I was unpleasantly shocked when I was given quotes SUBSTANTIALLY higher than that quoted to me by online sites. For example, my total cost for Dallas to Florence Italy via the AMEX rep quote was $10,500…as opposed to less than $4000 online.

By: Andrew M

Andrew M — Fri, 15 May 2009 20:16:35 +0000

I’ve had Amex since 1983, and in the last 10 years have been using it a lot for business expenses, sometimes 50-60K/month, always paid in full. I had a Platinum personal card, and one for my wife, and a Platinum card for my business with one additional cardholder. As soon as the financial crisis hit, Amex decimated my credit limit (yeah, right, no specific limit), then again recently to $6K, which is frankly useless. Luckily, I have other alternatives for both business and personal – but I can’t see the point in paying $495 + additional cardholder fees for something that has less buying power than the lowliest Visa card and has practically no prestige, it seems a lot of people are feeling the same. Anyhow, today I downgraded all my cards to Gold, and saved myself nearly a thousand dollars a year. I’d encourage everyone else to do the same, there’s no benefit to platinum, the concierge is less useful than a chocolate teapot, the rewards are just as good on the gold card (although given the limits, it’s a moot point).

Downgrading was actually a really painless process. I might drop Amex altogether in the not too distant future, it’s virtually valueless.

By: Justin B

Justin B — Fri, 08 May 2009 23:05:23 +0000

well I got suckered into upgrading the platinum from gold. It is costing me $81.00 for 3 months until my normal renewal date. the only reason I am trying this is I need to do some traveling & they offered me 35000 bonus points to try it. so I guess spending $81.00 & getting $350 in return isn’t that bad. I will try & use some of the extra services.

By: Jay

Jay — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:10:31 +0000

I could never understand the delusion of some people that think carrying an AMEX Platinum gives them an aura of prestige or worse, that AMEX cares deeply about its card holders and their “loyalty” will be recognized. Anybody with an okay credit (meaning less than 30% debt-to-available credit and no late payments/collections in the last two years and no serious delinquency in the last 4-5 years) willing to pay their annual fee will be probably welcomed by AMEX, but years of exemplary charge and payment history means absolutely nothing to them when their computers detect a “risk” in your spending behavior (which shouldn’t be surprising since delinquency rates of even their super prime -this includes Centurion members- customers has gone up lately).

When there are Visa cards that offer 2% cash back on all purchases (Schwab. No spending limit and no foreign transaction fee, too), AMEX charge cards really don’t make good financial sense. Even if you travel often enough to take advantage of some of their partner offers, why charge everything on it when you can get better rewards with other cards?

By: Robert Dambach

Robert Dambach — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 02:03:34 +0000

I have had a platinum AE for years. No limit; just pay the bill. Well this little perk ended without any notification from AE. Customer no service told me they reviewed epedia and just decided to give me a credit limit of only $5000. Kinda hard when bills in my office are $6,000+. Never a day late or a problem at all. Then when I told them I needed to go ahea and cancel the useless card, please give me my $400 back as they changed the agreement. After prorating the cost they were nice enough to give me $260 back after 4 months. They never notified me of this change in writing, email or by calling me ; they just did it and then they cancelled my card and told me afterward that I will lose my 117000 points accumulated. because my card was now “overdrawn” I couldnt transfer the points because it cost $56. So they deducted 11000 pnts and finally did it. Total time dealing with them today;;; about 2 hrs. Thank goodness I have other cards and sources of credit. Someone just trusting them could go out of business.

By: Sandi

Sandi — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 23:17:20 +0000

I love the Platinum card! I started out with the Green card and because of the spending habits, I was given the Gold Card within 6 months. After another 6 months, I received the invititation to the Platinum Card. The $495 annual fee was a little scary, but it is worth it if you use the card correctly. I travel 3 or 4 times a year, and using my Platinum, I am given access with 2 companions in the airline clubs. Love that! In December my husband and I made a quick decision to fly to Australia to spend the holidays with his family. I contacted Quantas to book a flight and could not believe the pricing! Economy seating from LA to Sydney was just over $8000 per person! YIKES! Quantas informed me that I if I would have booked a flight, say, 6 months prior, pricing would have much better. I then made a call to the Platinum Travel Services and they were able to get me on a flight with Quantas at $2800 and then proceeded to give me a FREE companion ticket for my husband! I made the reservation with them, received the companion ticket by Federal Express, which in turn I had to Fed Ex it to Quantas in Arizona. After Quantas received the companion certificate they then emailed me my two tickets. DONE! What would have cost me over $16k in airfaire only cost me a grand total of $3250 (including taxes and fees). That was a total savings of over $12,750! As I look at it, my annual fee of $495 is covered for over 25 years with that savings! Now, next month we are traveling to Las Vegas and with the Platinum card we were able to book a really nice suite in a luxury hotel for the price of a regular room. Another savings of just over $400 per night. Platinum Travel Services and the Conceirge were also able to get us front row seating to the shows we wanted to see and they have also arranged a luxury SUV to accomodate our travel to and from the airport. Not to mention the additional amenities that we will receive from AMEX during our trip. We have another couple that will be going to Vegas with us and they do not have an AMEX account…no problem! AMEX is granting the couple the same amenities as long as I use my AMEX to pay. The couple will then pay me back at the time of the transaction. I LOVE AMEX! They are truly the best credit card company!

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:42:00 +0000

After using the card for a year I’ve come to the conclusion that the plat card is good if your spending 10 – 15k per month. Yes it saved me money on car rental insurance, and yes the card has prestige, and the concierge service is.. decent; it’s not the best but it’s like using a bad search engine – you have to know what you want and have to be very specific when asking for it. I’ve used my card to buy jewellery, put down payments on cars (Benz dealership didn’t let me pay more than 5k with amex because of the high fees they charge), and dinners between 50$ and 1500$ but recently for some reason as soon as i reach 15k in the month any charges get declined, i call and ask why and i get the generic answer that i’m spending more than they thought i would be spending. ?! – is the sky the limit with this card? NO. Is it a good card to have though? sure…. just always have a backup card.