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Big changes to American Express Platinum on the way, including a metal card and higher fee

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American Express is planning yet more changes to its UK card portfolio, this time on The Platinum Card.  For once, you are getting four weeks notice of what is going to happen.

Whether you are a cardholder or just a potential cardholder, you have time to make your plans accordingly.

Here is the news in a nutshell:

The Platinum Card will be made from metal, not plastic – see the image below

The annual fee increases from £450 to £575, albeit with some modest improvements in benefits

The spend required to earn the 30,000 points sign-up bonus is doubling

New UK American Express Platinum metal card

The new fee and benefits come into effect from 11th June for new cardholders.  Existing cardholders will receive the new benefits from 11th June and will be charged the higher fee on their next renewal after 1st August.

Let’s look at the new package in detail:

A new Platinum card, made from metal

American Express launched a metal version of The Platinum Card in the US in 2017 and has been slowly rolling it out since.  Arguably they have missed the boat in the UK, since Curve, N26 (N26 Metal reviewed here) and Revolut (Revolut Metal reviewed here) have all launched in the last six months.

I have been using a metal Curve card for a few months.  They are surprisingly heavy and fall out of your wallet easily.  The good news is that I have never had a problem using it in a card terminal or ATM.

New cardholders from 11th June will receive a metal card automatically.  Existing cardholders will receive one when their current card expires.  If that is a long way away, I imagine that if you call after 11th June to say that you have lost your card, the replacement may well be metal …..

Platinum supplementary cards will also be issued in metal.

Looking at the image above, I image that – like Curve – your name, card number and expiry date will be printed on the back of the card to make the front look more stylish.

An increased fee, from £450 to £575

Existing cardholders will be billed £575 from their next renewal after 1st August.  New cardholders will pay £575 from 11th June.

If you apply before 11th June you will pay the existing £450 for the first year.

Additional Platinum supplementary cards go up from £170 to £285

Additional Platinum supplementary cards after the first free one will be charged at £285 instead of £170.

Whilst this is a sharp jump, the current £170 fee for additional Platinum supplementary cards is ludicrously cheap.  You can basically give someone full Priority Pass membership (admits two), Hilton Honors Gold, Marriott Bonvoy Gold, Radisson Rewards Gold, Shangri-La Golden Circle Jade, Melia Rewards Gold, Eurostar lounge access, full travel insurance etc for £170 per year.  It is exceptional value and couldn’t last.

Additional supplementary cards issued as Gold cards will continue to be free but will continue to not have any benefits except for being covered by The Platinum Card travel insurance.

A sharp jump in the spend needed to trigger the sign-up bonus

The sign-up bonus on The Platinum Card is a generous 30,000 Membership Rewards points.  This converts into 30,000 Avios or various other airline and hotel schemes.  Airline transfer rates are 1:1.  The hotel transfer rates are 1:2 into Hilton, 2:3 into Marriott and 1:3 into Radisson.  You can also convert at 15:1 into Club Eurostar.  You can see the partner list on the Membership Rewards site here.

From 11th June, new applicants will need to spend £4,000 within three months to trigger the sign-up bonus.  This is a sharp increase on the current £2,000.  You should apply before 11th June if £4,000 would be a stretch.

£10 per month of Addison Lee credit

Cardholders will receive £10 cashback per month on Addison Lee taxi rides charged to their card.  This does not accumulate if unused in any particular month.

If you use this, you will save £120 per year which offsets the fee increase.  This is fairly easy if you live in London but far more difficult if you don’t.

This benefit is only available to the primary cardholder and not to the Platinum supplementary cardholder.  The annual benefit is therefore capped at £120.

American Express Amex Platinum card

$200 credit on EVERY onefinestay house rental

This is potentially very interesting.  You will get $200 cashback each time you spend $200 or local currency equivalent on The Platinum Card on a onefinestay house or apartment rental.

(Rentals in the UK receive £150 cashback on stays of £150+.  Rentals in the Eurozone receive €170 cashback on stays on €170+.)

I thought this would come with a catch, but it doesn’t.  I have spoken to Amex and you will get the cashback on each and every booking.  The nearest thing to a ‘gotcha’ is that you must opt-in to this benefit via the American Express website when it goes live on 11th June.  If you forget to opt in, you won’t receive your cashback.

The only snag is with onefinestay itself.  Most of their houses require a three night minimum stays – not all of them, but most.  Looking at a low cost country such as Thailand, the cheapest place I could find is $185 per night in Koh Samui with a three night minimum.  The cheapest with a two night minimum is $450 per night – although you are, of course, getting a monumentally large Koh Samui villa for this!  If you think that you will be able to book yourself a cheap $200 property and essentially pay nothing due to the $200 cashback, you will be disappointed.

Other new benefits that I won’t insult your intelligence with by pretending they are useful

You will be able to book American Express restaurant partners via the Amex app instead of calling (some of these deals are OK, to be fair, and offer benefits such as a free glass of champagne to cardholders)

You will be able to message American Express from inside the Amex app

You will be able to use the American Express Centurion Lounge in Heathrow Terminal 3 when it opens later this year (I have no doubt that this will be an excellent lounge – Centurion Lounges have a great reputation – but Platinum cardholders would have got access anyway and there are already two good Priority Pass lounges in Terminal 3.  There is nothing new about this.)

Conclusion

For existing Platinum cardholders, the key question is whether you can easily use the monthly Addison Lee credit.

If you will, the increase in annual fee is offset and you are in a similar position to where you are today.  If you can’t use the Addison Lee credit, you are facing a £125 fee increase with very little in return, unless you become a heavy onefinestay user.

For potential new Platinum cardholders, the increase in target spend to £4,000 within three months to trigger the sign-up bonus could be a deal-breaker.  I strongly recommend applying before 11th June to lock in the existing £2,000 spending target if you can.  You can apply here – note that the website will not be updated with the new details until 11th June.

As a reminder, you qualify for the 30,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus if you have not had any card which earns Membership Rewards points – ie Gold, Green, Platinum, Centurion or the Amex Rewards Credit Card – in the past 24 months.

In general, you need to look at The Platinum Card like an iPhone.  You could, in theory, save a lot of money by scrapping your iPhone and buying a torch, alarm clock, Chromebook, portable hi-fi, calculator, stopwatch and a non-smartphone separately.  Most people don’t.

Similarly, you could drop your Platinum card and:

pay for travel insurance for your entire family and the families of five random people you would otherwise give a supplementary card

pay for car hire insurance when you rent (although insurance4carhire will sell you an annual policy cheaply)

pay for airport lounge access, potentially via a Priority Pass (or buy pricier tickets which include it)

pay more for luxury hotels rather than using Fine Hotels & Resorts (admittedly you can book many FHR properties with similar benefits via our hotel partner Bon Vivant)

pay more for Eurostar tickets to get lounge access via your ticket type

pay for better quality rooms and breakfast at Hilton, Marriott, Radisson, Melia and Shangri-La hotels instead of relying on your status benefits 

pay for an ice scraper for your car rather than using the new metal Platinum card

etc etc.  You need to do the maths based on your own personal circumstances.

Should I apply for The Platinum Card NOW to lock in the £2,000 bonus spend target and the £450 fee?

Probably.  You will get a better deal than usual, because you will only pay £450 but will earn 11 x £10 Addison Lee credits before your first renewal at the higher rate.

Wait until tomorrow, however, when I will run a full article on what The Platinum Card gets you.

The Platinum Card website is here if you want to apply or find out more, although the benefits I describe above will not be shown until 11th June.

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Category

American Express Platinum card

Comments (665)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • TGLoyalty says:
    13 May13 May 07:21

    No changes to earning though ie no extra point on foreign fx charges.

    My annual fee just hit after having the card for free for 11 months but won’t be renewing for £575 next year for £10 Addison Lee credit (I’m not in London)

    • Murray says:
      13 May13 May 15:59

      How do you manage to pay it at the end of the year – is it usually like this or do you typically need to pay at the start of the year?

  • Si**o says:
    13 May13 May 07:26

    I’m out! £575 and still half the benefits of the US version.

    Been a card hold on Plat for 2 years, but just doesn’t seem to be worth the fee now.

    Does the gold still come with double points on travel spend?

  • James says:
    13 May13 May 07:30

    I’m very lucky by the looks of it to have a renewal date of 2nd July which will be on the old fee.

    That said, I won’t be renewing at the new rate whenever that comes along.

  • Mike says:
    13 May13 May 07:30

    This is the end of Amex Plat for me – I have had a Plat for at least 5 years churning every 6 to 7 months to gain 132 K AVIOS each time for an annual Club/First holiday flight. 132 K = 35 K (recommend sign up bonus), 5 K (Supplementary), 90 K (5 x 18 K recommendations) , plus 2 K for £2000 minimum spend. With an increased 24 month churn period, the £4000 required spend (Which would not be an issue if Billhop still let you pay into a personal bank account (ie my own !)) I fear that this is the end of using the Amex plat to generate the AVIOS required for my annual Club/First holiday flight. PS who actually wants a card made of metal !!!

    • Paul says:
      13 May13 May 07:50

      I’m always curious when people say things like this… how do you manage to find 5 people every 6/7 months who want to be referred?!

      • Mike says:
        13 May13 May 10:06

        Paul – You can (could) refer yourself and still get the bonus (was 18 K per card per person), plus a family member – so I always did 5 referrals (out of the 6 maximum) every 6 to 7 months (90 K MR). The referred cards were always cancelled after 2 months.

    • Dominic says:
      13 May13 May 07:53

      I suspect amex will say good riddance with that churn

    • Paul Komp says:
      13 May13 May 10:38

      Wow. You’re the reason these changes are happening.

    • Lady London says:
      13 May13 May 10:46

      Hum Mike I think you were the sort of customer Amex wanted to lose!

      • Polly says:
        13 May13 May 16:57

        Agree. We at least held them for 8 months, and all spend went on them if possible. I felt we earned our rewards, and justified in referring. It’s a real shame for those who didn’t. Go all out to milk.

  • The Original Nick says:
    13 May13 May 07:33

    My Plat is up for renewal next month. I will refer my OH this week, get the 12000 referral points, and cancel. Will then get a supp card from her, get all the hotel benefits and cancel her Plat card. This is my plan anyway.
    Good bye Plat.

  • Freddy says:
    13 May13 May 07:35

    I was expecting people the amex faithful to be saying that the card is still worth the fee, looks like this is a hike too far!

  • JP says:
    13 May13 May 07:37

    I used to have AMEX Platinum but very quickly realised it was an incredibly overpriced product. Most of the things (status aside) it offers can be acquired for a lot less money.
    1) Annual Travel Insurance – for my whole family this costs £65. Ironically, the policy is with AMEX.
    2) Car Rental Insurance – I nearly always hire exclusively in the USA so switching to Sixt where all policies include a $0 excess was a no brainer.
    3) Lounge Access – I can’t remember the last time I travelled and didn’t have lounge access included with my ticket.
    4) £120 of London taxi credit – you could probably get the same thing from Uber for around £85.
    5) The earning rate is poor, they still apply 3% FOREX fees to every transaction.
    6) Hotel status – just book a better room. Besides, isn’t every man and his dog Hilton Gold these days?
    7) Metal card – seriously, who cares?

    I’m not sure the smartphone analogy works; it’s not about acquiring these things it’s about how you carry them around with you. Since you don’t carry a travel insurance or car rental insurance policy around with you the analogy doesn’t really work. When you combine all these things with the price increase, the changes to acquisition bonus, the increased spend required for the acquisition bonus then it’s just not a competitive product.

    Regrettably, I’m starting to think that point collecting and AMEX as a business proposition in the UK is dead in the water. No disrespect to Rob at all but you only have to look at the changing nature of the content on this site to realise this is happening. There seems to be a lot more articles telling you how to use your points rather than how to acquire them in the first place, a lot of lounge reviews and the articles telling us how the points game in the UK is coming to an end (AMEX signup bonuses). I now have only one card with AMEX (BAPP) and if they make any changes to that then, in all honestly, my relationship with them will be finished. I suspect I am not the only person who is thinking along these lines.

    • Judy says:
      13 May13 May 08:02

      Sadly, you’re spot on with every point you raise (no pun intended).

    • MikeL says:
      13 May13 May 08:08

      Well said 👍

    • Rob says:
      13 May13 May 08:24

      Fair points in general but no way can you get family travel insurance which covers £1m+ of US cover for £65. The MSE Best Buy is £200.

      You can also cover 5 families with Plat if you dish out supps to them.

      • JP says:
        13 May13 May 08:29

        I’m afraid you’re not correct. My policy costs £66.21 for the whole family for the year and it includes £10,000,000 Medical Emergency Expenses. It’s an AMEX policy – I’ve got the policy document in front of me. You can’t buy these policies from AMEX anymore but it’s definitely what I’ve got.

      • Alan says:
        13 May13 May 10:18

        But I only have 1 family, why would I need to insure 5?
        I can’t even use the insurance for the one family I have as there are pre-existing conditions.

        I’m sure AMEX has run the numbers and believe that it still works for them. Maybetheir intention is to run down teh Platinum card completely in the UK?

        Or, maybe, they want it to be a signal for businesses that any customer yielding one has more money than sense so screw them for every penny you can?

        Who knows?

        • JP says:
          13 May13 May 10:48

          Exactly Alan. Is being able to insure 5 families really a selling point for this card? I feel like this might be grasping at straws a bit. It was borderline before but with these changes AMEX Platinum isn’t worth the money and I haven’t yet read one comment that says it is. I appreciate that getting ‘exclusives’ on stories like this might require you to window dress things a bit more Rob but I would much prefer a balanced view over which AMEX has no influence even if it meant waiting a few days to hear about it. Either way I wasn’t an AMEX Platinum customer before and these changes certainly have made me run out and apply for one.

          • Rob says:
            13 May13 May 11:40

            Amex has no influence on this article, except to the extent that they have given me full details on the changes, eg the small print of onefinestay, which I wouldn’t otherwise have had.

            You are missing the point though. If you can use the AddLee credit, you are NO WORSE OFF. If it turns out that the supp card gets the AddLee credit too (TBC) then you could be £115 better off than you are now.

            There is no such thing as a balanced view on Amex Plat because everyone has different travel patterns. The ‘holy grail’ to most, Priority Pass, has virtually zero benefit to me as we always travel in Business. On the other hand, the 4pm late check-out via Fine Hotels & Resorts is of HUGE value since it transforms our experience on 5-6 weekends away each year. I have two kids so I value the insurance highly. I rent a lot of cars so I value the rental insurance. All swings and roundabouts.

            Also worth noting that anyone who is self-employed or has small business income can, if they only use the card for business expenses, write off the entire fee against tax. This changes the dynamic heavily for a lot of our readers.

          • JP says:
            13 May13 May 15:29

            Agree to disagree on this one but I don’t think I’m “missing the point”. Addison Lee credit is utterly useless to those who don’t live in London. So if you’re one of the 15m people that live in the north you will be worse off unless you’re in London every month.

            Guaranteed 4PM checkout can be secured by any decent luxury travel agent – a contracted rate is not necessary. Any Four Seasons Preferred Partner worth their salt should be able to ring up FS Hampshire and organise a 4PM checkout for you – no questions asked.

            I also have two children but can secure a better deal for travel insurance elsewhere. I don’t want to insure 5 families – just mine. Car rental insurance isn’t necessarily essential if you rent from a company that includes it for everyone.

            I really struggle to see how these benefits which can be acquired through other channels is worth £575 a year. Finally, AMEX may not dictate what you write in this article but surely they could pull the plug on their information sharing relationship with you if they don’t like what you write?

          • Rob says:
            13 May13 May 17:18

            No, they have no choice but to tell me what they’re doing under the terms of my Consumer Credit Licence.

          • Shoestring says:
            13 May13 May 15:38

            tbh I thought Addison Lee was some seedy swingers dating app

          • SimonW says:
            13 May13 May 15:47

            It is TOTALLY worth the money for me. YMMV

          • JP says:
            14 May14 May 06:48

            So anybody who has a Credit Consumer Licence gets the information? If so how can you claim it’s an ‘EXCLUSIVE’ then?

          • Rob says:
            14 May14 May 09:23

            Without wishing to state the obvious, if no-one else has published this news then it clearly is exclusive 🙂

            Amex only has about 10 UK affiliate partners, including us, and I was given it in advance of the other nine-ish.

    • meta says:
      13 May13 May 08:27

      Are you sure your current travel/car insurance will pay out no questions asked and within a few days? On my recent trip Amex Plat, my claim for missed connection was paid out within 5 days (money was in my account in that time frame). They even covered the cost of the lounge access (because it was a private one) while waiting for the new flight.

      • JP says:
        13 May13 May 08:34

        I’m not sure how I would know that unless I’d had cause to make a claim. Does anybody know that before they take out a travel insurance policy? When I originally purchased the policy I did my research and it had good reviews.

        As for car rental insurance – I don’t have it. I hire from Sixt in the USA who include a $0 excess with all their vehicles. This is arguably better than a third party policy where you would have to pay out for the damage and then claim it back. When the insurance is with the rental company you don’t have to pay anything OR claim it back.

        • Lady London says:
          13 May13 May 20:12

          Thank you for that tip on US car Hire JP. The car hire excess policies (for those of us that dont currently have Amex Plat) cost pretty much twice as much if you need to include USA in the areas covered. So Sixt is a good tip. x.

  • TigerTanaka says:
    13 May13 May 07:40

    I am a recent Amex Plat which I have in addition to the BAPP card. For me the Plat card was fine for the first year after a self referral got me 9,000 Avios and 35,000 MR points plus all the other benefits. I was in two minds whether to renew but now I am now fairly sure I will cancel the Plat card.

    1) I don’t use the Plat card for spending at all
    2) I am Gold on BA and KLM so normally have lounge access anyway (maybe 2/3 trips a year on EasyJet or Lufthansa).
    3) I don’t live in London so the Addison Lee credit is no use whatsoever. I appreciate that Amex’s UK customer base is London centric but some people in the North earn decent salaries and are not crippled with £3k a month mortgages.
    4) The travel insurance is fine but is probably only worth £150
    5) I do about 8 Hilton stays a year so the extra points for Gold are appreciated. Free breakfast is not really an issue as the vast majority of my stays are for work anyway.

    My renewal is not until February so I will try to keep an open mind until then.

    • Lady London says:
      13 May13 May 20:15

      Hey Tiger i guess you if you cancel earlier than Feb you will get a refund pro rata for unused months? for now, anyway…

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