Reply To: Amex Platinum benefits into 2025

[JDB]

@BOSSMANTRAVELS – you called it a bonkers post by @jj, and it may have been slightly exaggerated for emphasis but it did make the point very well. Platinum is Amex’s premium, flagship product (save invitation only Centurion) yet it offers access to tawdry lounges that serve bottom shelf drinks and ultra processed food and/or reheated slops.

As @jj says, if you are the right sort of premium cardholder you have access to airline lounges that maybe aren’t great, but are in a different league to PP. Then these premium cardholders are given junior statuses in hotel programmes that offer little of merit when a premium cardholder is more likely to wish to stay in a more premium place; that doesn’t mean expensive, just better, non corporatised chain boringness. The Plat offers an insurance policy that is below the standard of other packaged products offered in the UK. They try and sugar the pill of the £650 fee by telling you where you can dine on their dollar to recover some fee. Oh, and they will let you spend a bit of their money in a shop you otherwise wouldn’t visit. As far FHR etc…

Fortunately the product is so good and Amex really believes in it that they will beg you not to cancel by slipping you at least £350 worth of Avios every year and frequently more. Absent retentions (the posh word for bribes) how many UK Plat cardholders would they have? It’s a really classy flagship product.