Here’s how I used the Amex Platinum in the last 9 Months—A success story?

[icemankaka]

I would say, do you normally travel withOUT travel insurance (Or you have a seperate policy).

For me, I wouldnt think of not having a policy and whilst I have never really used the AMEX policy, I’ve used the HSBC one quite a bit – because some benefits work better on one but not the other. Yet if I have a car rental, I’ll def be using the AMEX policy if something goes wrong (and I use the hertz benefit a bit).

Andre182 wrote:

I wanted to share my experience with the Amex Platinum card over the past 8 and a half months and see if you all think I maximized its value. I would also love to hear how you use it.

Costs:

• Annual Fee: £650
• Pro-rated Refund: £185 (cancelled as I received a supplemental card from my partner)
• Net Cost: £465

Benefits:

1. Membership Rewards (MR) Points:
• 75k Sign-Up Bonus
• 5k Bonus for issuing a supplemental card to my partner.
• 18k Points from referring my partner.
• 50k Points from a retention offer (I texted Amex, mentioned I was considering canceling, and they offered 50k points to retain me).
• 25k Points from everyday spending
• Total MR Points: 173k
Valuing each point conservatively at 1p (even though I got more value from flights), that’s £1,730 in points value.

2. Statement Credits:
• £450 in restaurant credits (£300 domestic and £150 abroad; only used the abroad credit once). I value this at £450 as I would have gone to these restaurants anyway.
• £100 from Harvey Nichols, spent on diffusers I would have bought anyway. Valued at £100.

3. Lounge Access:
• 9 trips in economy, multiplied by 2 (for me and my partner), equals 18 lounge visits.
• I value each lounge visit at £10 per person per trip, totaling £180.

4. Refund Protection:
• Partner bought an item for £420, but only store credit was offered upon return. We raised a claim with Amex, and they issued a £300 credit with no questions asked and my partner retained the item.

5. Hilton Status:
• We only used it once for a free breakfast, valued at £10 per person per day. For 3 days, that’s £60.

6. Travel Insurance and Car Insurance:
• While these benefits were available, I didn’t end up using them, so I’ll value them at £0.

Total Value Received:

• MR Points: £1,730
• Statement Credits: £550
• Lounge Access: £180
• Refund Protection: £300
• Hilton Status: £60
• Travel and Car Insurance: £0

Total Benefits: £2,820

Net Gain:

• Subtracting the net cost of £465 from the total value of £2,820, I ended up with a net gain of £2,355.

What do you all think? Did I manage to maximize the value of the Amex Platinum, or is there something I missed? I’d love to hear your thoughts and tips. Also, if you’ve had experiences with the card, feel free to share how you’ve used it and what value you’ve gotten from it. Let’s compare notes and see how we can all get the most out of these benefits!

[Wiseoldman]

jj wrote:

@Wiseoldman, I’m not sure where you have spent your working life, but I can assure you that business ethics, morality and social responsibility have been a major factor in decision taking in every one of the hundreds of board meetings that I have attended. I can’t extrapolate my experience to all corporations, but I can tell you that some corporations very much behave like moral entities. Am I alone in regarding the extraction of a retention bonus from a company with no intention of honouring the implied bargain as being deceit?

Personally, I hope that someone from Amex reads this thread, decides to close the naive loopholes in its business processes, and uses the cash saved to enhance the attraction of its products for those customers who don’t churn. Sadly, I have no faith that Amex is smart enough to do that.

@jj I have no idea how your personal experience comes into this. We all need to be guided by our own moral and ethical guidelines. The point I was making was corporations have proven time and time again that they are not “moral or ethical” creatures. Would be great to see some examles of good/moral companies doing well and I applaud you for making it happen as a Board member. Amex is certainly not proven to be ethical. A simple google search various examples of Amex being fined for “illegal” not just moral issues as we well know moral issues are not “fined” https://duckduckgo.com/?q=american+express+regulatory+fines&t=opera&ia=web

Just to empahsise I am not advocating cheating and falling down the same immoral/unethical spiral that companies have gone down but I hate attributing superior attributes to companies where none exist.

[JDB]

@Wiseoldman the fact a company tries hard through leadership, culture, training etc to be “moral or ethical” (and frankly most do simply because it’s good for the business) doesn’t mean they always succeed. There are always bad apples or rogue business units that let the company down and whose actions would very definitely not be sanctioned from the top.

This unfortunately happens in any large organisation – not just within for profit corporations. There have been some truly awful financial and abuse scandals followed by cover ups within various churches. It has done enormous and probably permanent damage to them. They are still moral.

It does happen but truly rotten companies are really quite rare.

[Aston100]

Harrods wrote:

It’s always the people who are new to these forums with no post history with nothing better to do that ruins it for all of us.

What exactly has been ruined?
As some others have already pointed out, there isn’t anything listed that isn’t a feature or already openly known about.
This isn’t one of those Bendy Bondy Ernie situations of old where there were definitely things that shouldn’t have been talked about.