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While many try to justify the plat card by looking at the value to them, I thought i’d look at what it would cost to replace the benefits offered.
1) Travel insurance and lounge access – roughly costing £100 for a family? and Lloyds/Halifax WE mastercard for £180.
Another option is Natwest black premier for £252 that includes car breakdown and gadget cover (save £60-80 compared to plat).
Nationwide flex plus + Halifax WE card is more expensive.
2) Hotel status – the toughest to replace. Hilton and Melia gold will be missed. Marriott gold can be retained using Bonvoy card + 10 nights.
If one travels more in Asia, ALL signature is better and can be bought at little cost.
3) FHR – replaced with Emyr/Virtuoso. Will miss the guaranteed 4pm checkout.
4) Car hire insurance – likely cost £50?
5) Card offers – hold a BAPP and with the Bonvoy card, most offers would be covered
6) Dining and HN credits – nice to have, not a must-have. So no replacement required.My usage would be slightly different:
1) Restaurant benefit – £150 (I don’t use overseas benefit as I don’t go to places where they are available)
2) Harvey Nichols benefit – £50
3) Car Excess Insurance (USA) – £120 (annual policy)
4) Hotel Status – difficult to put a value on these so I’ll put £100 but depends on how much you travel but last year, having gold gave us a £1600 benefit at a Hilton Property in the Carribean compared to paying out of pocket for same ‘upgrade’.
5) Lounge Access – for a family – say, £60 per trip, 2 x trips per year (equiv to pay for food in food hall)
6) Travel Insurance – I can’t use AMEX due to pre-existing condition not covered so £0
7) Vouchers / statement credits – hard to say, but around £50?
8) Membership Rewards Points – depends so I’ll leave this as a ‘bonus’; worth it for some, not so for others.So for me – benefits are worth at least £590 so value of card is borderline but convenience of having everything in one product pushes it to break even. Were the travel insurance to cover minor pre-existing conditions, then it would push it into the ‘worth having’ field. Others may get greater benefit (use of lounges for example) or less (can’t use restaurant credit, don’t travel that much etc).
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1) Restaurant benefit – £300 – I use both
2) Harvey Nichols benefit – £100 – I use both, and the goods I buy are consistent in price with other stores
3) Car Excess Insurance – yet to use, 0
4) Hotel Status – hard to price – have taken advantage of Hilton Gold, Melia Gold and Marriott Gold. I have also used status to match to other hotel chains.
5) Car hire status – yet to use, so 0
6) Lounge Access – I will use current Priority Pass pricing for Standard plus £229 (10 free visits, guest £24), which reflects the number of times I have used it.
Actually, it’s Standard Plus x 2 (£458) because I have brought a guest with me each time for free (as opposed to the Priority Pass listed offering which adds £24 per guest). If we used it more, I guess it would be akin to the annual Prestige membership at £419 x 2
7) Travel Insurance – 0 for me – pre-existing condition, however P2 and the offspring benefit by coverage.
8) Vouchers / statement credits – United Airlines offer really stood out for me last year. I found a Premium Economy flight for circa £750, and this price discounted by £350 using United offer, plus all the other little offers that I am able to use.
Having said that, this also appeared on free card (which P2 took advantage of at the same rate), so cannot list as a Platinum specific benefit.
9) Membership Rewards Points – depends on spend/any Amex MR offers that pop up
10) Centurion lounge access – I believe it is Cardholder +2 entry? There is also no other way to get it apart from Amex Platinum or higher, and we really enjoyed our visit, with more planned.
11) Airport Fast-Track – have used once and it worked, will try it again at an opportune moment 🙂
12) Eurostar lounge access – have also used once, liked it.➖
Amex hasn’t stated what they will be doing next year with the Dining/HN credits, and the Amex statement credit offers appear to have diminished somewhat for me, so this will affect my decision to renew when the anniversary is due (which is before the credits renew for the year, if they were going to).
Without Amex providing this information, it is likely I will move to Lloyds or HSBC Premier if either will have me.
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That said, I haven’t issued a second card yet but as the offspring begins to travel more, I can see where benefits can be doubled in places.
Haven’t used any of the other listed perks in the brochure either. I also seem to have a ‘Cruise Credit’ that I haven’t seen any discussion about yet on HfP or anywhere else, for that matter 😀
1) Travel insurance – Their Postponement cover is worth a lot, especially with a little one; moving a holiday back a few days at short notice is an excellent perk and rare to find with other insurance products.
2) Dinning Credit – Used 300 last year, will only use 150 this year.
3) Harvey Nicholls – Used 100 last year and will use 100 this year.
4) Hotel status – Can be worth a lot, booking a standard room and always get a room with a view (worth £200 over a week). Also Hilton Gold breakfast (£200), although won’t be staying at a Hilton this year.I’m due to renew in August, if they extend the dining credit & HN credit then I will likely continue; if not then I will drop the card and probably re-join in 2 years for another 70k/100k MR points.
Also surprised they haven’t said anything about the dining credit, as anyone joining now only gets £300, if not extended, but if extended then it’s actually £600.
Interesting exercise. Total value was much more than I expected at £2,140.
£700 exclusive Platinum hotel deals compared with cheapest alternative price
£100 guaranteed 4pm checkout (resort hotel allowing use of all facilities)
£420 lounge visits (14 at £30 each, equivalent restaurant bill)
£450 statement credits eg dining and Harvey Nicks (would have spent anyway)
£170 Bicester eVIP (£35×2 public cost for hands free shopping plus 10% discount)
£300 worldwide winter sports travel insurance for 6 adultsThe thing that surprised me most was lounge usage as I almost always travelling business class and have BA status. But a family trip in PE plus a few legs where business class wasn’t available soon added up.
None of these replies are on topic for the thread!
As the OP stated, there are loads of posts of ‘this is how much I saved’ elsewhere already. The topic here is how and how much to replace the some of the benefits.
Example: Travel insurance and lounge passes via other cards (LLoyds), or using the free ones on Gold.
Or the fact that many of the ‘offers’ (Plat dining and HN credits aside) are likely available on other cards.
Anyway – here’s one on topic: Virgin Flying club Hertz discount CDP is *almost* as much discount as Amex Platinum CDP, and available to anyone to use. I’ve yet to find anything better than those 2 codes.
Hire car excess insurance can be very cheap indeed, I think I only need one trip in Europe this year, so paid £11 for that (and got topcashback). And in the USA I love the CDW too much to try and avoid it, so I need no excess insurance for the USA.
And that HSBC Premier insurance was a very welcome discovery. £0!
And that HSBC Premier insurance was a very welcome discovery. £0!
Agree it’s great as it is free….but doesn’t come with postponement cover. Try rebooking a holiday at short notice, so much more expensive, especially flights.
None of these replies are on topic for the thread!
As the OP stated, there are loads of posts of ‘this is how much I saved’ elsewhere already. The topic here is how and how much to replace the some of the benefits.
The OP’s question is exactly what I attempted to answer.
The problem is that many of the benefits cannot be replaced. I don’t know of another financial product offering travel insurance that can be shared with your adult children and their families, so the only equivalent option is to buy insurance on the open market if you’re the kind of parent who takes your adult offspring on a fully-expensed holiday. Priority Pass lounges are typically much lower lower quality than the Centurion ones, so the realistic alternative is a restaurant, not a card offering lounge access. The Bicester benefits come packaged with some hotel rooms, but who will stay a needless overnight to get handsfree shopping and a 10% discount? Emyr offers some great hotel deals, but I have no idea who, if anyone, can match the periodic FHR exclusive rates. And I’ve excluded statement credits that feature on any of my other credit cards.
So, the alternative to Platinum is most commonly to pay your way, one transaction at a time.
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