Amex Platinum - value for money or not £600 annual membership

Esterbrook142

My wife and I use our Platinum Amex for all purchases where they accept it.  There is no APR as such as the conditions are the payment is cleared in full each month by DD so we only ever have 30 days or so credit.  The annual fees are £600.

We probably spend >£40k annually which includes holidays (2-3 a year), household spend, groceries, eating out essentially everything all goes on the card. The benefits of the card include but not limited to:

Private Lounge access at all airports
Travel insurance
Amex points - similar to Avios
Discount schemes renewed weekly
Money off vouchers c£100 twice a year at certain retailers.

We occasionally think think it might not be value for money although we've just cashed in our points and got £1,400 (deducted off our next statement) which I appreciate has accumulated over the years and as we travel often the lounge access and travel insurance does seem to make the £600 not too bad a cost and at worse it balances off with the benefits.  We have recently had our first child and travelling will be reduced so the lounge access and travel insurance less of frequent a benefit.

I'm certainly not complaining about the cost in this thread, it's more about value so please don't take it that we are being hard done by, I was curious if anyone had ditched their card for another provider or type of card as the fees have gone up by £50 over the last couple of years.  We have had a British Airways Amex in the past and found their companion flight useless in many ways and although we accumulated 3 or 4 companion flights were never able to use them due to the stringent terms and availability they place on them.

Any positive feedback / advice welcome 

Many thanks 

Emmia

You could switch to the Amex platinum cashback card, which is fee free. It really depends what "perks" you want.

Belenus

You might find stoozing with other credit cards a better option although finding the right interest free balance transfer and zero transfer fees deals is getting harder and harder.

We probably spend about £25,000 a year on credit cards and stoozing has earned us about £800 in the last year.

A lot of our expenditure is in places were Amex is not accepted.

We are not interested in private lounges as we usually travel with EastJet.

lr1277

If you haven't already done so, have a look at the website head for points. That would be the articles and the forums. Within the forums there are various subjects as well as a daily chat thread.

I don't have this card but here are some thoughts based on reading that site.

Do you not amass points? Can you not use these for either cheaper or free flights? Or you could use the points for cheaper or free hotel stays?

You can buy the lounge access directly with Priority Pass or Dragonpass. That by itself would be cheaper than the Plat card. But obviously you wouldn't get the other benefits like the insurance or the cashback offers.

How valuable is the insurance to you? I understand there is one type of insurance that is hard to purchase elsewhere, that is rebooking a flight or hotel because of sickness in the member of the travelling party. Say you still want make the same journey after the person gets better, hotel and flight prices will now have gone up since you made the booking. That is where this insurance comes into play. I understand other travel insurance policies will refund you original flight and hotel costs, but this money may not cover a new booking at much shorter notice.

In terms of medical insurance, for me personally, I would have to get separate medical insurance travel cover because of the list of exclusions.

Be ware, the insurance provider is changing in the New Year and I don't know if there will be a change of benefits/policy exclusions.

If you use the card just for the travel benefits, would you consider the Lloyds World Elite Mastercard? Cashback of 0.5% for upto £15k spend then 1% above £15k spend. A better Priority Pass membership than Amex's priority pass in that the Amex priority pass doesn't give you a credit at cerrtain airport airside eateries, whereas the Lloyds card does. You also get Fast Track Security at certain airports whereas I don't know if Amex offers this feature. Also costs £15 per month.

Edited to correct something.

WillPS

If it's just the points you benefit from then you might as well get the fee-free Amex Reward card, which earns exactly the same points at exactly the same rate.

While you're there, consider if the value of the points is more or less than what 1% of your spend on the card would be. If it's more, stay with Amex MR points. If it's less, then consider taking another form of reward.

Santander Edge Up pays 2% for a year, then 1% ongoing (£3/month fee, max £15 cashback/month).

Nectar Amex pays a fairly straightforward 1% reward on spend (£30 annual fee) - the main catch is this can only be spent at Sainsburys or Argos.

If you spend more than £18k/year on your Amex then the Cashback (not Everyday) cashback option will be even more profitable.

In order to financially justify The Platinum Card you really need to be making use of the non-spend related perks - if you're not travelling that becomes a lot harder (tho not entirely impossible) to do.

DullGreyGuy

Esterbrook142 said:

My wife and I use our Platinum Amex for all purchases where they accept it.  There is no APR as such as the conditions are the payment is cleared in full each month by DD so we only ever have 30 days or so credit.  The annual fees are £600.

We probably spend >£40k annually which includes holidays (2-3 a year), household spend, groceries, eating out essentially everything all goes on the card. The benefits of the card include but not limited to:

Private Lounge access at all airports
Travel insurance
Amex points - similar to Avios
Discount schemes renewed weekly
Money off vouchers c£100 twice a year at certain retailers.

We occasionally think think it might not be value for money although we've just cashed in our points and got £1,400 (deducted off our next statement) which I appreciate has accumulated over the years and as we travel often the lounge access and travel insurance does seem to make the £600 not too bad a cost and at worse it balances off with the benefits.  We have recently had our first child and travelling will be reduced so the lounge access and travel insurance less of frequent a benefit.

I'm certainly not complaining about the cost in this thread, it's more about value so please don't take it that we are being hard done by, I was curious if anyone had ditched their card for another provider or type of card as the fees have gone up by £50 over the last couple of years.  We have had a British Airways Amex in the past and found their companion flight useless in many ways and although we accumulated 3 or 4 companion flights were never able to use them due to the stringent terms and availability they place on them.

It all depends on if you value the benefits or not and if they fit with your normal spend. 

Travel insurance is ok but no cover for pre-existing conditions. It does however include Hire Car Excess cover which is unusual in the uK market. 

MR points can be converted to Avios but not really similar to them. One key thing is that they never expire so you can save them up over a long period and use it for something big. Using it to reduce the balance is the worst effective rate you can get for each MR point as it's under 0.5p/point and so you may as well have something else. By comparison my best technical achievement was over 8p per point when getting 1st class flight for $5 each. Personally, wouldn't use them for less than 1p each. 

Lounge access has multiple routes, you get 2 Priority Pass both with unlimited access and 1 guest each for free. Buying a PP with that level is impossible and the highest level they offer would be more than the annual fee alone. You also get access to their own Centurion Lounges, EuroStar, Lufthansa and Delta (if travelling with their brand). If you travel a lot these are great, particularly the EuroStar which is otherwise hard to get into if not in Business.

You get £200 off UK fine dining and £200 of overseas fine dining with no minimum spend (though it's split between minimum of two visits). We live in London so its easy, a number of the restaurants have cafes, bars or snack menus etc so rather than spending £300 on a meal out and getting £100 back we can pop in and have say drinks and a cake for free 4 times a year

The £50x2 for Harvy Nicks isn't the best... not a shop we go to so it's a bit of an effort to use it. It's been ok when wanting something they sell and everyone else sells at RRP.

The random discounts are pot luck, was fortunate one year that there was a 10% rebate on a company we were planning on spending a lot with so got c£500 back. Plenty of regulate 15% off train travel etc which are ok. 

You also have the "events", though they tend to be London centric. Used to go to a fair few of them because they were free and normally included either an interesting experience or free gift or drinks. These days they tend to be more paid (some good value though, others exclusive) but book up incredibly fast. 

Plus the FHR and other hotel programs. Hilton is free drinks on arrival and free breakfast plus room upgrade. Places like Manderine Oriental is £200 credit, free room upgrade, free late checkout and occasionally 3 for 2 type offers.

As long as you travel regularly and you would otherwise be going at least a couple of times a year to a Michelin restaurant then its easy to achieve a value over the fee, and significantly over the fee to not prefer a cash back or other reward card. If you dont travel much, prefer McDonalds to the Fat Duck and think Aldi is overpriced then its false economy to get the card and start spending much more to realise the benefits. 

Esterbrook142

thanks for the point about lounges, if we tend to travel abroad incl. long weekends say four times a year and that alone in lounges (at say £30 per entry per person x 2 for the return x 4 breaks) it gives us a £480 cost and we do like the lounges.  The travel insurance for a year including skiing would be >£100 each so we've made our money back in years we have travelled.  Amex points can be transferred to avios points for flights but it was easier to take the cash and use on an Ethihad flight - we got stung their as we used the amex concierge services and pay for those flights don't count as a reward spend as it wasn't through the Etihad point of sale!!....Sneaky!!

I will look at the Lloyds World Elite Mastercard as seems reasonable but as out membership for this card just rolled over in September will need to stay put for now.

lr1277

Hmm I did a 2nd edit on my previous post that no longer seems to be there.

Just in case that 2nd edit doesn't show up, I said, the Plat card gets you into Centurion lounges. However anecdotal evidence suggests they can be crowded especially in the US.

lr1277

Until the end of this year (I think) Amex are offering pro-rata refunds so you could cancel earlier than next September.

WillPS

Esterbrook142 said:

thanks for the point about lounges, if we tend to travel abroad incl. long weekends say four times a year and that alone in lounges (at say £30 per entry per person x 2 for the return x 4 breaks) it gives us a £480 cost and we do like the lounges.  The travel insurance for a year including skiing would be >£100 each so we've made our money back in years we have travelled.  Amex points can be transferred to avios points for flights but it was easier to take the cash and use on an Ethihad flight - we got stung their as we used the amex concierge services and pay for those flights don't count as a reward spend as it wasn't through the Etihad point of sale!!....Sneaky!!

I will look at the Lloyds World Elite Mastercard as seems reasonable but as out membership for this card just rolled over in September will need to stay put for now.

The annual fee is (for now) refunded pro rata. If you're not going to benefit, the money-saving option is to cancel ASAP!

Remember you can always sign up again in future if your circumstances change.

DullGreyGuy

Esterbrook142 said:
Amex points can be transferred to avios points for flights but it was easier to take the cash and use on an Ethihad flight - we got stung their as we used the amex concierge services and pay for those flights don't count as a reward spend as it wasn't through the Etihad point of sale!!....Sneaky!!

May be "easier" but you got under 1/16th the value, you could also have transferred the points to Etihad; they reduced their points requirements earlier this year and opened up the Residency to airmiles. Not as good a value as Avios but should still be better than the less than 0.5p that converting them to cash off the balance is.