Amex Plat Revisited: Still Worth The Annual Fee ($550)?

by Robert McGarvey

Regular readers know I have long been a fan of Amex Platinum but in a new year, I find myself again looking into the wisdom of the $550 annual fee card. The big hit: at the end of 2020, the $20 per month Amex credit against cell phone bills and also streaming video fees vanished. Amex had always said those were temporary perks. There was no surprise here. But that cut my Plat benefits $40/month.

The good news is that when I dug – more on the process later – I found numerous perks that go to cardholders. But you do have to hunt. Amex does not give them to you unless you ask.

I say do likewise with any premium travel rewards card in your wallet. You just may find that the card has added new, tasty perks. Chase Sapphire Reserve, Plat’s doppelganger, is a case in point. It too has lot of perks cardholders may not know about.

And of course the backdrop to this quest is the other, huge loss for Plat cardholders, at least for me: the sheer lack of travel raises questions about any card conceived as a travel perks card and the Amex Plat has to be at the head of that pack.

A travel perks card that stays in your wallet is obviously of little apparent benefit. Thus, my new quest for value in the Platinum card. I have had one for some years. Only now have I become a perks hunter.

Understand, I see no near-term changes in my air travel appetite. Clients aren’t requesting my presence (Zoom works for them and for me at present).

Besides, air travel continues to have too many maskless cretins who deny medical evidence. That lack of masks is especially worrisome once you’ve read Hugo Martin’s horrifying piece headlined Coughing, sneezing, vomiting: Visibly ill people aren’t being kept off planes.

I expect we will get more rational policies in the Biden Administration, but how soon will it be implemented and how many maskless morons will have to be physically thrown off planes?

Until we have mask clarity, and until the vaccines are widely distributed (so far the distribution has been a failure of Trumpian girth – “incomprehensible,” said Mitt Romney who added that it was “inexcusable”), count me as a deeply hesitant flyer – and probably I will make no use of the Amex Centurion clubs in the first half of 2021.

Mind you, Centurion clubs for some years alone persuaded me to keep renewing Plat. So their lack is a big issue for me.

Another Plat perk has been a $200 airline credit (good for incidentals with an airline selected by the cardholder in January – this is for snack boxes, beer, etc in coach). But I may not fly American – the airline I selected – at all, not in the first half of 2020.

What now are the benefits of a Platinum card?

I did recently get the $85 TSA Precheck renewal fee covered by Amex.

There’s a $15/month Uber credit which is also applicable to Uber Eats and I will admit I have been derelict about using that, but in December – when the credit is upped to $35 – I used it to cover half of a meal delivery from a local Vietnamese restaurant, Rice Paper. I count that meal a success. I will use the Uber Eats credit again.

But I need more perks to justify the $550 fee for my card plus $175 for my wife’s card.

And so I visited the Amex Plat Offer and Benefits page which lists 100 deals and some are good. A favorite has been $50 off any purchase at Saks, useable twice yearly for $100 total.

$50 off a $250 purchase at Johnny Was.

Spend $45 at Teleflora, get $20 back, up to 10 times. That’s $200.

Spend $50 at Home Depot, get $50 back, up to two times.

Spend $50 at BestBuy, get $50 back, up to two times.

Those offers total $550 and there are 96 more that I see. Everything from the Container Store to Samsung (spend $1000, get $200 back) and Loews Hotels (spend $200 get $50 back).

Keep hunting for perks. New ones are popping up. For instance: OneMileAtaTime has found a $30 monthly PayPal credit, good through June. That’s $180. And no enrollment is needed. Just use Amex to pay via PayPal and you qualify, on most purchases, for the $30.

Whew. Yes, this is a bit of work. I’ll be glad when the Centurion and the $200 airline credit are ample for me.

But until then, stay alert. Amex (and its competitors) will be fiddling with their rewards. Be ready to pounce.