topic Re: Is American Express considered prestigious? in SmorgasBoard

Is American Express considered prestigious?

Anonymous514 — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 19:44:55 GMT

Amex isn't prestigious lol.

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

SoCalGardener — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 19:45:19 GMT

@Anonymous514 wrote:
Amex isn't prestigious lol.

That's interesting--most people think it is. Care to share your thoughts?

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

dragontears — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 19:47:05 GMT

@SoCalGardener wrote:
@Anonymous514 wrote:
Amex isn't prestigious lol.
That's interesting--most people think it is. Care to share your thoughts?

Amex isn't "prestigious", their marketing department did a good job of propagating that imagine but in reality all you need is: not terrible credit, a suspected heart beat (they don't actually check), and a willingness to pay an AF (for most of their cards).

What exactly do you find so "prestigious" about them?

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

SoCalGardener — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 19:47:29 GMT

@dragontears wrote:
@SoCalGardener wrote:
@Anonymous514 wrote:
Amex isn't prestigious lol.
That's interesting--most people think it is. Care to share your thoughts?
Amex isn't "prestigious", their marketing department did a good job of propagating that imagine but in reality all you need is: not terrible credit, a suspected heart beat (they don't actually check), and a willingness to pay an AF (for most of their cards).
What exactly do you find so "prestigious" about them?

I can't argue with any of your points, and I also can't really say what I find so prestigious about them--because I've never actually analyzed it.

I just know that from when I first started getting credit, being able to have an Amex card--and the only kind I knew about back then were their charge cards, i.e., PIF each month--meant you had a certain financial status. I mean, being able to charge a *car* on plastic?! That looked pretty darned impressive to me as a teenager.

I know I'm not the only one who considers Amex prestigious, so perhaps someone else will chime in with their thoughts.

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

FinStar — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 19:47:51 GMT

@SoCalGardener wrote:
@dragontears wrote:
@SoCalGardener wrote:
@Anonymous514 wrote:
Amex isn't prestigious lol.
That's interesting--most people think it is. Care to share your thoughts?
Amex isn't "prestigious", their marketing department did a good job of propagating that imagine but in reality all you need is: not terrible credit, a suspected heart beat (they don't actually check), and a willingness to pay an AF (for most of their cards).
What exactly do you find so "prestigious" about them?
I can't argue with any of your points, and I also can't really say what I find so prestigious about them--because I've never actually analyzed it.

I just know that from when I first started getting credit, being able to have an Amex card--and the only kind I knew about back then were their charge cards, i.e., PIF each month--meant you had a certain financial status. I mean, being able to charge a *car* on plastic?! That looked pretty darned impressive to me as a teenager.

I know I'm not the only one who considers Amex prestigious, so perhaps someone else will chime in with their thoughts.

Not prestigious at all, in my view.

Perhaps a variety of individuals associate "prestige" with some level of financial status by carrying (insert fancy card name here) for its exclusivity, but at the end of the day, it's just another financial tool or a loan on a piece of plastic (or metal). I mean, when I was offered the invite for the biz version of Centurion decades ago, I didn't see it or associate it with prestige other than the card having some extraordinary benefits that most charge or credit cards didn't offer at the time, but what I saw was AmEx wanting "for X initiation fee + Y annual fee" now you're part of the "club". So, while nice and all, I passed.

Since the "back in the day" references tend to frequently come up when referring to these types of discussions, societal trends are what have driven the illusion that if you're carrying (fancy name card) then your status in the totem pole has been elevated somehow. Even well-to-do or wealthy individuals could simply write a check without the need of plopping an AmEx card. Financial institutions have very decent marketing budgets and know exactly how to play into those psychological and emotional factors to make you feel special, powerful, appreciated and exclusive.

Today, anyone with a pulse can obtain an AmEx Platinum Card or even a Gold Card. If you have adequate scores, income sources and a decent profile, you can be approved. Obviously, back in the 70's or 80's, things were different as far as the underwriting criteria. AmEx and Diners Club competed fiercely for their share of the market. But, times have changed and today's generation isn't as impressed by those things anymore.

At any rate, the discussion has veered of track so I'm separating these last few responses so as not to hijack the OP's discussion any further.

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

FinStar — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 19:46:39 GMT

@SoCalGardener wrote:
@Anonymous514 wrote:
Amex isn't prestigious lol.
That's interesting--most people think it is. Care to share your thoughts?

Define "most people" @SoCalGardener. Was there a recent poll conducted somewhere or a source?

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

SoCalGardener — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 20:25:08 GMT

@FinStar wrote:
@SoCalGardener wrote:
@Anonymous514 wrote:
Amex isn't prestigious lol.
That's interesting--most people think it is. Care to share your thoughts?
Define "most people" @SoCalGardener. Was there a recent poll conducted somewhere or a source?

Not to my knowledge. I'm just an idiot who made a generalization based on people I've known over 50+ years. End of story!

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

CYBERSAM — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 20:56:50 GMT

Definition of prestigious perhaps is the key here!

To a person who has bad credit, no credit! AMEX would be prestigious!
To a millionaire who has personal assistance doing all their finance and shopping, having a PA would be prestigious!
To Queen of England, having a credit card of any type probably would not be considered prestigious!

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

iced — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 21:49:58 GMT

@CYBERSAM wrote:
Definition of prestigious perhaps is the key here!

To a person who has bad credit, no credit! AMEX would be prestigious!
To a millionaire who has personal assistance doing all their finance and shopping, having a PA would be prestigious!
To Queen of England, having a credit card of any type probably would not be considered prestigious!

That's pretty much the problem with all attempts to give something status ... and also why going after something purely for status is a waste of time and money.

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

NRB525 — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 18:25:37 GMT

@Anonymous514 wrote:
Amex isn't prestigious lol.

Which AMEX cards? The Credit One and NFCU in your siggy?

Personally I've had good luck finding prestige via AMEX cards, so I find them a desirable set of cards. I'll not hold ( have closed some ) when the benefits weren't working or shifted to another AMEX. As with all cards, one has to weigh how that card works in a specific wallet.

Just getting any AMEX by itself does not elevate a person, that much is true.

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

wasCB14 — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 02:13:03 GMT

Amex Platinum puts you in a class of people as elite and rarified as you would find at the Miami Centurion Lounge.

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

iced — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 02:18:41 GMT

@wasCB14 wrote:
Amex Platinum puts you in a class of people as elite and rarified as you would find at the Miami Centurion Lounge.

If it's anything like the Vegas lounge, on some days you also receive the status of waiting in a line outside with all the other elite and rarified people.

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

wasCB14 — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 02:22:09 GMT

@iced wrote:
@wasCB14 wrote:
Amex Platinum puts you in a class of people as elite and rarified as you would find at the Miami Centurion Lounge.
If it's anything like the Vegas lounge, on some days you also receive the status of waiting in a line outside with all the other elite and rarified people.

I've only been to SFO and SEA, but I've heard MIA is generally chaos. Lots of small kids running around, guests making messes faster than staff can clean, disorderly "lines" for food, etc.

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

sccredit — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 02:42:49 GMT

This whole idea seems to pop up from time to time. I've had the Personal Green, Gold and Platinum (along with revolving products) as well as the Business Platinum that I ran $1mm a year through and eventually received the Centurion invite. At the time the benefits didn't justify the cost for me, so I passed. Eventually they just became another creditor listed in my personal BK. It was never prestige for me, it was the flexibility of the charge card when it came to running a business. Other than that they were just another card issuer.

Just to note - the only other person I have known myself that had a Centurion card was a complete and utter d-bag, so that didn't lend much "prestige" to it.

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

Aim_High — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 00:15:22 GMT

@FinStar wrote:
@SoCalGardener wrote:
@dragontears wrote:
@SoCalGardener wrote:
@Anonymous514 wrote:
Amex isn't prestigious lol.
That's interesting--most people think it is. Care to share your thoughts?
Amex isn't "prestigious", their marketing department did a good job of propagating that imagine ...
I just know that from when I first started getting credit, being able to have an Amex card ... meant you had a certain financial status.
... back in the 70's or 80's, things were different as far as the underwriting criteria. AmEx and Diners Club competed fiercely for their share of the market. But, times have changed and today's generation isn't as impressed by those things anymore.

^ This ^ Alongside Diner's Club in the 1950's, American Express was one of the earliest widely-accepted credit/charge cards. And underwriting standards were much different. So yes, for those of us over age 50, we remember when AMEX cards did used to mean some exclusivity for good reason. But I agree that while the actual "exclusivity" has deteriorated over the years, AMEX marketing has been successful in keeping that image largely in-tact in much public perception.

Take this 1970 advertisement for American Express. The ad stated that the minimum salary to be considered was $7,500, which equates to about $55K in today's money. Since the US median household income is around $65K, that would have eliminated about half of the population, even before any other underwriting considerations. Sure, that's not uber-exclusive territory, but that by itself gives you an idea of the selectivity. For those of us who didn't come from money and whose fathers worked blue collar jobs, I'm sure that perception of exclusivity was even stronger.

There's also the lifestyle promoted in the ads and the American Express travel benefits that dated back to their business in traveler's checks. Both frequent airline flights and frequent dining out are things that were more reserved to the wealthier half of the country back in the 1950's to 1970's. Neither were as common as today for the average American.

And charge or credit cards themselves were also not common, so having a credit card by-itself was a differentiator of "status." According to the Federal Reserve, >over 80% of the population< didn't have a bank-type charge or credit card in 1970.

"... bank-type cards issued under the Visa and MasterCard brands are so widely held and used today that it is difficult to imagine that they were not especially common only three decades ago. Known at that time as BankAmericard and Master Charge, respectively, and issued only by commercial banking organizations, they were a new product in the mid-1960s and by 1970 together had reached only about one-sixth of families ..."

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

wasCB14 — Sun, 13 Feb 2022 21:14:30 GMT

"not every man can"

"our kind of man"

Not an ad that has aged well.

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

NRB525 — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 02:41:30 GMT

@wasCB14 wrote:
"not every man can"
"our kind of man"

Not an ad that has aged well.

We've made allowances for the Declaration of Independence, to adapt it to modern thinking, even though the mindset of the framers was more restrictive than anyone today would like.

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

NRB525 — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 02:58:28 GMT

It is important to recognize the scope of American Express history. They've been innovating for a century, particularly in international payments, business travel, and products like travellers cheques that were more secure than cash. The print ad is reflective of that as "The New Money" short term credit, was a new development.

https://about.americanexpress.com/our-history/default.aspx

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 10:40:41 GMT

All of the prestigious talk can tie back to an era. Remember having an AX Green and AX Gold Cards back in the early '70s and people seemed to swoon over the "don't leave home without it" and they would ogle the card as they ran it through the knuckle buster imprint machines.

Really liked the AX Gold Card with a Bank name on it and the "line of credit" that came with it. Then along came the Platinum AX and that was the "cat's meow" and it really got the eye.

When I saw a change in the status came when people started using the cards more generally at big box retail and more regular folks decided they could get approved for the cards. The appeal to the masses so as to expand the number of card holder made it's exclusive more questionable.

Found the Platinum for Business was a good product back in time and as some posters have referenced you could put a good dollar amount through it. One of my employers was a large international corporation and they encouraged us to run with an AX to enhanced our psychological status (in our mind).

Re: Is American Express considered prestigious?

NoMoreE46 — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 03:41:44 GMT

I did like the airline lounge access when I had my Platinum. Back then (2006-2009) I justified the AF since I was like flying over 40 weeks a year.

Is the Platinum prestigious? I guess I would say so.

The Green card - Meh.