Amex Platinum retention offer

[DemonHusker]

I used chat to cancel the card as I don't use it much and they offered me 40K MR points for 3K spend in 3 months so I will keep it one more year. Is that a decent offer, I am not sure but seemed reasonable since I didn't put much spend on it.

[disdreamin]

Truthfully, the only way I can see to assess this is based on how you will use those rewards. If the value of your planned redemption of those MR exceeds any additional annual feel you will pay, then it's a good deal. So, assuming keeping the card another year means another annual feel, are 40k MR worth $695 to you the way you typically redeem them?

[DemonHusker]

My renewal was $550, if it was $695 I probably would have canceled. I do get use out of the full Uber credit but not much else.

[B_Slow1]

The value that you can extract from the credits that Amex offers, will depend on whether or not the retention offer is a good one for you. For each person, it’s going to be a little different. 

For myself (looking at Year 2+), I get use out of the Uber credits, the Saks credit, and the airline credit, but that’s it. And I don’t consider those credits at their full value necessarily. For instance, the Uber credit if used for food, isn’t giving you a full $200 in value because Uber Eats inflates their prices.

Finally, when it comes to the retention offer itself, I’d have to consider how I would have otherwise spent the $3000 or whatever it is, that is required to get the bonus. Right now, I wouldn’t be getting 5X points on flights; most likely only 1X. So what am I losing by putting spend on the Platinum vs. a card with better multipliers?

[dogmeat]

Sounds like an excellent offer to me. Even better if you can put flights on it for 5x. 

Since you didn't mention using the $200 airline credit, if you ever might fly United, set your preferred airline to United and create a MileagePlus account. United has something called the TravelBank where you can purchase flight credit in $50-$100 increments that are credited by the card's airline credit. Do a $50 purchase to test that you get the credit, then a couple more if successful, before the end of the year, then another $200 in small increments after the beginning of the new year.

Also you can Google 'flyertalk Amex retention' to see what offers others are getting on the Platinum. I didn't check but my guess is 40k/$3k would be considered excellent.

[Anonymous]

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@dogmeat wrote:

Sounds like an excellent offer to me. Even better if you can put flights on it for 5x. 

Also you can Google 'flyertalk Amex retention' to see what offers others are getting on the Platinum. I didn't check but my guess is 40k/$3k would be considered excellent.

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Well, there is a 60K/$4K.   But I more agree with some other posts, regardless as to what others are getting, it comes down to how you use the points.   If you redeem them at 0.6c, that's $240, so even before considering opportunity cost, you would need to getting good value out of the other features to justify even the $550 annual fee.    On the other hand, if you redeem at 3cpp, a no brainer.   But... if you were getting 3cpp, cancelling might not have been in the picture!