You need > $3200/yr in grocery spend to to make BCP pay more than BCE if you consider the fee. You have the potential to make a total of $85 more than with BCE if you max out grocery spend at $6K. Gas/Dept store transactions get a 1% bump on top of that, with no max.
It would be interesting to see if that upgrade link really works as you said that you just obtained the PRG and BCE.
Normally the CARD act prohibits any kind of annual fee increase in the first year.
Normally the CARD act prohibits any kind of annual fee increase in the first year.
For Chase, it has to be 4/24 not 5/24. If it’s the 5th card in 24 months your likely to be declined. You might be lucky on recon but to be safe I would make it the 4th card.
The PRG is hard to justify after the 1st year. It comes down to how much you plan on using the card. If it’s not going to be your daily driver and don’t have a lot of other bonus category cards for most of your spend. It’s definitely worth keeping but if you don’t plan on putting most of your spend on it. It becomes much harder.
I’m currently debating if I should cancel mine. I travel to the Caribbean a lot for work so AMEX coverage sucks.
The net fee is right around $32 if you include the roadside assistance into the AF.
AAA basic is 63 a year where I live and that includes the exact same things Amex does. Of course the platnium has Roadside Assistance as well if you do upgrade.
For Amex being mainly a travel perks based company. They really need to work on expanding their global footprint again.
The PRG is hard to justify after the 1st year. It comes down to how much you plan on using the card. If it’s not going to be your daily driver and don’t have a lot of other bonus category cards for most of your spend. It’s definitely worth keeping but if you don’t plan on putting most of your spend on it. It becomes much harder.
I’m currently debating if I should cancel mine. I travel to the Caribbean a lot for work so AMEX coverage sucks.
The net fee is right around $32 if you include the roadside assistance into the AF.
AAA basic is 63 a year where I live and that includes the exact same things Amex does. Of course the platnium has Roadside Assistance as well if you do upgrade.
For Amex being mainly a travel perks based company. They really need to work on expanding their global footprint again.
@Anonymouswrote:
For whatever reason Amex will show the "request upgrade" button almost immediately upon opening one of the non-preferred variants of their cards, despite the CARD act preventing you from doing so. The best their CSRs can do for you is to tell you to wait a year then suggest you could also go ahead and open a new card now instead of waiting for the upgrade.
I myself would recommend the CSP/CSR route for flexibility +killer signup bonus. I decided to go with chase over Amex or a co-branded card for the flexibility of redemption options because it better fit our young family (well...family with a young child anyway lol) travel patterns. While we are almost exclusively loyal to delta we don't fly enough to make even the higher earn rate of the fee-based delta Amex cards worthwhile, it would take years to earn awards tickets. we rack up a fair amount of varying hotels & property rentals along 1-2 flights a year & heavy dining spend - CSP out earns Amex delta+SPG when considering awards booking requirements. Not enough spend in a single ecosystem.
If we flew more frequently and or internationally I'd probably have gotten delta gold or platinum + spg, but for us there's more value in transferring points or redeeming through chase.
Yes, I received the upgrade offer from Delta Platinum to Delta Reserve almost immediately. Seems to just be a glitch in the Amex website that doesn't factor in the CARD Act. When I brought it up, someone else actually tried to do so and it wouldn't let them. As for the Delta cards themselves, there's no reason at all to put spend on the cards unless you're trying to get the MQD waiver for $25,000 spend to obtain Silver, Gold, or Platinum status. Put simply, if you have two flights a year (one round-trip or two one-way), the Gold pays for itself with the free bags. If you have one Main Cabin round-trip flight a year with at least one other person, the Platinum pays for itself with the free bags and annual companion ticket. Delta Reserve is a harder one to justify unless you fly Delta quite a lot.
