@Anonymous wrote:
Nothing special. 2x at restaurants on my Delta Gold is nice in a vacuum, but I get 4x MRs on my Gold card already and MRs beat SkyPesos any day so...meh.
Yeah, the Delta cards earning rate aren't that special if you have the Amex Gold Card. Downgrading my Delta Gold to the Delta Blue next year. Just got it for the 70k Skypeso SUB! 
I have Delta Platinum Business, not feeling these changes. It was already kind of borderline to me, this puts it over the edge. Using the companion pass is kind of a pain in the ass.
What kind of miffs me is that you have to eat the AF the first year, so the longer you have it the more that original AF can be minimized. I've only had it a little over a year so I basically paid $390 for a single Companion Pass...
What kind of miffs me is that you have to eat the AF the first year, so the longer you have it the more that original AF can be minimized. I've only had it a little over a year so I basically paid $390 for a single Companion Pass...
As I see it I will be paying $550 instead of $450 for my $1,000+ FC companion ticket. It's stll better than paying $1,000+.
I book all my flights w/ Plat for 5x. MQM bonuses and companion ticket still have me keeping this card. We fly FC anyway and having TSApre and CLEAR there is no need for Sky Priority.
So far I'm are pretty pleased switching from AA to Delta. I can keep my Medallion Plat status w/ the MQM bonus even when I have to through in some AA flights because of destination.
Personal Cards: Amex Plat | Amex Delta Res | CSR | Citi AA Exec Business Cards: Ink+ | Amex BGR
I did notice something with the new changes. If you have large spend 😉 these new changes make Diamond much more attainable. You can get a majority of the way there on spend alone.
While not all of the changes are bad, this is certainly going to make me have to rethink my 2020 strategy for sure. And it's all over the board. Oddly enough, the changes actually have me questioning whether to keep my American Express Platinum charge card.
As far as the Reserve upgrades go, I've been on plenty of flights with open seats in First, and quite often there is considerable availability in Comfort+. While chances may not be great snagging a First upgrade for someone without status, a Comfort+ upgrade is certainly a possibility unless you're taking that 6 AM weekday flight out of Atlanta to Minneapolis, Detroit, Seattle, Boston, etc. where nearly half the passengers on the plane are Medallions. I'm certainly glad that if they were going to extend this, they didn't go the complimentary Silver Medallion route, as that creates issues with reciprocal SkyTeam Elite status worldwide.
I'll certainly echo that that if these cards existed on their own without many cardholders also having Amex Platinum and/or Gold charge cards, the changes on earning structure would be quite welcome. As it is, if there were no other changes made to my card lineup, I still don't see putting anything other than non-category spend on Delta Reserve. Since I've only been using SkyMiles when I'm getting at least $0.02 value from them, and knowing that I would be spending in $30k increments it was easy to justify getting at least 3% back with Mileage Boost. Now that it's only going to be the MQM bonus and not the 15k SkyMiles bonus each $30k, it makes it much harder to justify putting non-category spend on the card vs. Freedom Unlimited, where worst case I can get 2.25% back toward Delta flights plus still earn MQMs and RDMs, the latter of which would push the CFU net closer to 2.67%.
For those who can run significant spend ($250k+) through the business cards, this is a huge positive change. For those who only have a few credit cards, and don't have other high-end travel cards they seem to be mostly positive changes. But for those of us in the middle where the cards are used to help with status or for the perks, it does really complicate spending strategies and we'll all have to weigh our own opportunity cost (by spending on Delta rather than other cards) to benefit ratio.
As long as you use the companion certificates with the Platinum and Reserve SkyMiles cards, the AF is likely below $0 anyway, even with the increased AFs. And it is fortunate that while Gold is joining Blue with no longer qualifying for MQD waivers, at least spending on Blue and Gold will still pool into your yearly total if you do have a Platinum or Reserve card (which is the current way Blue works with Gold, Platinum, and Reserve). All of my Delta cards renew prior to January, so the AF isn't a concern at all, but I do need to start doing the math to see what best fits my needs going forward as it's possible that one or more Amex cards may end up getting closed due to redundancy.
