To upgrade or not ??

[plastic_man]

Hi all!

Last night I received an email from Amex to upgrade my gold preferred card to the platinum card with a 50000 bonus attached to it after $5000 spent in 3 months.

My problem is I never travel that much to justify the $450 annual fee , and the $5k spending in 3 months might be hard , unless I use it for business purpose.( which I heard is against their policy)

My question is: does anyone use this card without traveling much and still able to justify the annual fee?

Thank you.

[Skye12329]

If i ran all of our expenses and purchased through the card. Then yes we could achieve it without travel expenses and able to justify the fee. Sadly we could do the spending within 1 or 2 mos.

[Anonymous]

If you really don't travel, the 55K MR (including the spend) are worth at most $550 (and for many redemptions less) against a $450 fee, so at most a $100 profit, which is exactly what spending $5K on a free 2% card would give you, and if you could spend some of that $5K on 5% categories, you would do better.

Now if you travel enough to be able to use airline incidental rebate ($200) and make use of the perks, or of course transfer the MR, then its a different picture.

You also lose the better earning ability of the PRG  (but the same comments really apply to that card too for non-travelers)

[plastic_man]

Thanks for the input. Yeah, I will probably update and switch it back to gold after one year...now I just have to focus all my spending to meet the 50k bonus .

[elim]

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@Anonymous wrote:

If you really don't travel, the 55K MR (including the spend) are worth at most $550 (and for many redemptions less) against a $450 fee, so at most a $100 profit, which is exactly what spending $5K on a free 2% card would give you, and if you could spend some of that $5K on 5% categories, you would do better.

Now if you travel enough to be able to use airline incidental rebate ($200) and make use of the perks, or of course transfer the MR, then its a different picture.

You also lose the better earning ability of the PRG  (but the same comments really apply to that card too for non-travelers)

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  perfectly painted   :]

[plastic_man]

Just upgraded.

Now, I'm planning to use my $200 airline credit before dec 31 by buying AA gift cards then buying another $200 after Jan 1st ..to make a total of $400 credit back.

Since I don't travel that much, I search online and found that I can sell each $50 gift card for around $37.50.

50 x 8 = 400

37.50 x 8 = 300

My fee will be only $100. ( not counting the 50k bonus)

Not bad!😀😀

[jsucool76]

Did you use the airline credit on the premier rewards gold card yet?

the 50k upgrade offer is great, but one of two things could happen. If you used the PRG credit, that might already be $100 out of the $200 of your plat credit, OR, it could reset giving you $500 in airline credit. ($100 PRG, $200 Plat '15, $200 Plat '16)

If you didn't use the PRG credit then you possibly missed out on something.


Your post leads me to question though, if you don't do much travelling and couldn't make use of airline gift card, why have the PRG to begin with?

[plastic_man]

@js. Yes I have used the $100 credit on the PRG. So hopefully I will get credit for both. I will keep posted .

[jsucool76]

After your upgrade is processed and you have the card in hand, I'd hit up an online chat and just ask how much credit you have left. Hopefully you get your card in time to make the 2015 purchases. Cutting it close.

[plastic_man]

That's my plan. I have 6 days left! 😬