Amex Plat card- is it worth it?

[NWgoldelite]

My dad is thinking of getting the amex plat card, but at $395 a year it seems kind of pricey. I also heard that you only have access to the airline club of which you are flying. This could be a problem if hes flying NW out of FLL since CO is the only one with a club there.

Any other tips or feedback would be appreciated, thanks.

[Nugget]

If the airline clubs are the primary appeal, he's probably better off buying an annual membership to the NW or CO club directly. Especially for an elite flyer, this can be the more cost-effective solution.

I justify the annual fees from the room upgrades I get at hotels. My travels are scattershot enough and involve a few long stays instead of many short stays in hotels. This makes it difficult for me to earn status with a hotel chain. Booking hotel rooms through amex platinum travel services manages to get me room upgrades and preferred treatment which I appreciate. If that sort of thing isn't important to you, then the plat card might not be worth it.

The conceirge services are pretty useless and the "2 for 1" full fare ticket deal is an empty scam.

Bear in mind that the annual fee for the plat card includes Membership Rewards participation for all the cardholder's amex cards. If you're currently paying for the MR program, you'll be saving that expense by moving to the Plat card.

[merchanb]

If he flies enough, and manages his miles, something like this might work for him:

Pay $40.00 a year for Amex membership rewards and wait to transfer miles to Continental until they give the yearly bonus offer.

Take advantage of Continental's $150.00 extra mile offer each year.

Fly Continental, Northwest or Delta whenever possible for CO miles.

With either a courtesy or mileage-deduct upgrade, the boarding pass gives access to CO, NW, DL and associated clubs.

It's been working for me. I've only missed one upgrade segment this year and always gotten into one club or another.

[NWgoldelite]

I havent been able to talk him into a club membership, but he showed some interest in the amex plat, so I thought this would be my chance. But now I dont know if it's worth it.

Nugget, what do you mean the 2 for 1 International First/Business ticket is a scam? Is it never available or something? This was one of the benefits that looked very promising, especially for our trip to asia this summer.

[Nugget]

One full fare BusinessFirst ticket to NRT from SEA: $7,133.36.

Two Y fare (worst case) economy tickets upgraded with 50,000 miles: $4,225.86.

Two economy fare tickets upgraded with fees and 100,000 miles: $3275.72.

I suppose it all hinges on the value of miles. If you're a frequent flyer with an abundance of miles in your account, it's hard to stomach the dollar cost of the AmEx route. I suppose if you weren't a frequent flyer it might be an attractive way to take an overseas vacation in First Class.

(Round trip pricing on Continental, costs based on 1-Feb through 14-Feb travel. These should be representative prices. dbaker will also surely pipe in to show me how I missed $1000 in savings, too. He's better at this than I am)

[dbaker]

You can usually get discounted BF for about half the full fare price, too.

[Hollywood]

So based on some of the posts I read on about the card, it's not really worth the membership fee? I travel rather infrequently and when I do I use the AAdvantage Citibank Card.

I don't know how I got an invitation since I only had the Green card with MR for a year before I closed the account. I didn't spend enough on it to justify the $65 a year.

I was thinkink of getting the Platinum solely based on the prestige of it. Now, I don't know if it's still highly regarded, but having one of those at my age would be nice.

Yeah, so, even if I can get them to lower the membership fee, it won't be worth paying for it just to carry it around? The benfits seem nice but I get most of those with the Citibank card.

[maxtuh]

Depends on how you use the card