Thinking about what I should do when Amex refreshes the Platinum Card

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A few people will probably be able to make a strong argument which says that the Platinum Card® from American Express was ruined a few years ago when Amex decided to hike the annual fee and, in return, give cardholders a series of benefits that were more akin to a coupon book than a high-end credit card offering.

For me, however, the Platinum Card has continued to be a viable card to hold (just), but I have a strong feeling that with the card about to be refreshed for what feels like the gazillionth time (we expect this to happen sometime in Q4 2025), it won’t be long before I have to admit that I’m not part of the Amex Platinum Card’s target audience (apparently Gen Z is who Amex wants to target this card to).

It’s time, therefore, to see if I can come up with a contingency plan. The problem with that, however, is that I’m not sure where to turn, and if you’re expecting a definitive answer at the end of this article, prepare for disappointment!

What do I want/need?

A logical place to start would be to consider what I actually use the Platinum Card for and to see what will need to be replaced if the time comes to give up the card.

From a spending point of view, I rarely use the Platinum Card for anything other than airfare spending as it’s an uneconomical card to use in any other spending categories (it earns me 5 Membership Rewards Points per dollar spent directly with airlines or through Amex travel on up to $500,000 of spending every year – terms apply).

From a benefits point of view, these are the ones that I use organically (i.e. without having to make a special effort just to make sure I get as much value out of the card as possible):

• The card’s excellent travel protections.
• The Global Entry credit (once every four years)
• Centurion Lounge access
• Plaza Premium Lounge access

I view everything else as extras to be used to recoup some of the annual fee.

Sure, I use the $20/month digital entertainment credit, some of the Uber Cash credits, some of the airline credit, and the Saks 5th Avenue credits, and I occasionally make the most of the access the card gives me to Amex Fine Hotels & Resorts (so I get to use the $200 prepaid hotel credit), but would I really miss having access to any of these?

Probably not.

At this point, the problem that I’m immediately faced with is that out of all the cards open to new applicants, only the Platinum Card® from American Express and the Business Platinum Card® from American Express (a card I’m even less likely to get value out of than the Platinum Card) offer Centurion Lounge and Plaza Premium Lounge access.

I guess that simplifies things a bit.

Either I suck up whatever changes Amex is about to push through on the Platinum Card (including what will almost certainly be a big rise in the annual fee), or I resign myself to losing Centurion Lounge access and access to Plaza Premium lounges.

Assuming that’s what I choose to do, where does that leave me?

I now need to find a card (or combination of cards) that will …

1. Give me an excellent return on my airfare spending
2. Give me excellent travel protections when booking airfare
3. Give me a Global Entry credit once every four years
4. Allow me to get enough value out of its/their earnings and benefits that I can justify having it/them in my wallet.
5. Give me a way of earning Membership Rewards points with relative ease (a job that the Platinum Card currently does for me).

The search for a good return on airfare spending

Finding a card that comes with a Global Entry/TSA PreCheck credit every four years is easy (there are a lot of them), so I’m going to start by looking at cards that could replace the Platinum Card’s strong airfare earnings.

This is the list I’ve come up with from cards that earn one of the major rewards currencies (I’m not interested in earning a niche currency):

• Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card:
  • 8x on all bookings made through Chase Travel
  • 4x on airfare spending made direct with airlines
• Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business credit card:
  • 8x on all bookings made through Chase Travel
  • 4x on airfare spending made direct with airlines
• Citi Strata Elite Card:
  • 6x on airfare booked through CitiTravel.com
  • 1.5x on all other eligible spending
• Capital One Venture X Rewards Card:
  • 5x on all bookings made through Capital One Travel
  • 2x on all other eligible spending
• American Express® Gold Card:
  • 3x on airfare booked directly with airlines or through Amex Travel
• American Express Green Card®:
  • 3x on travel (includes airfares)
• Chase Ink Business Preferred® Card:
  • 3x on travel (includes airfares)
• Citi Strata Premier® Card:
  • 3x on airfare spending

As far as I can tell, that pretty much covers it, and before I even start to consider any other aspects of the cards in this list, I know that I can eliminate two cards straight away.

As I have very little interest in putting a middle-man between me and whatever airline I’m booking with, I don’t want to have to use one of the credit card portals to get a good rate of return on my airfare spending.

This rules out the Citi Strata Elite Card and the Capital One Venture X Card which both offer poor returns unless you use their respective travel portals.

That leaves my list looking like this:

• Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card
• Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business credit card
• American Express® Gold Card
• American Express Green Card®
• Chase Ink Business Preferred® Card
• Citi Strata Premier® Card

Next up, I need to consider which of these cards offers good travel protections.

The search for good travel protections

As a reminder, this is what you get with the Platinum Card:

• Trip delay cover if you’re delayed by 6 hours or more – up to $500 per person per trip(must pay for the flight entirely with the Platinum Card and valid on round trip bookings only).
• Trip cancellation insurance up to $10,000 per trip (must pay for the flight entirely with the Platinum Card and valid on round trip bookings only).
• Unlimited Emergency evacuation cover (no requirement to pay for a flight/trip with the Platinum card in order to receive this cover).
• Lost luggage cover up to $2,000/$3,000 (checked bags/carry-on) per person (must pay for the flight entirely with the Platinum Card and valid on round trip bookings only).

As travel cover benefits go, that’s a pretty strong set, and if I want to swap out my Platinum Card for a card that covers me as well (or nearly as well), I’m going to have to rule out a lot more cards from the list above.

In fact, if I want to ensure that I’m covered in the event that a trip is delayed by 6 or more hours and not 12 or more hours, I have to rule out all but the two Chase Sapphire Cards and that leaves the list looking like this:

• Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card
• Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business credit card

If I was willing to book airfare through the Citi Travel portal or the Capital One Travel portal, both the Citi Strata Elite Card and the Capital One Venture Card would still be in contention at this point (both offer 6 hour trip delay coverage and both offer trip cancellation and interruption cover), but that’s a compromise I’m not prepared to make.

As you may have noticed, it hasn’t taken me long to get the list of potential Platinum Card replacements down to two cards and that, I have to admit, shows that the Platinum Card has some important strengths that most other cards don’t share.

The Platinum card doesn’t force card holders to use a travel portal to get great returns on airfare spending and it provides cardholders with excellent travel coverage as well (Capital One and Citi should learn from this).

Now I have a problem

The problem that I now face is that I’m already on record as having said “It’s “no thank you” from me to the new Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card“, and a quick look at the Chase Sapphire Reserve Card for Business shows me that its earning rates and benefits are, for me, weaker than those offered by the consumer Sapphire Reserve card.

This is less than ideal.

Yes, the Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card offers card holders great travel protections (in most cases you could argue that they’re better than the cover offered by the Platinum Card).

Yes, it would give me the Global Entry credit that I’d like, and yes, its 4x on airfare spending would go a long way to making up for the loss of the 5x that the Platinum Card currently gives me, but that’s not where things end.

I haven’t yet considered how I’m going to replace at least some of the Membership Rewards points that I will no longer be collecting if I give up the Platinum Card.

Possible options

A key thing to keep in mind in this section is that in my article covering the refreshed Sapphire Reserve card, I came to the conclusion that if I used the card “normally” and didn’t make a concerted effort to squeeze every bit of value out of the credits that the card offers, the card would cost me $386/year (net) to hold.

With that in mind, here are a few options I’ve considered.

The Amex Gold + Sapphire Reserve combination

I could elect to get the Chase Sapphire Reserve Card to cover most of what the Platinum Card now offers me and I could downgrade my Platinum Card card to the American Express® Gold Card to try to keep my Membership Rewards balance looking healthy.

This, however, may not be a particularly economical solution.

Right now and without trying particularly hard, I can get at least $500 of value out of the Platinum Card (I get more, but let’s say that I only get $500 back) so that leaves the card costing me $195/year (net).

The Sapphire Reserve Card would cost me $386/year (net) and the Amex Gold card would cost me $325/year (because the credits that the card offers are of little interest to me).

That’s a net outlay of over $700 and I cannot image a scenario in which Amex refreshes the Platinum Card to the extent that it costs me $700/year (net).

The Amex Green Card + Sapphire Reserve combination

I could elect to get the Chase Sapphire Reserve Card to cover most of what the Platinum Card now offers me and I could downgrade my Platinum Card card to the American Express Green Card which I could use on travel spending other than airfare (3x) and on worldwide dining (3x) to keep the Membership Rewards points rolling in.

This would be a more economical option than the Gold Card option as the Green Card and the Reserve Card together would cost me ~$535/year.

Could Amex refresh the Platinum card in such a way that spending $535/year to replace it would be a good idea? Possibly, but it’s probably unlikely.

Mostly give up on Membership Rewards

I could choose to replace the Platinum Card with the Reserve Card and then stick with what I already have in my wallet for all my other spending.

This would leave me without a card that offers strong Membership Rewards earnings (the Blue Business Plus Card would be the strongest card in my Amex portfolio), but the increase in my net outlay would be just $386/year.

Can I see Amex changing the Platinum Card in a way that it would end up costing me at least $386/year to hold? Sure. That’s well within Amex’s capabilities, but do I really want to be left without a good Membership Rewards card?

That would leave me at the mercy of (mostly) Chase and Citi (neither of whom can be trusted not to do something annoying) and I don’t think that’s a position that I want to put myself in.

Don’t do anything

And I now come back full circle to an option I mentioned towards the beginning of this article – I could suck it up and stick with the Platinum Card.

This scenario brings up the question of how much would the Platinum Card have to cost me (net) before I decided that it would have to go?

Based on what I’ve already written, logic dictates that the answer must lie between $386 and $535, but I really can’t imagine keeping a card in my wallet that costs me that much to hold.

I don’t think my conscience would let me!

I don’t yet have a definitive answer

I warned you at the start of this article not to expect a definitive answer, so when I now say that I’m not 100% sure what I’ll do after the Platinum Card refresh, don’t get annoyed 🙂

The problem is that we don’t yet know how bad the changes to the Platinum Card will be, and because, for me, there’s no obvious straight one-card replacement for the Platinum Card, it will be the magnitude of the changes that will dictate what I do.

I know that I’m not going to go down the path of downgrading to the Gold Card as I’ve never seen the Gold Card as a card that would improve my wallet enough to justify its annual fee.

I also know that I’m not going to leave myself without a good Membership Rewards card in my wallet, so I suspect that the Green Card will come into play if the Platinum Card has to go.

That leaves me with two possible outcomes:

1. I’ll live with whatever changes Amex pushes through on the Platinum Card because it won’t be materially cheaper to walk away.
2. I’ll downgrade to the Green Card, pick up the Sapphire Reserve Card and work very hard at getting the net cost of holding the Reserve card a low as I can get it (even if it means going out of my way to trigger some of the credits I probably wouldn’t normally use).

Neither option is filling me with happiness and joy (both will probably involve me paying more in annual fees than I’m paying right now), but as someone who travels quite a lot, I don’t want to leave myself without a card that returns strong earnings on airfare purchases and I don’t want to leave myself with weaker travel coverage than my cards already give me, so I’ll just have to accept that whatever extra I have to pay is simply “the cost of doing business”.

Are you a Platinum Card holder wondering what to do post refresh? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. And let me know if I’m missing something obvious (which may well be the case!)