Frequent Miler on the Air - The $895 Platinum Card: Shockingly Compelling | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep324 | 9-19-25

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

In today's episode, we'll talk about the secret to a happy points & miles marriage, chasing "The Infatuation" credits, Hilton's 250K devaluation, and everything you need to know about the refreshed $895 Platinum cards: (Including The Platinum Card® from American Express and The Business Platinum Card® from American Express). We thought this annual fee might be all bad news, but these cards are shockingly compelling!Giant Mailbag(01:30) -"I was wondering if you would be so kind and encourage my wife “Lindsey” to try and use the correct card for purchases on the next podcast."Card News(06:23) - Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card fights back(12:36) - Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card(15:37) - Southwest® Rapid Rewards® Performance Business Credit Card(19:48) - Chase Ink Business Cash® Credit Card and Chase Ink Business Unlimited® Credit CardLearn more about signing up for Chase Ink cards here.The Bonvoyed Collection®™(21:54) - MaxOut Deals(24:32) - Hilton standard award nights now cost up to 250K points(26:38) - Citi locking accounts for many Strata Elite customers, requesting tax transcriptsAwards, Points, and More(30:35) - Hilton for Business offering Diamond status fast track after 10 nights through Dec 15(31:22) - Now filter to Marriott properties with a club loungeMain Event: $895 Platinum Card: Shockingly Compelling(32:54) - Big Picture (all Platinum cards)See our posts on the consumer cards here and the business card here(38:15) - Consumer Platinum cards (includes The Platinum Card® from American Express, The Platinum Card® from American Express for Schwab, and The Platinum Card® from American Express Exclusively for Morgan Stanley)(56:52) - The Business Platinum Card® from American Express(1:08:58) - What we predicted in MarchQuestion of the Week(1:16:44) - This reader earned less through their Chase Travel℠ booking than they expected when using the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card. We'll explain why the way these points are posted can be confusing and misleading.Subscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie Yoder

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. On today's episode, we'll divulge the secret to a happy points in Miles marriage. We'll go chasing after the infatuation credits. We'll talk about Hilton's 250,000 point devaluation. And, of course, we'll cover everything you need to know about the new 895,000. dollar platinum cards. Frequent Miller on the air starts now.

Today's main event, the $895 platinum card. Shockingly compelling. So as has been long threatened, American Express has refreshed their platinum cards with new bigger annual fees and new and changed coupons. And shockingly, I'm kind of a fan, at least on the consumer side. that's what we're going to cover in today's main event. Yeah, I mean, it's really surprising because I just didn't anticipate that creating a $900 card would increase interest in the card. I thought for sure that that would thin the herd.

And it's interesting to see if maybe this might actually increase interest in the platinum card, which is pretty wild to consider. But we'll come back to that later on. Remember, if you want to jump ahead to that or you want to come back to something later on, you'll always find the timestamps in the show notes. So just expand the show description to find that wherever you're watching or listening. Don't forget to like this. Give us a thumbs up. Let us know that you liked it. Leave us a comment if you didn't.

And let us know what you didn't like about it or share your opinion in the comments. We appreciate that. Okay. Let's drag out this week's Giant Mailbag. All right. Giant Mailbag time. This week's Giant Mail comes from Ivan. Ivan says,

I was wondering if you'd be so kind and encourage my wife, Lindsay, to try and use the correct. card for purchases on the next podcast. All right, Ivan, turn up your radio so she can hear. I guess radio is an old-fashioned term, isn't it? Anyway, he goes on to say, she really enjoys these international business class flights via redemption, but gets agitated when I try to explain to her that one or two of her charges that week didn't go on the correct card. I've simplified her rotation to three cards. She doesn't listen in, but if you do end up talking about it, I'll be sure to play it when she's around so I can watch her reaction. Maybe this will further inspire her to think before pulling

out her next card so we can continue flying in class. Well, you know, I laughed pretty heartily when Greg started this and I got to explain why because Greg, I heard him say, you know, wondering if you be so kind as to encourage my wife Lindsay to try and use the correct card for purchases on the next podcast. And I heard a like a notification from something on my computer and I thought it must have been coming through my speaker. So I hit my mute button really quickly so that I wouldn't get that ding on the recording. And then Greg kept moving his mouth. And I thought that you muted your mic so that Lindsay wouldn't hear it. So I laughed thinking that Lindsay was not even going to hear that. But I guess Lindsay probably did. I was the one that missed it. But I understand. I took a look.

So I understand what's going on here. So Lindsay, you're not alone. You're not alone out there. I mean, if, Lindsay, if you want to talk to my wife and encourage her to use the right card when we're making our purchases, maybe she can encourage you. You can form a little support group. How's that? I actually have advice not for Lindsay, but for Ivan. Oh, Ivan, you want a happy marriage. Don't sweat these little things. So, you know, I got for my wife a single card. It gets 2.62% cash back everywhere. And she just uses that. And we have a happier life as a result. I know that with just three cards to you, it seems really obvious.

Like, remember to use that gold card for groceries and this other card for dining and so on. But I promise you, the average person who's not deep into this game, that's not obvious at all. You might start, because once for groceries, you might start associating that one with food. And then you think, oh, I'm at a restaurant, food. I'll use this one. And then you get mad at her. That's not fair. What you should be doing, I think, is just get her one good Everywhere card.

Maybe to, but also, if you have more than one, label them. You have to put on them very clearly when to use which. But the bigger picture advice is don't sweat the small stuff. Think about this. Like, let's say she spends $100 using a card that only earns 1x, but should have used another card that earns 3x. for that purchase. Well, you're out 200 points.

So that's like two bucks or maybe as much as four bucks if you highly value those points. It's not going to make a difference in whether you're going to be flying international first class or not. It's such a piddly little amount. So do your marriage a favor and simplify for her. And I will say, by the way, I want to reinforce what Greg said there because I chided my wife for using the wrong card there and, and, uh, and I do when she uses the wrong one. But I've got to say, I probably have a, a, I would consider a pretty on point player

too in terms of like, she's got a pretty good handle on the game, understanding which points we use for which things and which points we want to accumulate. And even knowing all of that, like Greg said, like three cards, four cards, five, whatever you, what you put in the wall, it starts to get confusing for even the best of us. So, you know, even though my wife is pretty aware of which card to use, sometimes she doesn't use the right one. And believe it or not, that happens to me too sometimes. So, you know, it's a, I think it's a great point like Greg said. You can't sweat those tiny little things, especially if you're signing up for new cards, so you're earning some big welcome bonuses, you're referring each other and you're earning decent numbers of

points from referring each other for new cards, then the 200 points from a small purchase like that, like you said, totally not going to matter at all. So Greg is on point with that. Now, do you think Ivan will play this for his wife after all. Maybe he's going to cut it off at some point. Right, right. See, see. Even they're encouraging you. So hopefully Lindsay listens to the whole thing so that she can fight back. I've been right back in and let us know. I'm curious. All right. Well, good luck with that, Ivan and Lindsay and happy business class flying. Let's move on to this week's card news. What do we have up for card news? All right. So Chase is trying to fight back. They knew this platinum refresh was coming. So the day before

Amex announced the details of their new platinum cards. Chase was like, oh, let's make the Sapphire Reserve a little bit better. And so one thing they did was they added, they edited the edit credit. So the edit credit, as of this year, was you get $250 back for hotels book through Chase's the edit platform, $250 back per six months. So January through June and then July through December, they're now changing that starting in 2026. So now it's still two separate $250 rebates per year you can get, but you don't have to use them

during a particular time of the year. So for example, if you book two separate stays in January of 26, you could get the full $500 back from those two bookings. So that's a pretty nice change. And then for 2026 only, they are, or at least they're only promising this in 2026, not as an ongoing benefit, is they're adding an additional $250 hotel credit for what they call select Chase Travel Hotels. And this requires, just like the edit, requires a minimum of two nights. But these are not booked through the edit. These are like just a whole bunch of different hotels.

It includes all of, I think all of, but it's unclear whether it's all. Anyway, IHG Hotels and Resorts, Omni Hotels and Resorts, Virgin Hotels, Pendry Hotels and Resorts, Montage Hotels and Resorts, minor hotels, and Pan Pacific Hotels and Resort. So it sounds like a really large collection of hotels where you could get an additional $250 back with your Sapphire Reserve card. Yeah, I think that's pretty interesting. and that includes some, you know, some fancier chains, you know, Omni, typically a little higher end. The Virgin Hotel is certainly playing to that crowd. Minor hotels is one you may not have immediately heard of, but we recently wrote about a GHA discovery status match. And within that post, I talked about minor hotels and they own NH Collection and Tara, a bunch of other chains that are not necessarily ones that are top of mine, but you may have heard of before.

So there's quite a few options. there. I think this is interesting, and I think I have a question for you. Do you think that they have, let me back up. They've promised this for 2026. Do you think this will continue in the future? I know this is just a guess, but just a prediction. Do you think that's going to come back around, or is this one and done just to try to placate people? Yeah. So I have sort of two parts of this guess. I think that Chase's Sapphire Reserve rollout was not as well received as they had hoped. Certainly our reaction to it was muted at best. And I think they got wind of what Amex was planning to roll out. And they saw that they can't really compete, you know,

item for item against what Amex is doing. And of course, we'll get into that in today's main event. But so I think they're, they kind of scrambled to find some things that they could roll out quickly. And so my guess is that this $250 credit is, is like a quick band-aid that they could apply right away for 2026, but that they're probably going to be rethinking how they do hotel credits overall. And that's why they didn't make it an ongoing thing. And so that's my guess, is that, you know, it's anyone's game, what happens in the future, but they, so they don't want to promise it past 2026. Yeah.

Yeah, that's interesting. Definitely a positive change that the edit credit is no longer going to be like time-based, but rather just twice a year. That's great. I found that really annoying. And Amex is doing similar thing in the January to June, July, to December that Chase was doing. And I hate that because you got a plan to use it each time.

You got to happen to be planning a trip that happens. coincide with the properties that are eligible during the right window. And of course, you don't have to travel during that win a bit. I like getting rid of that. I like it just being twice a year. So well done, Chase, that's a huge improvement. I do too. I just wish they would get rid of that two-night requirement. I mean, yes, I get it that if you have a bunch of cards, then they don't like you, like, stacking back-to-back one-night stays or whatever, but most people don't have a bunch of cards. And most people do encounter situations where they legitimately just want a book one night. I had that happen. We needed just one night in Amsterdam. Surprisingly,

like a hotel we were interested in was available through both Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts and the Edit. And the edits price was actually cheaper. Again, surprisingly, I haven't seen that happen often, but I couldn't get the credit if I booked that way. And so I booked through Fine Hotels and Resorts. So anyway, yeah, but you're right. It's a good improvement that they'd, uh, you can book it any time now. Yeah. My, my guess on the $250 credit is that you're right for the most part, although it also seems to me like it could be just a good opportunity for them to reach

out to certain hotel partners and say, hey, listen, you know, you're already advertising, you know, you're spending this much on advertising. We can give you access to these customers. And, and so maybe they're splitting the cost in some way that both sides feel like they're winning on that, you know, getting a decent benefit. And then maybe that would change. with the different properties over time depending on who it is that wants to you know take on that marketing that's smart that's smart that makes a lot of sense and it encourages people to use chase travel

so chase chase chase has a large incentive to incentivize people using chase travel more often so i think it's a smart idea anyway we'll see we'll see what happens all right next up in the card news this week the sapphire preferred is in the news as well because the sapphire preferred has a new short-term a coupony type of a benefit here where you can save $75 on $150 in spending with the infatuation. Okay, what is the infatuation? Yeah, I've registered for the infatuation. I don't really know what it is. Right, right.

It seems to be a magazine-like website app that links to a bunch of restaurants. But this coupony thing, it's not just booking. It's not just booking restaurants that are on the infatuation. It's you have to, you have to, you have to spend at restaurants that are listed under their link and dine restaurants, which is a very small collection of restaurants. And then you have to spend $150 at these restaurants between, or I think there's a one-time rebate, between now and October 16th of this year. And you get $75 back on $150 spend. This is weird. So the list of restaurants seems to me just as small as that list of the Sapphire Reserve

Reserve tables or whatever that's called, where you get a rebate for the Sapphire Reserve card. So I guess that Sapphire preferred cardholders were clamoring to have a tiny list of restaurants that they could try to seek out just like Safari Reserve cardholders. get. And so they get their wish, but only until mid-October. Right, right. But, you know, that's absolutely true. But I'm going to tell you that the Lincoln Dine restaurants, it's at least in New York, is the only city I really looked at. It is a much smaller list yet for Lincoln Dine than it is for the Sapphire Reserve tables. So it was significantly more select. So you really just have to be

located in the right place or traveling to the right place to be able to use this. And the nice thing is, of course, they are in multiple cities. So if you're traveling over the next month and you have a Sapphire preferred and you happen to be near one of these restaurants and you want to eat at them and you're spending $150.

Great. If all those things line up, then yeah. Yeah, no, as far as it being more limited, you're right. Like, for example, in Detroit, there are four or five Sapphire Reserve exclusive table thingies, but they're, I don't think there's any of these the infatuation ones so yeah yeah yeah so very limited

very limited it'll be a short infatuation exclusive very exclusive very exclusive that's the right way to say it so if you got a sapphire preferred check that out we got a post and and of course remember you'll always find links to more information in the show notes so hopefully we'll include a link to our post about that deal next up this week in card news we've got a new offer out on the Southwest Rapid Rewards Performance Business Credit Card. So this is the more expensive business credit card in terms of the annual fee. But it's out now with a new offer for 120,000 points after $10,000 in purchases in the first three months. So if you're doing the math at home, after you meet the minimum purchases, you will have enough points for a Southwest Companion Pass. The Southwest

Companion Pass requires 135,000 points earned in a calendar year. However, if you're a car holder, you get a 10,000 point discount on that, essentially a 10,000 point head start. So you only need to earn 125,000, and you'll end up with at least 130,000 after you've met the minimum spending requirement. So essentially, this is a credit card coming with a companion pass and 120,000 points to boot. What do you think about that? Super compelling, exciting. What do you think? If you're a Southwest Flyer, that's, I think that's very compelling. And if you wait a bit, to apply, it should be possible to time your spend such that the bonus will all hit in January of next year. And then you get your companion pass for two years. So that would be ideal.

And that's a great, obviously a great deal. And I believe that there's, if you're able to change the due date on your statements, you may not even have to wait depending on it. We wrote a post about last year how to kind of maximize that. So we'll try and republish that and make that clear for people along with our guide to the companion pass. But yeah, companion pass season traditionally we've recommended after October 1st, if you open your Southwest cards and critically important, wait to complete the spending requirement until you're after your December statement period cuts. I always recommend until after January 1st, then earn all those points in January of

26 and get the companion pass for all of 2026 and all of 2027. Now, I had been cautioning people, like people even in my own social circle to wait and see what happens with the companion pass because several months ago, Southwest surveyed customers indicating that they're at least considering turning the companion pass into an elite status benefit rather than a benefit that you get by earning a bunch of points with Southwest. And I had been nervous that we would hear an announcement around now, September, early October, about a change to companion pass qualifying. I haven't heard any rumors about that. That's just been my speculation and educated guess. We haven't heard anything yet. And the longer the time goes on and we haven't heard anything about changes to the companion pass, the slightly more confident I get that we're not going to get any changes

to the companion pass. I don't know yet, though. I wouldn't feel super confident until October 1st or 2nd or thereabouts has come and gone with no announcement. If we don't hear any announcement by the first few days of October, I would feel relatively confident that there's going to be no change in companion pass qualification. And if that's the case, I might go for this one myself. Yeah, totally makes sense. And that's a good caution about the companion pass. So if they do announce it, it would probably be, maybe effective January 1st of next year.

And so your recourse would be to try to complete the minimum of spend before your December statement cuts so that you would get the commanding pass this year and it would be good for all of next year. So it would only be good for one full year, but at least you'd have it for one full year. Right. And that's absolutely the way I would play it. If that change is announced after I already apply for the card, that's exactly what I would do. I'd hurry to meet the spend as soon as possible. But hopefully, no change. And hopefully that'll work out to be a fantastic deal. I mean, companion flies for free with you for all the year in which you earn it in the entire next year and you've got that 120,000 points. Of course, when you use your points, you can add the

companion still just paying the taxes, $5.60. Usually each way domestically. And the performance business card comes with some benefits, you know, seating benefits and whatnot. You can see more in our post about this. Okay. And then finally, last but not least, talk about the ink cards. Yeah. So the no annual fee ink business cash and ink business unlimited cards, they're back with their popular 90,000 point offers. Now, they're advertised as $900 welcome offers, but those, the $900 is provided to you in the form of 90,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points, which can be cashed out for $900.

Or if you have a one of the cards, one of the cards that earn ultimate rewards points and has an annual fee, you can move the points to one of those cards like the Saffer Preferred, Saffer Reserve, or even Inc. preferred. And then those points become transferable to airline and hotel partners and also can be used to book travel and potentially get those boosts that Chase offers through Chase travel. So I just thought it was worth pointing this out. Even though this has been around before, these are great offers. I mean, for no and a few cards to get 90,000 points, they both regards $6,000 spend in three months, which isn't bad, pretty low for business card offers.

And yeah, you know, I have a friend who's not even into travel rewards at all, but he grabbed one of these last time it was around because he's like, $900. That's great. So anyway, I recommend it. Check out if you're at all concerned about whether you can apply for business cards or how to apply for them. We have a post called How to Sign Up for, Now, how to apply for Chase Inc cards. And we'll have the link in the show notes for that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's terrific to, like you said, no annual fee card. That's a great, great bonus. Whether you cash it out now or you just hang on to it until, unless, you know, until someday in the future when maybe you get, even if you don't have a Saffir preferred or Inc Business Preferred yet,

you just want to wait a little bit and see. I think it's definitely worth considering, like you said. right now unfortunately we got some bad news the bonvoid collection we got several things up in this week's bonvoid collection first up is really bad news about a buying group so we've talked a little bit about buying groups before in the past as a way to increase spend and get most of it back and we have a post about buying groups with a list of various buying groups and one of those buying groups max out deals appears to be out of business for now It doesn't look very good for them, I guess. They were served a criminal complaint, it seems, over money laundering.

So they, I think, have stopped, ceased operations for now. It sounded like from the complaint, like their assets had gotten frozen. So you can read all about that. The complaint is available online to read. It sounds like it wasn't probably something that was directly related to the buying group activity, but rather they were doing some sort of money laundering, perhaps. as well. I don't know. You'll have to read the complaint to see what the whole deal is there. Hopefully, you didn't have any outstanding deals with them. And that certainly stinks for those

that did that may not get paid on them. Yeah, it just shows, you know, a lot of people in this hobby, just backing up a little bit, use buying groups as a way to increase credit card spend, whether it's like max out deals is all about buying products that you send to them and they send you cash for that. But there's also things like buying and selling gift cards, buying and selling gold, things like that. And with all of these buying groups, there's always this risk that the business that you're dealing with might just cease operations, stop paying out. And there's really very little you could do about it other than to minimize your exposure with any one company. Yeah. And I think that that's probably the key thing.

And that's something that those who have been around the game for a while now probably have been aware of with the plastic merchant folding years ago, that you just don't know when something like that's going to happen. So the moral of the story is always just don't get in over your head. Don't, you know, it's sort of like going to Vegas. Don't gamble with more than you can afford to lose because it's hard to know when something like this might happen. I didn't personally do any deals with max out deals, but I know there are many people who have. And so, you know, everything is good until it isn't. And unfortunately, it seems like this is not going to turn out well for those that were owed money as my expectations. So that stinks.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Another one. This is kind of old news by now, but we haven't had a chance to report it yet through the podcast. Hilton decided for the third time in less than a year to raise the rates on a lot of their standard award prices. So the way Hilton's award pricing works is if a standard room is available, they have internally, there's no award chart published for this, but internally they have like a cap of how much

that standard room will cost in points. And when Hilton first eliminated award charts, that cap was 95,000 points, quickly went up to 120,000, stayed there for a long time, then creeped up to 150,000. But now it's like kind of spinning, spiraling out of control. It went from, in very short period time, it went to 200,000 and now to 250,000 at the top end. But that also means, what we've also seen is it's not just hotels at the very top end that went up to 250, but hotels at other thresholds have gone up a bit in many cases. So basically what this was is just a devaluation of your points, but not of your free night certificates.

Because your free night certificates, at least as of right now, are still usable for any Hilton hotel that's available where the standard rooms are available. Yep. Yep. So that's, you know, it's unfortunate to see that go up. Though if you use a tool like Max Miles, no, I'm sorry. Max my point. Max my point, you can kind of take a look at the whole calendar and get an idea because some properties don't have as much variance as others. And so that, can kind of help you plan out what you might need in terms of how many points you're going to need for a redemption in the future. Yeah, rooms.org, also, which is the sister app to seats.com. Also has calendar view or sort of spreadsheet view for all these hotels. And I find that even easier to use. All right. Lastly, tell us about City. Yeah, well, bad news there too. So unfortunately, we reported on the blog recently that City has locked to the accounts of many strata elite card holders. And so people who applied like in the first couple of weeks of the card coming out, particularly people who applied using online links that were not provided to them directly by a banker, but also some folks who applied in branch through a banker have had their strata elite accounts locked.

and so when you log in, there's like a fraud pop-up that comes up and prompts you to call in. And when you do, they are requesting people send a tax transcript saying that they didn't complete income verification during the application process. And so as a result, they're mailing people like physical snail mail the form and insisting that the form be mailed back to city also. So it's a slow process to do that. And of course, that would provide them with some of your tax information in order for them to verify income information. It's a little unclear as to what the full story is here. It seems like some step in the application process must have been skipped for a large number of applications.

This isn't like one or two or a few dozen people. There's quite a few people that have been wrapped up in this. A lot of people who apply during those first couple of weeks. and it's strange. It's not unheard of to ask for a tax transcript. Amex Financial Review. If you ever get an Amex Financial Review, it's very common for them to ask for a tax transcript.

But Amex Financial Reviews, well, common enough to feel like common knowledge maybe to Greg and I are not common. Right, right. They don't happen often. And this is like a huge number of people all at once. So something was definitely messed up. Nobody really understands exactly what.

If you don't provide the tax transcript, city says they'll close the account, presumably they'll close all of your city accounts if you don't do that. So I would think that if you were honest on your application about all the information, you'll probably be fine. It's just kind of nobody really knows what's happening at this point because it's a slow process to receive the form via mail and then mail it in. So who knows how it's going to shake out. Yeah. Anyway, that's unfortunate. I mean, that really puts a damper on the rollout of the Strata Elite card, which is otherwise if this doesn't happen to you or if you get through it easily, it's a great card, I think, for the first year, because especially if you get it mid-year like this, because you can use their calendar year benefits twice then

before you cancel or downgrade the card next year. Whether or not it's an ongoing keeper, it's not very clear to me. But for one year, absolutely, it's a great deal. And I think what makes it a even bigger bummer. And to be clear, this is not happening to people who've opened the card in the last few weeks. If you open the card in September or probably even late August, like, don't worry and look over your shoulder waiting for this. It's, it's probably not going to be an issue for you. It seems to be just people who applied really early on. But the big bummer, I think, on top of what Greg said, is that I would assume a lot of those folks had not finished their minimum spending requirements before or their account got locked.

And now they can't spend on the card for however long it takes for Citi to be able to process this. And they also can't use the card benefits. Those calendar year credits that you're mentioning can't get used either until this gets resolved. And so it's eating into that amount of time. And that may cause a problem for some folks in terms of meeting the spending requirement for the welcome offer, which would certainly make me unhappy if I were in that boat. I would certainly be asking for additional time if that happened.

But it's frustrated. It's very frustrating for people I think. Yeah, for sure. All right, awards points and more. Let's run through this a little quickly. Quick tidbits here for awards points and more. Hilton for business is offering Hilton Diamond status, a fast track, I should say, to Hilton Diamond status. After you complete 10 nights, you've got to register a course for the promotion and then complete 10 nights through Hilton for business by December 15th. Now, since it has to be completed through Hilton for business, I didn't actually look at the terms on this, but I assume award nights would not count. You're going to have to be booking the Hilton for business rate. So you've got to sign up for that program, which is free. It's easy and free to sign up. And the rate's usually good. And the Hilton for business rate is usually good. So if you're booking paid nights and you'll complete 10 nights by December 15th, then might as well get yourself diamond status.

And if you're not going to have 10 paid nights by December 15th, well, then it probably isn't worth a mattress run, is it? No, definitely not. All right. Next up, Marriott has added a nice little useful feature to the search options, the search filters on their website. When you search on marriott.com for a property, there is a filter option now to filter to properties with an elite member lounge. That's really nice, right?

Yeah, I think that's a great enhancement. It looks like it's not really complete yet, like it's missing some that are known to have lounges, but to the extent that they, you know, shore it up and make it, make it accurate. The ability to, you know, when it when certain times a lounge can be really important to, you and so the ability to filter two properties that have them so you can see whether and it's and it's not just having a lounge right it's having a lounge that your elite status will get you into which knowing how complicated marriette's elite perks are if this ever works correctly that's that's a good feature right there yeah it really is because it'll simplify things and there are times when i just i want to have lounge access and it's kind of a pain to go through click one by one try and figure out

does the property have a lounge? I'll usually start by looking at the cash rates and see if they have one for an executive type of room. And then if the description says that it has lounge access or I got to look around at the hotel amenities. So this is much better. A big fan of that as an enhancement. Hopefully they complete enhancing it by making sure that every property that should be on there is on there. But a good first step, Harriet. Well done. Absolutely. That brings us to this week's main event. Main event time. The $895 platinum card, shockingly compelling. All right. So let's get into the big picture here that American Express has several versions of their platinum card. There are at least three consumer platinum cards. So there's the regular

platinum card and the Morgan Stanley platinum, the Schwab Platinum. And actually, I think there's Goldman Sachs also has one, but we've never really talked about that one because we don't know anything about it, but I assume it fits in the same bucket. And then they have, of course, the business platinum card as well. So all of these platinum cards have gone up from $695 to $895. That's the annual fee. And they've introduced, wait for it now, this exciting, a mirrored finish. Whoa, what? Right?

What? So now, you know, instead of getting out your compact and flipping it open to be able to look at yourself and see if anything's stuck in your teeth, you can just whip out your platinum card and check that way. So that's a huge, huge enhancement to the... You know, what I'm laughing about most is that was exactly what I was thinking, who needs a compact now? You got the mirror finish.

Just hilarious. That was exactly what you said. Oh, yes. So if you're into collecting them, which I have to be honest, at this point now, I have both the flowery design on one of our platinum cards and like the kindergarten paint looking design on another of our platinum cards. So I kind of want to complete the collection now and get the mirror finished too, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And I'm looking forward to being able to, you know, leave my compact at home. Said nobody in the last 80 years. So, okay, so we're not done with the big picture. So they've also introduced more and better coupons. Now, and the good thing is all the existing perks, like airport lounges, hotel car, elite status, all that stuff, the perks have unchanged are unchanged. They did add one perk across the board, which is they added sterling status with leading hotels of the world. So LHW, this is the collection of hotels where you can actually.

transfer city bank points to LHW and book your hotels that way. But now with Amex, you can also go into those stays with Sterling status, which is their second level of status beyond the base level. And except for one feature on the business platinum card, they've taken nothing away. So if there's any features about the cards that you like, good news, those features are still there. So that's probably one of the biggest surprises of all this. to me, really. Yeah, it really is. On the consumer side, no change at all. And on the business side,

there's a change that we knew was coming for a long time. So no surprise change. So I think that that was all really good news. And we'll talk more about that. So yeah, that's the big picture. Now, I want to add one more thing to the big picture. If you say, I don't care what Greg and Nick have to say about this card, I'm not paying $895 a year for a card. I'm going to cancel it. don't rush to do that right now. There's no hurry. You don't need to call up and protest and tell them how you're going to cancel right away because you want to make sure you use the benefits we're going to talk about before your next anniversary comes up. There's no sense in canceling when you can take advantage of perks that you already have access to. If you're an existing card holder, unlike Chase, who complicated things by creating this set of dates. And so two different sets of benefits depending on when you open your card. It makes me it really simple. Existing card holders get access. to all these new benefits, like right away. And in fact, when I say right away, this card has launched on September 18th. And some of the benefits are quarterly.

We'll talk about that. And so you get 12 days left in the third quarter from the day they launched this. Of course, less than that now when you listen to this when this publishes. But you've got hopefully a few days left in the third quarter by September 30th to use those quarterly benefits. Might as well do that because in October 1st, be able to use them again and then continue to use them until your next anniversary. So don't run out to cancel.

We'll also probably talk about when you'll get charged the new annual fee because if you've got an annual fee coming up soon, you can take advantage of all these new benefits for the low price, lower price, not low. Yeah. Actually, check out our posts on the new consumer platinum card and a new business platinum card to see the specific dates. But off the top of my head, if your card, if your annual fee renews before like early December with the business platinum card, then it'll renew at the old rate. And if it renews before early January with a consumer platinum card, again, it'll renew at the old rate.

So it's only renewals after those dates that will get the new annual fee. So if you're really lucky, your renewal date will be like towards the end of that, you know, right before, right before that cutoff date. And then you get a whole year of the old annual fee, but more than a year of all these new coupons, which would be great because we're about to talk about the new coupons. Right. Nick, why don't you take away the consumer platinum cards? What's what's changed? Okay. So again, we said no change to any of the existing stuff. So you still get the $200 airline fee credit, $200 Uber credit, $100.00, and I'm using those as like the aggregate figures. Of course, the Uber credit, you know, is split up monthly and the Sacks credit is split up January to June, July, or December. No change at all on those things. Changes, though, include fine hotels and resorts or the hotel collection before he used to get one credit. each year for up to $200 towards bookings made through Amix Fine Hotels and Resorts, or Amics is the hotel collection. Now you're going to get two credits per year, one from January to June and one from July

to December, of $300 each. So a total of up to $600 in credits per calendar year, get that again, $300 every six months versus $200 per year. So that's a nice increase. It's quite a bit, quite a bit more money than you got before. and even if you only used it once per year, it's going to give you more money now than it did before. So it's really just gravy if you're able to use it twice.

Also worth noting, if you already used the $200 credit before the refresh on September 18th, you get another $300 to use by the end of December of this year. So enjoy that. If you didn't use it, you're only going to get the $300. You're only going to get one credit if you haven't used any final tells and resorts credit yet. So, but still, you're going to get $100 more than you were expecting. So it's still not terrible.

The digital entertainment credit is increasing. It was $20 a month for a total of $240 a year towards purchases for things like Disney Plus, Disney Bundle, ESPN, Hulu, some other qualifying services. Now it's going to be $25 a month, so $300 a year. And they're adding Paramount Plus YouTube Premium and YouTube TV along with the other things that were on there before. So you've got a few more options to use it. and a little bit more money.

So that's a nice change if you were using your digital entertainment credits, or if you like me weren't using them because they didn't cover something in full, well, maybe now they will, depending on which thing it is that you want. Yeah, I'm excited about that one. YouTube TV is something I already subscribed to, and that's, I don't know, $80 something a month, I think, something in that range. So using the full 25 a month will be, you know, obviously super ridiculous. easy. So that's just 300 bucks, super easy for me. Awesome. Yeah. And I think I imagine there's a lot of

other people out there subscribing to one or two or three or five or six or those things. So it should be easy for a lot of folks anyway. Also new, the card is going to have a $400 a year total in Resi dining credits. So it's a quarterly $100 credit. So $100 back each quarter after you make eligible purchases with Resi or with a restaurant that's listed on Resi. Now, I should mention here about this benefit and many of the new benefits, don't forget to enroll in the benefits or the benefits we've already talked about. Don't forget to enroll in these benefits. Not all of them are automatic.

Many of them, you have to go into your Amex account and get on that platinum card and then click where it says benefits and then scroll around the page. There's actually a section that says enroll. scroll down far enough. It gives you a whole bunch of the benefits you have to enroll in. You do have to click and enroll in them just by checking a box and hitting confirm. Make sure you do that. But if you do that, $100 quarterly resi dining credit. So you could just go to any restaurant that's on resi. And again, as I mentioned before, because this card has launched during the third quarter of 2025,

you may still yet have a few days left if you're listening to this right after publication to use it for the third quarter. And then starting October 1st, you'll get another $100 for the fourth quarter and for each quarter thereafter. So that's a nice little benefit, nice ad. $120 Uber one membership credit. So if you buy Uber one membership, then you'll get $120 back in statement credits each year. If you have an auto renewing Uber one membership, that's actually something I was paying for because I've got a few platinum and gold cards in our household. So we use Uber enough that it made sense for me to pay for it because I was saving more than the cost of paying for the membership.

so I'm glad to not even have to pay that anymore and still get it. So I think that's a nice little benefit. $300 in Lululemon credit. This is again split up quarterly like the Rezi credit, $75 a quarter. So you can order from Lululemon.com or in store, I think, as well. And then a $200 or a ring credit. The aura ring is some sort of a health tracker ring that you wear. It just looks like a like a ring that you would wear on your finger. And it tracks some of your health metrics. And so you get up to $200 back each calendar year and statement credits when you purchase an aura ring through aurorring.com. Again, you have to enroll in that benefit. And it's worth knowing that if you want to use that on an ongoing basis, that aura ring, there is a subscription involved. And that's separate.

You're not going to get a credit theoretically anyway for the subscription. You will for buying the device itself be able to. Yeah. To be clear, you can use it without the subscription. It's just the features are limited unless you subscribe. Good to know. And it does include a free month to check it out when you buy it. So I, and I know that because I just checked it out since it's a new benefit. I took a look at it. So, so, all right, we talked about the different benefits. Again, $200, or a ring, 300 Lululemon, 120, Uber 1, 400, Rezi, 300 now in digital entertainment credit, 600 in fine hotels and resorts, plus the $200 airline fee credit, Uber credit, Sacks credit. What do you think, Craig? Yeah, this is, this is a home run, I think, for American

can express. I mean, you know, if you were starting with the $6.95 and just saying, is it worth $200 more, I find it hard to imagine that many people will not find at least $200 of added value for them. And by added value, I don't mean just the total cash amount. Like, so for example, maybe $400 in Rezi credits is worth more like $200 to you because, you might forget some quotas to use it, or maybe you don't have resi restaurants around, you know, where you live. And so you might occasionally use them when you're traveling, but you can't count on it every time. So maybe it's worth less than 400 to you, but still, you know, I think you should be getting at least the $200 extra back plus, I mean, all these different credits. It would be hard not to get more than that, I think, an additional value above what you were getting before.

And for people just looking for the first time, you know, don't have a platinum card yet, you know, if you look at these things and try to try to be realistic about what ones would you actually use and which ones are actually saving you money versus you're going out of your way to spend more money in order to get these vouchers. But if you're really true to yourself about, like, which ones will actually save you money? I actually think that a lot of people will find that, you know, wow, I am actually going to, you know, get at least $900, probably more value out of this card. I think that'll be true for a lot of people. Definitely not everybody. There's going to be a lot of people who say, well, I'm never going to book a fine hotels and resorts day. I'm never going to eat at a resi restaurant or hardly ever. you know and so on down the list and if that's you then you know obviously I'm wrong about this but I'm kind of I look at it and say wow this is so easy to recoup more than the annual fee that I'm excited about because the main reason for having a platinum card is not all these coupons the main reason is so that you know when you're traveling you could get into the Centurion lounge is you could get in Delta Sky Clubs up to 10 times a year you could get up into you could get into a number of other

types of lounges you could get elite status with all the car rental companies you can get you get you get automatic emergency evacuation and transportation coverage if anything goes wrong when you're traveling so there's a lot of great features that you're getting and if all these coupons add up to meaning you're getting more than your your money's back it's like you're getting all those perks for free and i shouldn't really say free because there's a there's about some work involved right in getting in getting these coupons but but I like it now if you're at the other end if you're if you like the platinum lounges and things that you get into but you have no intention of ever trying to collect on any of these coupons then obviously the increased annual fee is a net negative and that's

that's a shame yep yeah you're right and you know I think it it's worth recognizing again $900 is a lot of money to spend on a credit card annual thing. I mean, there's no way around that. It's a lot of money. And for a lot of people, $900 is a significant amount of money. I mean, I say a lot of people where everybody really, $900 is a significant amount of money. So it's a big investment. And there definitely will be people who wouldn't have spent $900 on those various things. However, I think probably Greg and I are both pretty excited because we do spend $200 a year on things that trigger the airline fee credits already, you know, whether we have this card or not, we're going to spend probably $200 a year on things that qualify for that.

And in Uber, I don't use Uber all the time, but I use Uber Eats often enough now that, again, I'm going to use it a number of times every year. And Resi, I've been surprised at the breadth of restaurants that are on Resi now. I mean, it's definitely not everywhere, but people who have been listening a long time, I live in a rural area. I live in the mountains in the middle of nowhere. And there's a town with a population of about 10,000 that's not too far away. And there's a restaurant in that 10,000 population town that's on Resi. And it happens to be a decent one. And so, you know, even in a place that small, I have a way that I could use the Resi credit. So I think for a lot of people that live in,

you know, most people live in a more populated area than I do. And so I think the Resi credits are probably going to be relatively easy to use for a lot of folks. And like you said, digital entertainment credits are pretty much, again, widely applicable. So I think Amex has done a great job with the wide applicability. Fine hotels and resorts is probably a sticking point for a lot of people because either you do frequently stay in places that, you know, are of the kind of ilk, so to speak, of fine hotels and resorts, or you don't. And if you don't, you might look at that and say, well, man, these places are just too expensive. And so I'm not going to use that. However, I would encourage you to take a look because sometimes you'll be.

be surprised. There's plenty of places where the properties on fine hotels and resorts are places that I wouldn't have paid to stay. I don't generally spend $1,000 a night on a hotel. And there's plenty of those types of hotels and fine hotels and resorts. But every now and then I get surprised. I just booked one that was under $300 in Germany in Europe. And then I was just looking at Los Angeles because I needed a night in Los Angeles. And the Fairmont and Long Beach is, again, $300, $300, $301 for a night through fine hotels and resorts on the night that I looked. And So every now and then, if you told me Los Angeles, I would have said, no, there's not going to be an FHR place in Los Angeles for 300 bucks, but sure enough, and it's not in Los Angeles. It's Long Beach. Okay, we could split hairs. But my point is that you might at least once a year be able to find a use for that that you didn't expect. And so I think it really adds up. It's surprising how well this adds up. Yeah. And let me add something to when you compare it to Chase Sapphire Reserve. So some of the big coupons available through. the Sapphire Reserve, which is a, by the way, a $795 card, so it's in the same ballpark.

That one has the $500 total of the edit credits, but the edit is a much smaller collection of hotels available than fine hotels and resorts by itself before you tack on the hotel collection. And this was true even before Amex recently made a big push to add a whole bunch more hotels to those platforms. So Amex has much, much better breadth of coverage of hotels where these coupons will apply. And also, you could use the Amex One to book One Night's Days with Fine Hotels and Resorts, which you can't do with the edit in order to get the rebate.

So I think just Amex kind of blows Chase out of the water with the hotel collection thing. And then let's look at dining. So Chase has their exclusive tables thing, which we made fun of in another segment of this show, because it's an extremely, extremely limited collection of eligible restaurants where you could get, what is it, $150 back per six months, I think? Yep. Yep. And so like in where I live in Ann Arbor, there's nothing. In Detroit, there's something like four restaurants. So Detroit is closest major, major city to Ann Arbor.

Rezzi, though, there's probably at least four restaurants right in Ann Arbor on Resi. I mean, Rezzi is a big popular, you know, hotel, restaurant, you know, booking platform. You don't have to book the restaurant through Rezi. You just have to show up. And this is true, Chase's thing, too. Just have to show up at one of these eligible restaurants. But the list of eligible restaurants is like, you know, 100 times. I mean, it's, I haven't tried to count, but, but.

It's ridiculous, you know, how much more, how much wider that collection is. So getting $100 every quarter with Amex versus $150 every six months with Chase, there's no comparison. Amex's solution is way, way better for that. So I just wanted to, you know, to point out those two things as like Amex really, you know, I think they had Chase in its sights and I think they scored. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they certainly did.

If I had to pick this or the Sapphire Reserve just based on how well the benefits stack up against the annual fee, this would be my pick. I mean, and that's not the whole story. I worded that carefully because, you know, MX isn't accepted everywhere the visa is. And maybe you prefer Chase's transfer partners or booking through the Chase travel portal and using the points boost. There's reasons why you may pick the Sapphire Reserve over the MX Platon. But if we're just looking at benefits versus annual fee, I mean, I find it so much easier to add up just the statement credits to be $900 or more.

And then like Craig said, there's so many other benefits that just become gravy at that point. Hilton Gold status gets you breakfast internationally and get you a food and beverage credit when you stay at Hilton domestically. And so if you're not going to get a Hilton credit card also, the MX Platinum card gets you that. And, you know, there's a lot of those things on there. You mentioned the emergency evacuation. There's so many of those little things that, man, I would find it hard to consider not holding the platinum card personally. And I don't chop at Lulu Lemon, for instance.

So the Lulu Lemon credits didn't necessarily appeal to me. We'll figure out something to do with them. I'm confident. But it wasn't something that I would spend money on. So that particular benefit isn't one that was exciting for me. But I know some people listening are probably really excited about the Lulu Lemon credits. I think there's enough of these, though, that are widely applicable enough that I think a lot of people are going to like this. I think they did a good job. I agree. Now, I do need to call out

there's at least two things that are, I think, are much better on the Chase Sapphire Reserve. One is the ability to, under certain circumstances, get much more than one cent per point value when redeeming your points through Chase travel. So, for example, when you redeem for the edit hotels when you're deemed points you get two cents per point value doing it that way with flights it depends on whether your particular flight you picked is is boosted or not but uh the point is it's possible to get up to two cents per point value amex hasn't introduced anything like that and i really wish they would especially why not compete well i know why not it'll cost some money but i wish they would compete with with uh chase at least with the fine hotels and resort stuff and and let us use

our points to to book those at good value I agree, but let me ask you a question. If you had to choose between the points boost benefit to get double the, you know, two cents per point in value or the ability to book a one night stay in order to use your final hotels and resorts credits, which of those would you rather have? Yeah, that's a great one. Or to ask the question differently, if Amex increased it so that you get two cents per amyx point, when you're redeeming for

Fin Hotels and Resorts properties, would you trade away the ability to use to book Final Hotels and Resorts one night stays? Would you accept a minimum two nights? Yeah, that's tough. I probably would. But it's a hard one, because it definitely makes those credits harder to use if you do it. Yeah. Well, not to mention just the late checkout

and everything, there's so many times when I do just need a one-night stay and FHR comes in handy. So I like the night's ability. One other big thing with Chase, where Chase has advantage, Chase kept, in their big refresh, they kept their $300 travel rebate, which is for any spend on travel. You know, made directly with the card. You don't have to go through Chase's portal or anything. You just got $300 back, which is so easy. That's great.

Amex is the closest thing they have to that is that airline incidental fee credit, which only works on your chosen airline. only works for certain types of spend with your chosen airline. So I really would have loved to have seen Amex trade that for a general travel credit to really fight fire with fire. But those are two things. But the bigger picture is I still think that Amex is showed Chase the way to do it. Well, that's what we're saying on the consumer side anyway. But I guess we need to talk next about the business platinum card and see if that shook out as well or if you feel differently about that one. So on the business platinum card side, what do we got? Yeah. So, you know, there's on the business platinum card, there's no change to the, any of the main perks,

$200 airline fee credit, $120, so $10 per month, wireless credits, $50 per quarter Hilton credits, the Dell and Indeed and Adobe credits all remain how they were when they changed this past summer. The one, the only thing that has changed negatively with the business platinum card is that 35% airline bonus. That's where you, when you pay with points for airfare, it used to be. If you booked, if you're booking a business or first class cabin and you're paying with points with your business platinum, you would get 35% of those points back. And that resulted in, instead of points being worth one cent each towards airfare that resulted in a net 1.54 cents per point value, which was very good. Now that perk is limited just to flights booked with your chosen

airline. So it's no longer valid with other airlines. So that's a bummer. We knew that was coming. Otherwise, what they did is they enhanced one perk and added a couple new ones. So not nearly as many changes as with the consumer card. The enhanced perk is, it used to be, that you got 1.5 membership rewards points per dollar spent in certain business categories and when you spent $5,000 or more in a single purchase. That's how it used to be. Now it's moved up from 1.5 to 2. You get two points per dollar on these key business categories and end on any eligible purchases of $5,000 or more, up to $2 million of total. spend per calendar year, you get this. Those eligible categories are all U.S. So U.S. construction

material and hardware suppliers, electronic goods, retailers, and software and cloud system providers, shipping for providers, and then, of course, the eligible purchase of $5,000 or more. That one is not, I think, limited to U.S. That's the only one not limited to U.S. providers. Yeah, so two points per dollar. I mean, this isn't wildly exciting necessarily. There are a lot of 2x cards on the market. At the same time, we haven't seen an improvement in a while on any of the spending categories. And so it's nice that you earn a little bit more. If you were already using it for one and a half points per dollar on large purchases,

well, now you'll be happy to earn two points per dollar instead. And if you're spending a lot in one of those particular categories, good news. It's, you know, nothing super exciting. Yeah. Although, I mean, if you're invested in the Amex membership rewards ecosystem, You know, yeah, you could earn 2X with the Blue Business Plus card, but only on $50,000 of spend. So if you have a business where you're spending a lot more than that, it's a nice way to earn a lot of points. Yeah, true.

And I could see a lot of businesses that would be in that boat. I mean, if you're in a construction-related business, buying materials and earning an extra, earning two points per dollar, because like you said, you'd go through the 50K cap on the Blue Business Plus pretty quickly. if you're in that field these days. So decent little benefit there, I guess. Yeah. All right. The most interesting new perk is that the fine hotels and resorts and the hotel collection,

the same $300 per six months coupon that you get with a consumer card is now available to the business platinum card. That did not used to be a feature of the business platinum card at all, even when it was a $200 coupon. So that's brand new. And they've added that without taking away the quarterly $50 Hilton rebates. So this now, the business platinum card, becomes one of the most compelling cards for booking certain types of hotel stays because there's a lot of opportunities for rebates. Then lastly, they've added a couple perks that kick in if you've spent $250,000 in a calendar year. One thing you get is a $1,200 flight credit to be spent through MX travel. in the following year, and you get $2,400, $1. AP statement credit.

So if you're a big fan of one AP, you better rush out and spend two. Like, that's, you know, like, back in the advanced placement classes back in school. What is this one AP? What is it? I don't know. Some kind of, some kind of merchant solution type thingy. Some kind of business thingy that you can worry about if you, spend $250,000 a year.

And, you know, some people are going to listen and say $250,000. Oh, my goodness. And other people are going to say, oh, my business spends about that every month. You know, it depends on what kind of a business you've got. So for the people who do spend that much on a calendar year on their card, hopefully you're earning two points per dollar on a lot of that now. And then maybe this will come in handy. The $1,200 in flight credit, certainly better than, you know, than nothing.

So nice to have that. And I don't know whether the $2,400 in one AP, credit is going to be any good. What do you think overall? I mean, is this is it better than it was before? Is it as good as the consumer card? Is there a more compelling business card than this? What do you think? Yeah, I find this one harder to judge than the consumer. It's not, it's not as clearly a home run to me. If you value, if you highly value the fine hotels and resorts credits, then obviously this is, you know, $600 a year more in credits. So that's, that's terrific. Or if you're a big spender, then there's a lot of upside there because you're getting the extra,

you're getting 2x on a bunch of purchases instead of 1.5x, and you're hopefully qualifying for that $1,200 flight credit, which if you stop spending at $250,000 is almost another half percent rebate on your spend. So that becomes a pretty compelling combination for some big spenders who are not interested in earning points through, you know, signing up for lots of credit cards or whatever. So that's nice, but, you know, I do feel like this particular one, I think it's a much narrower audience that's going to be excited about this one. Yeah, I have to agree.

I think if you liked the business platinum before, and it wasn't because of the 35% rebate on business and first class on other airlines, then you're going to be happy because you're going to get an extra 600, dollars in final hotels and resource credits that you may or may not use if you weren't a particular fan or maybe you opened one but didn't intend to keep it open i don't know that there's enough of the carrot here to encourage you to keep it open like greg said if you're spending more than 250k or around 250k a year and you don't want to mess with a whole bunch of different cards yeah definitely there's a use case where this would be a decent option i think but yeah it's not it's not wildly

exciting because I don't value the Fine Hotels and Resorts credits at face value. That's too much for me to value at face value. And as it is these last few years, I'm not always using or I haven't always been using the $200 FHR credit easily on the consumer card. It's required a little bit of effort. Now that there's $300 twice a year, that's a little easier because the $300 is an easier amount to work with to use it at least once. But if I only use that once, even if I valued it at the full 300 and I value the airline fee credits at 200, do I value the Hilton quarterly credits at 200? That's kind of hard to do because I do have to remember to bring the card and find a Hilton I can go to every quarter. So it's not bad. I mean, it is not a terrible value, but you really,

I think you have to be able to get good value out of FHR to make this work. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know, and you asked about compared to other business cards. You know, we were not enthused either with the Chase Sapphire Reserve for business card. But I'd say that if you just want a good solid business card that has some travel perks, the VentureX for business, simple, get 2X everywhere, don't have to mess around with coupons and all this stuff. I would pick that over this for most people. Except, you know, we didn't talk much. Nick, think about all your friends that are big fans of 1 AP. All those folks that are using 1AP, yes. And maybe there are a lot of business owners that are using 1AP. Maybe that's a more useful benefit than we realize. I don't know. But I think it has to, A, both be useful and you have to be somebody spending 250K a year. And maybe somebody out there is screaming at the podcast platform where they're listening right now saying,

well, of course you're using 1AP if you're spending a quarter of a million a year. Maybe. I don't know. I'm not sure what all the features are and the benefits. but yeah you know like you said i think hands down venture x business that's the pick i think on the business side for simple premium features premium card 2x everywhere doesn't matter if it's a five thousand dollar purchase or not one-time coupon essentially in the 300 dollar travel credit you can knock that all out one shot get your 10 000 anniversary points very easy to justify the

annual fee doesn't have nearly as much in benefits but way easier i think to to justify a card like that other than the Venturex business though then it starts to get i think a little bit more competitive in the sense of if you value the benefits and remember platinum card benefits there are a lot of them that overlap on the consumer side and business side so things like the emergency evacuation the hilton gold marriette gold etc a lot of that stuff applies on the business side as well access to centurion lounges access to delta lounges and flying delta you know access to the escape lounges and so if you want that 35 percent rebate, and you value a couple of those other things, $600 in FHR credits probably help, you know, kind of balance things out, right? Right, right, right. Yeah, I kind of don't want to, you know, imply that this isn't a good card for a lot of people, but it's just not as, not nearly as obvious as the, on the consumer side to me. But you can make it work.

It's definitely possible to make it work. All right, I want to, I don't want to leave unresolved the fact. I said one AP is some kind of businessy thing. So I've gone to American Express's page about this because American Express, this is a product from American Express. So here's what this is, according to American Express. One need, one solution, one process. Oh, oh, there you go.

One AP, obviously. All right, there is a little bit more information here. Automate supplier payments, all from one platform with our digital accounts payable solution designed to seamlessly work with your existing business accounting system. So yeah. Okay, there you go. That's what that is. There you go. I'm going to guess. I don't know because I don't run that type of business, but I'm going to guess that the difference in like cost and features from one to another is probably like more important than the $2,400 in credits for most business owners. So if you like one AP and use it, great. And if you don't, I don't know if that's going to be

enough of a carrot to move over. Right. Like, I wouldn't change my whole, like, accounting processes to get this $24,000 voucher. That requires that big span. That would be kind of crazy. All right. So I think we're ready to go on to the next step. So way back in March, there were already rumors that Amex was going to refresh the platinum

cards. And so we did a coffee break. It was called predicting. the refreshed platinum card. That was episode, Coffee Break, episode 47 on March 4th of 2025. And I just want to play a quick clip from that show. Nick and I today are going to predict what we think this new platinum card is going to look like. Let's start with the annual fee. Current annual fee is $695. What do you think, Greg? I would not be that surprised to see it go up by $200 to $8.95. Wow.

Wow, $895, $895 feels nutty to me. That feels like just a crazy price. I don't know. I think that they probably will increase it. I think it's crazy to increase it. I can't see it going past $750, though. I mean, I was, I said it was going to go up. You did, you did.

So I love that I nailed it exactly right there. So, but before I pat my... myself on my back too much. Let's talk a little bit more about what we got right on that show. We did get, we talked about the earning rate and we said there's probably not going to be a change and how much you earn from spend. Now, we were mostly right. We were, we were wrong about the business platinum card, but for the consumer platinum card, which is what we were really thinking about at the time. We said no. So we got that right. And then we talked about changes to coupons and to perks. Got every single thing wrong.

But I totally, I listened to the rest of the show because I was curious what else we said, because I thought you had predicted the resi credits. So I think you must have mentioned it like right after we've stopped recording because I definitely remember in conversation you predicting the resi credits. It just must not have made it to the show. You know what? I may have mentioned it on a later show saying, oh, I forgot to mention that I was predicting the resi.

I think that might be how it came out. And I know that in the post about that show, there was a comment where someone said, no, resi credits. And I wrote, oh, no, I forgot to say that, you know, because I definitely had that in mind. And somehow I forgot to mention that I was expecting resi credits. And that would have been the only thing we got right had I mentioned it. Oh, we could have been a contender. Could have been a contender. Here's a really quick summary of what we thought was going to happen.

We thought that Uber credits would be gone and replaced with general ride share credits. We thought that we'd have quarterly or semi-annual airfare credits instead of airline incidental fee credits. We thought SACS credits would be replaced with Walmart credit. We thought they would throw in a Sam's Club membership. We thought that they might limit Centurion Lounge access, similar to how they did with Delta Sky Club access. We thought they might add delta-free upgrades on Delta flights.

And Nick, this isn't so much a prediction, what Nick suggested they need. needed, and I still agree with this, is a better redemption rate for travel. Something like the 35% rebate the business platinum card has, maybe specific to brands like Hilton Delta or fine hotels and resorts, some way to get better value for your points, agreed, but that didn't happen. Yeah, so why were we so wrong, Greg? You know, let's not dwell on, let's just talk about the annual fee prediction. Okay, the annual fee, you nailed it. Nailed it on the annual fee prediction. Well done. That's off to Greg for nailing. it yet again with a prediction.

One out of a hundred and just proving that if you predict enough things, one of them is going to be right. No, well done. Well, you've got something right. There you go. There it is. You know what, though? I got to say that I think both of us were imagining, if I'm going to defend our predictions here, we were imagining what we expected Amex to do, but not imagining them trying to one-up Chase. And I think what happened is that Chase launched this product and I mean it's plainly obvious that amex intentionally wanted to one up the sapphire reserve and and they did and so I think that if we had looked at it through a different lens maybe we would have come to some more correct predictions I think we were looking at MX track record and what they've

done before and this is more generous than we've seen on previous refreshes I think and I think that that's in direct response to chase so I just don't think I think we we just didn't consider how competitive MX wanted to pay. I totally agree. We were so pessimistic with these things. Like there was not much good. There was not much good that we were predicting there. Right. Right. Right. Right. We didn't have much faith in a huge, you know, big positive change. And would we have seen a major change, like in a different environment, like where Chase had not just refreshed the Sapphire Reserve? No, I don't think we would have seen this exact set of credits at all, if not for Chase. I think, like you've you've sat a few times before, these seem like direct responses in many cases to what Chase did.

Yeah, yeah. Although I think the Rezi one was likely regardless because, you know, that's something added to their gold card and it seemed like past time for them to add it to the platinum. But other than that, I think you're totally right. Yeah. So well done. I've got to say in terms of being competitive, well done there. Let's see what happens next.

So before I hit the question of the week, any prediction about the next? next ultra-premium card refresh. Do you think someone else? Do you think like Capital One is going to try to change up the venture X? That's the scary one. I love that Capital One has kept the simple format of it's, you know, you get very simple credits that equal pretty much the annual fee and you get 2X everywhere. It's just such a simple card. It's so easy to explain. I really hope they don't enter the coupon wars that all the other issuers seem to be excited about doing. So is it possible? Yeah.

Is it likely? Yeah, probably. What about Bill? Do you think Built's going to be able to compete with this? Oh, interesting. I mean, we're expecting, and I bring up Built for anybody not aware, we're expecting that built is going to launch an ultra-premium card sometime soon. I think they've been saying that it would happen before the end of this year.

So we're expecting them to have a, I don't know, $500-ish card, I think, right? So is it going to compete? My guess is built is not going to be nearly as generous with the, with whatever coupons it supplies as, as Amex is. On the other hand, I mean, Amex is charging about $500 more or $400 more than what we're likely to see from built. So I don't know. What do you think?

I think that I was trying to gather a good clip that we can play later on. I love that. So we'll see. We'll see how that all pans out. You know what? I think that my impression is that Bill doesn't want to do the coupon-y thing. So my guess is that they're going to look for benefits that people are going to think, wow, it's worth paying $500 a year for these benefits.

And I think that they may be, maybe not at all, let me be clear, I don't know. But they may end up launching something that's competitive from the standpoint of, oh, well, the benefits matter to me. And look, I can get a similar set or maybe even a better set of the side benefits for much less than what Amex is charging for the platinum card. And I don't want all the coupons. So I think there's an opportunity for them to compete. Whether or not they will, I don't know.

I'm not sure. But I think there's at least some room. We'll see. All right. That brings us to this week's question of the week. This week's question of the week is a Chase question, but it could have just as well been an Amex question. So I think that this works really well for today's show.

Kat writes in and says, I recently made a couple of bookings through Chase Travel portal. Since I learned, it can be quite advantageous in certain situations. I used my Chase Sapphire card. I think Sapphire preferred card from the read of it when I made the booking since I wanted to earn 5x using my card, to be clear, booking through Chase Travel. So it booked something through Chase Travel. After I checked my account, I only earned 2x for my booking. Same thing happened another time where they didn't earn the full multiplier they were expecting the 5x through Chase Travel. So I'm getting discouraged about the chase travel portal. Are there any rules for when you get this and when you don't? What's going on here? Because the same thing will happen on the MX side at times.

Yeah. So the Saffir preferred card, at least at the time that this happened, was offering 5x. The advertised rate is book travel through Chase travel and get earned 5x points. But the Saffir preferred card earns 2x for travel purchases. So the way you actually earn the points is you'll get 2x for the purchase showing up like in your bank statement and 3x as an additional reward through the portal. And so it can be very easy to look at your earnings and see the 2x and say, oh, I didn't get what I was expecting or to just see the 3x and think that's all you got. But you have to add up the two to see what the total is. That's exactly what it is. And I wanted to make it.

mention that because Amex sometimes does short-term promotions that show up in a similarly confusing way where you'll see in a part of a bonus. And we haven't seen this in a while because I don't think they've run this type of thing in a while. But for instance, at times in the past, they've run things like 10x on restaurants with a certain card for a certain period of time, maybe with a new card sign up. And that will often post as like one or four X, depending which card you're using in one transaction and then the rest in another transaction. And it's kind of hard to reconcile things. So, So that's something to look for when you have a card that offers a bonus like that. It's not like a regular, I shouldn't even say it's not like a regular bonus category because in that case, in the Chase Travel case, it seems that way, but it's really two different things playing together. And that's where it gets a little confusing. So you do have to look closely at the details and see the total, the grand total of points that you've earned, try and figure out where they all came from.

So that is a confusing thing. But worth knowing, you probably were getting your 5x that just split over two transactions. Right. okay that brings us to the end of this week's episode if you've enjoyed this and you like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week go to frequent myler.com slash subscribe to join our email list follow us on all the various social media join our frequent miler insiders facebook group and wherever you're listening to this or watching this again don't forget to like it give it a thumbs up leave us a review if you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future

question of the week or a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for a giant mailbag You can send that too. Send it to Mailbag at Frequentmiler.com. Bye everybody. Hi, I'm David Brody, co-host of the Travelin-10 podcast. Together, myself and my co-host, Tim Johnson, have traveled to over 150 countries around the world

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If you care about the why, as much as the where, I hope you'll look. join me. You can find new episodes weekly at voyescape.com.