Hey guys,
It appears that American Express has stopped offering the Amex Platinum Charge Card in New Zealand.
The existing members can keep using it, but they arent accepting any new customers!\
I wonder if they will keep offering the bonus points to stay on, now that they've discontinued.
Confirmed with AMEX that they’ll keep existing customers :)
Is this the one with the annual membership fee of $1,250?
Yes, the platinum charge card (not the credit card), not taking on new customers anymore.
Just curious, how do you get the value of the fee back?
I think the amex points earn rate is the same as on the Amex Gold, which also gives two $100 dining vouchers, for like a $200 annual fee. I think they both have travel insurance.
The charge card had dining vouchers of higher value, right? And also airpoint lounge access, guessing this was the benefit that makes it worth it?Just wondering what I'm missing out on lol, like what extra benefits it had that the amex gold doesn't have
It worked out for us only with the 100,000 sign up bonus points and we had a oversea trip planned with this in mind.
Essentially, we were going to pay roughly the same amount as the annual fee in oversea accommodation. This was offset by converting Amex points to Marriott + $200 credit to Amex Travel. Lounge access also saved us money not spent on meals as we have lots of transit both ways.
The restaurant credit is $150 so a bit more than Amex Gold. We treat this as a bonus and did not factor this into our calculation with the annual fee.
Most likely won't be renewing unless we get a huge retention offer.
The Accor Silver membership you get automatically with the card. This includes a free nights stay each year. You also get 50% of dining at Accor hotels, even if not staying there. Accor also give silver members 20 nights status credits each year, so you only actually need to stay 10 nights and that puts you in Gold status - upgraded room category.
You get upgraded status with some other hotels and car hire too, not used that much
$300 of dining credit each year ($150 per 6 months)
$200 travel credit (when booking through Amex travel)
Decent travel insurance (so I dont need to buy a separate policy) and various other insurances
Lounge access
Maximising points accrual by putting whatever spending I can through it
Amex Offers - Charge tends to have more offers available than the other cards
Platinum concierge - can be a bit hit and miss depending on your request, but have had some decent time saving and outcomes
With the Mrs as an additional cardholder (no charge for additional cardholders) the value of some of these double up
Def seems worth it for the frequent traveller. Also sounds like the Accor hotel benefits and the lounge access combined would be worth like half the fee even for someone who just travels overseas with their partner once a year, add the dinning vouchers, travel credit, and other insurances and you're basically there already
dang - hopefully it comes back. Never thought I needed it yet because having young kids, it's a little harder to travel. And 2 points on spend didn't seem good enough to get.
What have you guys found to be the best benefit of this card?
i guess amex is exiting NZ.
:(
Sparking a another conversation here - perhaps it is time to start looking into applying for US Amex cards?
https://www.cheapies.nz/node/40401
Looks like Robin has done it before in this previous discussion thread.
Has anyone else done this before?
Interesting. Looks like you need a US residential address to put down, and a US phone number, but if you have those it looks do-able through Amex Global Card Transfer.
I don't think AMEX will exit the NZ market though. Surely they still make money here and the operational costs for a credit card company to operate in an additional market like ours can't be that high
hopefully its just a revamp of the platinum card offering.
Platinum Edge was also pulled a while ago. Still getting my free annual domestic flights!
I too continue to use the Plat Edge card. I use it for all supermarket and petrol purchases. Bad timing on plat card closure as next year I wanted to get the Plat card as my future overseas travel plans finally made the plat fee worthwhile. For anyone looking a US credit cards I think the best resource is on Australian Frequent flier ( you need to invest a few hours and go back a minimum of 50 pages)
https://www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au/community/threads…
there is a good overview on prince of travel which , which I cannot find now as the link on the article below is not linking.
https://princeoftravel.com/guides/which-amex-us-credit-card-…
It looks like American Express has decided to not issue any new Charge Cards in NZ. Charge cards require full payment each month and while had no credit limit as such had an unrevealed spending limit based upon customer assessment. Perhaps current economic conditions made these high risk and they had difficulty with some customers?
Side note, can you gift Air NZ Status points to someone else, or are these only available to be obtained and used yourself?
Earned either via flights or certain credit cards, and when you book for say 4 people, the tickets and points can't all go alongside your number, just the one ticket seat for you specifically can.
Damn, I do hope they keep it going for existing cardholders, it’s my primary card when looking to pay for anything and we make massive use of the inclusions each year.
Im still running the platinum edge they discontinued a couple years ago too, with triple points on supermarket and fuel spend.