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Comment by twblalock | Hacker News Reader

Amex is in a bit of trouble for a few reasons:

1. Competing card companies offer much better cards than they used to, and include benefits that only Amex used to provide. For example, Visa Signature and Mastercard's competing product offer return coverage, extended warranties, free rental car insurance, etc.

2. One of the main draws of accepting Amex was that Amex's customer base was more affluent than that of other card companies, but that is no longer the case, partly because of #1.

3. Amex lost the Costco deal. That's a loss of a great deal of credit card fees, and 10% of Amex cards were the Costco card.

The court case was also seen as a blow, but maybe not if it got reversed on appeal. In any case, there are plenty of other problems for Amex to worry about.

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Oh for sure! I myself no longer feel like I'm getting as much value from my $450/year Platinum charge card with Amex and am looking to switch to the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, as it's a visa (taken everywhere), has a better rewards program, and provides far more services for that same $450/year annual fee.

I have yet to find any credit card that's worth paying a fee for at all. What do (did) you get for either of those cards that's worth more than $450/year, that you can't get with a $0/year card?

They reimburse me $200/year in airline expenses (I use Southwest primarily, so I just buy Southwest gift cards which get reimbursed, and use them for flights), reimburse me for global entry every few years, top tier status at Hertz, Hilton, and Starwood, free Boingo account, free access to Amex lounges in a few major airports, rental car insurance coverage, etc.

http://thepointsguy.com/2016/01/maximizing-amex-platinum-in-...

I'm old and busy; I'll pay for covenience in life, which is why I've kept the card up to this point.

EDIT: Almost forgot: I have had the need to pay for a friend to be airlifted out of a central american country due to a medical emergency, and Amex was the only card willing to auth a low five figure amount with just a phone call to pay the helicopter fee. I have yet to find another financial provider who'll do that.

I'll probably get them if I keep up my level of travel, the free tsa pre-check, airline expense reimbursement, and benefits at hotels (free spa treatments etc) alone pay for the annual fee.

There is a major high-end hotel chain that has a $495-fee card with similar benefits to those stated for the AMEX card above. And if there are two ways to get something like that, there's probably a third.

fwiw the lounge access on the CSR card is nowhere as good as the amex, as you have to pay for anyone travelling with you. The CSR is comparable, but there are definitely trade offs.

This is good to know! Thank you!

I can't comment on the selection quality, but the Priority Pass which comes with the CSR is good for yourself and one guest. I've used is several times with my partner and no fees were charged.

Sapphire reserve gives you at least $1,500 up front if you spend $4k in first 3 months, and you get at least 4.5% back on restaurant and travel for a card that costs $130 per year assuming you use travel credit and global entry.

For many people traveling and eating out, the 4.5% will easily cover the $130 expense and so you easily make up the yearly fee.

There are several $0/year cards that give you back 2% on every purchase, so in comparison Saphire card gives you 2.5% on travel/restaurants and -0.5% on everything else.

That's why I don't use sapphire reserve for stuff other than travel and restaurant.

> What do (did) you get for either of those cards that's worth more than $450/year, that you can't get with a $0/year card?

I have a Barclays Aviator (old US Airways, now American Airlines) card, and although it has a $195/yr annual fee, I get $100 back for renewing my Global Entry card. This is in an addition to free checked baggage on American Airlines flights and group 1 boarding.

I usually fly enough that it pays for itself with the bag fees alone. The extra 1 year warranty on purchases has also saved me as well.

The other nice thing about Barclays is that as far as I know they're still the only issuer of credit cards to US customers which will actually do chip-and-PIN (as opposed to chip-and-signature on every other credit card in the US). Which means when you're traveling you can use that card at places which only do chip-and-PIN.

This is going to sound like an advertisement but I don't know a better way to state it.

Chase reserve is 300 back in "travel" expenses which include parking/tolls/flights/uber. Assuming you have any of those expenses, it's a 150 card. Redeeming points is 1.5x more value if done through the reserve, travel/restaurants give 3x points. If you spend 4k a year on restaurants/travel, you'll break even.

So why get it if I have to spend >4k to break even? Because there is (was?) a 100,000 point signup bonus worth 1000 dollars cash or 1500 dollars in flights/more if transferred for a ticket. I'll break even on the yearly fee just from flights that I'm taking so it's 1000 dollars for "free".

If you're a chase ultimate rewards user, you should have the csr for the 1.5x redemption. If you like free money, you should have the csr and meet the spending requirement for the bonus.

By fiddling with credit cards, I'll save over 3k this year while traveling. There are people who do far, far more.

I've got a Gold Amex and a Chase Sapphire, and both pay for themselves each year. Between the monthly/quarterly recurring charges associated with running a startup off your credit cards, travel, and monthly expenses (groceries, gas, etc) we get way more in kickbacks than our yearly fees.

The important thing is that we're not going out of our way to justify the cards, we're simply operating our household expenses the same way we would be on a $0 card.

The difference is we use our points to buy everyone in our family pnice Christmas gifts, can get pre-sale access to shows/concerts (that is admittedly underutilized now that we have three kids), access to airport lounges, double up on hotel points, get discounted airfare upgrades, and things like expense categorization in the web portal. We get frequent discount offers for things we normally purchase, instant alerts for weird transactions that I can handle from my phone.

For us it pencils out. For someone or a family without the recurring expenses we have and doesn't travel very often, it wouldn't be worth it.

People already listed some of the perks, but: in general you choose a card based on things you already are doing (flights, hotels, etc.) so that the perks of the card are worth as much or usually more than the annual fee you pay to keep the card.

For people who travel a lot, for example, an annual travel credit + Global Entry fee covered + lounge access + redeemable points from spending on the card provides much, much more than $450 in value. Back when I flew more than I do now, several of the available cards had returns for me well above the cost of their annual fees.

Just a generic piece of life advice here: you can call up your credit card company and get the annual fee waved, for degrees of difficulty generally south of e.g. getting a bank to waive an overdraft fee. They want their plastic in your wallet if you have a premium card; the most direct incentive is interchange and/or interest and the other one is "We probabilistically pay $X00 [+] to find a new customer of uncertain quality; this bird-in-the-hand is of known quality; let's keep them happy."

[+] Cost of customer acquisition in credit cards is $250 on the low end.

> Just a generic piece of life advice here: you can call up your credit card company and get the annual fee waved, for degrees of difficulty generally south of e.g. getting a bank to waive an overdraft fee.

Interesting. Would you consider it feasible to do so for a card you don't have yet (i.e. obtaining a new card without its associated annual fee), or would you only consider that plausible as an existing customer of such a card?

And does that apply to the large vendors (such as Amex or Chase), or only to smaller ones?

Most people who do it call after they're already using the card. The waivers are generally one-off but some people get a one-off waiver like clockwork every year they ask for it.

I am unaware of any CC issuer in the US of any size or segment which, as a matter of policy, refuses all requests of this matter. It comes down to policies and often a judgment call by a line cSR.

I pay for my amex and it pays for itself within the first couple months of each year. Great points structure and the fact that they pay airline baggage fees makes it a no brainier.

My last several apartments have all allowed me to pay my rent with a card. Which is nice, because it's been easy to hit the spend thresholds of premium cards and kick in all the good benefits.

Since I switched a while back from flying American to flying Delta, I looked into getting Delta's branded card, which is Amex... except my current apartment doesn't take Amex for rent payments. So I'd be unable to hit the thresholds to make the card pay for itself.

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