Sad: Amex Business Platinum Devaluing 35% Pay With Points Rebate

sick bro...

In all honestly, this week seems to mark the end of an era in terms of a style of credit card spend and redeem. Basically to get any outside value, you have to redeem via travel partners, or earn through credit card portals.

Ugh. This kills the last major value point for the card. With miles transfers nerfed by "dynamic" award pricing, the rebate was the last way to easily and reliably get >1cpp in value.

All the no coincidence blogger announcementemts feel like a coordinated effort to numb our expectations.

and Dell credit also dropping from $200 every 6 months to $150 for the full year effective July 1st. Cancelling my Biz Plat before August renewal.

Almost all cards and loyalty programs are utter tosh now.

This one hurt. Used this quite frequently.
The other coincidence is timing of this right next to rumor of higher tier AMEX card being floated the other day.

That sucks. With the difficult redemption environment i was basically using the 35% pwp as a backup plan.

4x gold card bonus spend stacked with 35% pwp = easy 5.4 cents per dollar... plus the airline miles.

Sad? You truly have a breathtaking gift for understatement at times. This is impressively awful. In one move, Amex is destroying the vast majority of the non-coupon book value of the Business Platinum card. With this move there's almost no reason to keep the card for huge swaths of cardholders. I've already cancelled my and my wife's personal Platinum cards. Now the Business Platinum will be out too.

Wow very disappointing I loved having this as a backup when I couldn’t find a good transfer partner redemption for a trip. Biggest reason I’ve held onto this card for years

your math is incorrect FYI. 35% rebate equates to 1.54cpp. so if you're earning 4x points thats 6.2% return

Incredible how greedy these issuers are getting right as we walk into a global recession

Makes perfect sense. Small-medium business spending is going to contract before personal spending does. So they are preemptively hedging on increased demand. Financial institutions don't play fair, they play smart. Or try to, at least.

All the blogsters will underplay this... (re: they won't bite the hand that feeds them. Reverse is true as well - Over hype / pump anything that will benefit them. It's ALL business $$$ my friend)

I used this quite often. Probably going to nuke the card when the renewal comes up this fall.

The CSR 1.5x and Platinum 1.35x (used to be 1.5 and already devalued) are the only things useful to me other than lounge access. Maybe all these cards have run out of gas except for people who travel constantly and it's worth it for lounge access alone. We make 3-4 round trips a year.

I will admit I don't use the feature that much. I mostly transfer to airlines. But I put spend on the cards know that I could. Seems like that would be exactly what they want?

Brutal. On top of Chase UR points nuked for cruises? Beyond brutal!

that how I always thought of it. now definitely cancelling.

This must be the major change that they were planning to announce.

Agree. This is devastating

Screw you Amex. Not even a grandfather period a la Chase? I’m done.

Never thought I’d say this but Cap One card actually looks pretty interesting about now. CM for 40 years and no notice??? Amex, you really really suck

Just cancelled the biz Plat after 12 months and a 250k welcome bonus. This was the primary benefit I actually missed…

…poof, it’s gone, so zero regrets.

Just cancelled the biz Plat after 12 months and a 250k welcome bonus. This was the primary benefit I actually missed…

…poof, it’s gone, so zero regrets.

This benefit is the only reason I hold both the personal and business platinum cards. This likely changes the dynamic.

This is the first Amex card I ever got.. corporate card in 1995. Among cards with fees, I’ll be down to the personal platinum and the Hilton Aspire and I’m sure the latter will be gone soon. When Blue for bizness changes, that will go away too. Time to use my points. Pretty soon we may favor Durbin.

They want you to carry a balance and not use a lot of the coupons.

The original rebate was 50%, and that was the reason I originally accepted an Amex business platinum card. Dropping it to 35% made it worse than transferring Membership Rewards points to miles, in most cases. Now they want to make it even harder, as devaluations of miles have made transfers worth less. Overall, the point is to reduce the value of customers' inventory of MR points. Whether or not that reduced obligation to "members" (customers) is directly recognized under GAAP, ultimately every lost dollar of value to to customers is gained profit for Amex.

You can’t carry a balance on an Amex biz card….

Cancelled the moment I read this. The rep noticed my Member Since '85. I reported this is the reason, as well as the utter hopelessness of the Centurion Lounge benefit, which is almost zero to me, without a guest, or with a queue. Too much work chasing the coupons. I'll get my lounges from Priority Pass and VISA.

Wouldn't it be great if we got a "We Listened" reversal on this one? It would require us cancelling now, rather than waiting for renewal months from now.

Yes you can, I have a $50K "pay over time" option on my Biz Plat