Buenos dias everyone. The annual fee posted on my American Express Business Platinum Charge Card on April 26, and since I hate making phone calls, I waited until the very last minute to call about canceling the card. American Express will only refund your annual fee if you cancel or downgrade within 30 days of when the annual fee posts to your card.
Once I finally resigned myself to getting on the phone, I told the representative that I wanted to speak with someone about closing my account because of the recent changes to the Membership Rewards Pay with Points rebate. She mentioned the fact that the card now earns 5 points per dollar spent on amextravel.com, then placed me on hold for several minutes and then handed me off to someone from their OPEN Membership Consulting team.
The second representative was very friendly, mentioned my long history with American Express (I’ve been a “Member Since” 2010), the amount of spending I have put on this card, and commented on the fact that I have several accounts with them. He acknowledged my concerns about the changes to the program, and noted that the benefit has gone from 30% to 50% back down to 35% over the past 8 months.
He then told me since I’m a valuable customer to them, he had two options for me if I wanted to keep the account open: a $350 statement credit or 50,000 Membership Rewards points – with no spending requirement. He even pointed out that with the $200 annual travel credit, they were basically paying me to keep the card open.
My jaw literally dropped when he told me the offers, but I quickly recovered and said that I would take the points. He read me a long disclosure, which I acknowledged, and then we went our separate ways. This is the largest retention bonus I’ve ever heard of for any Platinum card – American Express must be hearing from a lot of people about the recent changes.
Do the changes to the Pay with Points rebate affect your desire to apply for or keep the American Express Business Platinum Charge Card? What’s the best retention bonus you’ve ever received? Let me know in the comments.
How much did you spend this year on the card?
Wow! Were you a heavy user of the card? They offered me nothing!
That is a hell of an offer, really, but I would nevertheless have stuck to my personal retention script and kept asking “What else can you offer?” until they ran out of options — just because, you know, sometimes they have other options. And either way, at least you know for sure. Otherwise, and probably sooner rather than later, those with inquiring minds may find themselves wondering: “How much were they were willing to give me if only I’d asked?”.
Good point Mike! I hate doing retention calls and I was more than comfortable with what they offered, so I didn’t push back. Maybe next time :)
Much of my card usage is driven by minimum spend and bonus offers. So the way I look at earning structures, it often turns the single biggest point-earning move I’m left with for most of my cards in almost any given year is my retention offer.
biggest retention was on a personal Platinum last year, 25k points. spent about $15k that year, but of that, $2k was on various pre-paid hotels booked thru AmexTravel.com (some FHR, some not). don’t know if that was a factor.
Got 10K SPG points not to cancel…Took the offer and thanked them! :)
Hey thanks for the article, I was just offered 15k points to keep my card open.. not bad at all.. thanks!
I think the 1st question asked matters the most here… what was your spend on the card. Had to have been substantial to trigger such a large offer. You clearly didn’t keep this in your sock drawer.
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Was offered $300 Credit to keep mine open, maybe did 5,000 total spend on the card, as I got it during the 100k bonus and then moved on to other cards. Was shocked they gave me that since I haven’t put a dime on it in 7 months. Maybe I just had a nice rep?
Nice! Glad to hear they presented you with a solid offer despite minimal spend.
Wow, the same question has been asked 3 times now (4 if you count this post), and the author has still not answered the basic question… how much spend did you put on the card in the past year? We all appreciate the encouraging anecdote but without any sort of context, this data point is completely useless…. please answer the question, or at least give us a vague idea of how much you’ve spent, such as “just enough to meet the initial minimum spend”, or “somewhere between 10k and 20k”, etc… come on… give us something to work with!
Hi Tom – sorry about the radio silence, I promise I’m not being intentionally evasive! I’ve been incredibly busy the past couple of months, which is why I haven’t been posting here.
Skimming over my statements, it looks like the spend on the card last year was somewhere in the 80-90k range.
I got a 50,000 point bonus back in 2017 for complaining about the pay with points changes down to 35%. I was really upset because I was using Amex a lot using pay with points for business class air travel and it was great for me. I spent about $300,000 per year on Amex. I should have held out for more. I might try it again sometime soon.
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