AmEx Platinum Card for Mercedes-Benz Review (Discontinued)

     2018-04-02     2019-07-22 27 Comments

Discontinued Credit Cards

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Platinum Card from American Express Exclusively for Mercedes-Benz Review

2019.1 Update: This card will be automatically converted to the regular AmEx Platinum card, see here for official FAQs.

Application Link

  • This card no longer accepts new applications. If you are lucky to have this legacy credit card, you can still enjoy its original benefits.

Benefits

  1. Earn 60,000 Membership Rewards (MR) Points after spending $5,000 in first 3 months. The highest sign-up bonus is 75k. Because you can only get one sign-up bonus for this card for a lifetime, please wait until the highest sign-up bonus shows up!
  2. We estimate that Membership Rewards (MR) are worth about 1.6 cents/point, see below for a brief introduction. So the 75k highest sign-up bonus is worth about $1200!
  3. Mercedes-Benz specific benefits: Receive a $1000 certificate each year you charge $5,000 in purchases, good toward the future purchase or lease of a new Mercedes-Benz. Up to 2,000 excess miles waived at lease-end on leases through Mercedes-Benz Financial Services. $100 certificate at renewal of your Card account, good toward Genuine Mercedes-Benz Accessories.
  4. Earn 5x MR points for flights booked directly with airlines or with American Express Travel. Earn 5 Membership Rewards Points per $1 spent on Mercedes-Benz. Earn 1 Membership Rewards Point per $1 spent on all  other purchases.
  5. Earn 5x MR points for hotels booked directly with airlines or with American Express Travel.
  6. $200 airline fee credit for incidental charges such as checked bags per calendar year. Because this benefit resets according to calendar year instead of when you opened the card, you can actually get this credit TWICE during the first year! Note that this benefit is not automatically enrolled, you need to enroll and specify an airline by clicking here.
  7. The airline credit is actually easy to get: although AmEx terms & conditions says airline gift cards are excluded, data points show that they actually can trigger the credit.
  8. $200 in annual Uber credits ($15 per month, $35 in December). The credits will expire every month.
  9. Complimentary access to the following airport lounges:
  10. Complimentary Marriott Bonvoy Gold Status. Use this link to activate.
  11. Complimentary Hilton Gold Status. Use this link to activate.
  12. Complimentary membership for Avis, Hertz, and National membership. Use this link to activate.
  13. Up to $100 credit for Global Entry or TSA Pre application fee.
  14. Fine Hotels and Resorts (FHR): if you book hotels through FHR, you can enjoy the benefits of elite members, such as: room upgrades, free Wi-Fi, free breakfast, etc. The benefits varies by hotels.
  15. Platinum Card Concierge service: for the busy or even lazy, you can use this service to book hotels or reserve restaurants and so on, the service is said to be very, very good.
  16. With this credit card, you can get access to Amex Offers, which often offers very good discounts at some stores. In the past we have seen offers like: Spend $15 or more and get $5 back at Walmart; Spend $75 or more and get $25 back on Amazon.com.
  17. No foreign transaction fee.
  18. Authorized users also have access to the airport lounges mentioned above, and each of them can get complimentary hotel status. The $200 annual air credit is shared between cardholder and authorized users.
  19. This card is relatively easy to get approved for because it is a Charge Card, not a Credit Card. Charge card means that you don’t have the option to pay only minimum payment, you have to pay your balance in full on the due dates. Note that Charge Card applications will also result in a Hard Pull, just like Credit Card applications.
  20. Charge Cards have no pre-set spending limit.

Disadvantages

  1. $550 annual fee, NOT waived for the first year. Note that annual fee does not count towards the minimum spending requirement (and this is true for all credit cards)! 
  2. For up to three Additional Platinum Cards, the total annual fee is $175.

Introduction to MR Points

  • You can earn MR points with AmEx ED, AmEx EDP, AmEx Green, AmEx Gold, AmEx Platinum, AmEx Platinum for Schwab, AmEx Platinum for Morgan Stanley, AmEx Blue Business Plus, AmEx Business Green, AmEx Business Gold, AmEx Business Platinum, etc.
  • The MR points you earn on different MR cards will automatically go to the same MR account.
  • MR points never expire. You will not lose the MR points on one card if you close the account, but you will lose all of the MR points if you close all of the MR cards. In order to avoid losing your MR points, we recommend to keep the no annual fee AmEx ED.
  • If you have any of the MR cards, MR points can be transferred to some airline miles. One of the most common and best way to use MR points is to 1:1 transfer them to All Nippon Airways (ANA, NH) miles (Star Alliance). Other good options are: Air Canada (AC) (Star Alliance), Delta Air Lines (DL) (SkyTeam), British Airways (BA) (Oneworld), Asia Miles (Oneworld), Singapore Airlines (SQ) (Star Alliance), Flying Blue (SkyTeam), Virgin Atlantic (VS) (Non-alliance), etc. If you use MR in this way, the value is about 1.6 cents/point.
  • If you have any of the MR cards, you can redeem your MR points at a fixed rate about 1 cent/point towards air tickets on AmEx travel portal.
  • If you have AmEx Platinum for Schwab, you can redeem your MR points at a fixed rate 1.1 cents/point towards cash. If you don't want to spend time studying airline miles, this is a pretty good way to cash out the points. If you don't have this card, you can only redeem your MR points at a fixed rate 0.6 cents/point towards cash.
  • In summary, we estimate that MR points are worth about 1.6 cents/point.
  • For more information about MR points, see Maximize the Credit Card Points Values (overview), and Introduction to MR: How to Earn and Introduction to MR: How to Use (very detailed).

Recommended Application Time

  1. You can only get the welcome bonus once in a lifetime, so be sure to apply when the historical highest offer appears.
  2. AmEx doesn’t care about the number of hard pulls.
  3. You can try to apply for it when you have a credit history of 6 months.
  4. You must wait at least 90 days between the application for different flavors of AmEx Platinum cards, otherwise the application will be cancelled.

Summary

If you only keep this card for one year, you will get 75k MR points (worth about $1200), two airline fee credits ($200*2), and $200 uber credit. The cost is just the first year annual fee $550. So in total, you net about $1250! In order to avoid the repeat of perks, I don’t suggest you apply for this card when you have the regular AmEx Platinum Card. The travel perks are great but the earnings rate is not impressive so I wouldn’t call this card a keeper. Note that there are a lot of perks in this card, and some of them need to be enrolled by yourself, don’t forget to enroll them after receiving the card! If one day you don’t want to keep this card any more, but still want your MR points, you can apply for the AmEx EveryDay (ED) (no annual fee) to keep the MR points and use them in the future.

To Do List After You Get The Card

  1. Enroll in Airline Incidental Fee Credit benefit and choose a carrier. You must enroll and choose a carrier prior to making a reimbursable purchase.
  2. Add your card to Uber or UberEats.
  3. Enroll in Saks Credit benefit.
  4. Enroll in Priority Pass Select (PPS) lounge benefit.
  5. Enroll in Marriott Bonvoy Gold status.
  6. Enroll in Hilton Gold status.
  7. Enroll for Avis, Hertz and NationalCar Rental status privileges.
  8. Enroll in Walmart+ membership.
  9. Apply for Global Entry ($100 reimbursement) or TSA PreCheck ($85 reimbursement).

Related Credit Cards

Note that, although the look and benefits of the following cards are almost the same, they are different products, and they don’t affect each other’s sign-up bonus:

Recommended Downgrade Options

  • You can not downgrade this card to any card with no annual fee, so I suggest you close it when you don’t want to keep it any longer.

After Applying

  • Click here to check AmEx application status.
  • AmEx reconsideration backdoor number: 877-399-3083. The “real” backdoor number of Amex is well protected. Different from Chase, the representatives from this AmEx reconsideration backdoor number only have the right to help you submit requests.

Historical Offers Chart

This card is discontinued in 2018.04.02.

Application Link

  • This card no longer accepts new applications. If you are lucky to have this legacy credit card, you can still enjoy its original benefits.

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