American Express Platinum Charge Card Review (India)
American Express is known for their premium credit card services across the globe. If you’re looking to experience the most premium credit card offering from such an issuer, you’re at the right place.
American Express Platinum Card which is issued as a metal card in India is an ultra premium credit card known for it’s premium lifestyle and travel benefits. Its a charge card, hence no pre-set limit to it. Here’s everything you need to know about this card
Overview
| Type | Ultra Premium Credit Card |
| Reward Rate | 1.25% – 2.5% |
| Annual Fee | 60,000 INR+GST |
| Best for | Hotel benefits & Concierge services |
| USP | Hotel Memberships |
American Express Charge Card is one of the very few cards in India like AXIS reserve, the value of which has to be decided based on the lifestyle benefits it offers and not just by looking at the reward rate.
Apply through the above link & you’ll be rewarded 10,000 Referral Bonus Membership Rewards® points (spend INR 5,000 within 90 days) + stay vouchers worth INR 45,000* from Taj.
Annual Fees
| Joining/Annual Fee | Rs.60,000+GST = 70,800 INR |
| Welcome Benefit | |
| Renewal Benefit | Varies depending on the spends |
| Eligibility | 15L for Self Employed / 25L for Salaried |
With 100K points one can get a value >45K INR by transferring them to Marriott Bonvoy, among other options. But as of now only Taj vouchers are available as welcome benefit.
Note that, every once in a while American Express also sends targeted upgrade offers for the platinum card with better welcome bonus upto 125K MR points.
These upgrade offers are sent to existing cardholders with good spends. You’re lucky if you get one.
Credit Limit
- Minimum Credit Limit: 10 Lakhs
Even-though its a charge card and comes with no-preset limit, it still has internal limit or shadow limit which is more like a credit limit, except that it keeps increasing based on your re-payments.
Usually the limit starts with north of 10 Lakhs, however you will still be stuck with ~3L or so (based on financials & Credit report) for first few weeks until the system learns more about your spend pattern.
Reward Points
- Earn Rate: 1 MR Point per Rs.40 Spent
- MR Point Value: ~50Ps to 1Rs
- Reward Rate: 1.25% to 2.5%
The above reward rate is calculated only for Marriott Points transfers, based on my personal experience. I have got a value of even Rs.3/point at times but its tough to put a static value on it generally.
It may get you different reward rate based on how you redeem your points. Most Platinum cardholders transfer the points to Marriott to extract maximum value out of them.
Forex Spends
- Forex Markup Fee: 3.5%+GST = 4.13%
- Reward rate on Intl. Spends: 3.75% – 7.5% (3X rewards)
- Net gain: ~3.3% (only if you can get 1 INR per 1 MR)
Its a good credit card for international transactions as you gain over 3% of the spend. However, this is only for those who can extract a value of 1 MR = 1 INR.
It’s not for everyone! I personally prefer to use other cards for international transactions unless the merchant is new & of low profile.
So, considering the peace of mind that Amex gives you with their Zero lost Card liability, its better to swipe Amex over other cards when in foreign land.
Airport Lounge access
| LOUNGE TYPE | ACCESS LIMIT |
|---|---|
| Domestic Lounges | Unlimited |
| Amex Lounges | Unlimited |
| Priority Pass Lounges | Unlimited |
| Delta Lounges | Unlimited |
- Domestic Lounges: Both primary and supplementary card holders get unlimited lounge access to most of the domestic airport lounges located in India. These are affiliated lounges and not owned by Amex.
- Amex Lounges: You get unlimited lounge access to the Amex lounges across the globe like Mumbai Amex lounge. You also get access to the Centurion lounges as well.
- Priority Pass Lounges: You get unlimited access to the 1200+ priority pass lounges across the globe. Note that only one supplementary cardholder can be enrolled for priority pass lounge access benefit.
- Delta Lounges: Apart from the regular lounges, the additional advantage of this card is, you can also access Delta lounges when you fly with Delta Airlines. This may come handy if you’re flying inside USA.
Note: You may need to request for Priority Pass after getting the card. It took about about 4 months to arrive from HongKong.
It was delayed for me due to covid during mid 2020, but for others it should come within a month or so. However, a digital priority pass will be available instantly, if required.
Birthday Benefit
- 10,000 INR Taj Voucher
Since 2021 American Express has been sending out 10K Taj voucher on the cardmember’s birthday. This is a wonderful benefit which I’ve been enjoying since past 2 years.
The voucher is sent a month prior to the birthday month, ideally sent by end of the previous month.
Travel Spend Benefit
- Spend 1L on travel and get 30,000 INR Taj Voucher
American Express has been rewarding travel spends all the time. Earlier they used to give Taj vouchers on international travel, but post the pandemic Amex shifted it to domestic travel spends.
This benefit is applicable every year. Quite lucrative for sure but as my travels are taken care by points, I had no opportunity to explore this benefit.
Home Assistance
- Benefit: Get any home assistance done through your local service provider and claim re-imbursement.
- Services covered: Repair (or) maintenance of A/c, fridge, inverter, etc
- Limit: 1200 INR per bill upto 2 times a calendar year.
- How to claim? Share the invoice/bill copy along with your bank details to lifestyle concierge desk.
It’s quite a simple benefit that could help you save a little bit on your service/repairs. The claim process is straight forward and you get the funds on your bank a/c within 2-3 weeks of your email.
Elite Tier Benefits
The American Express Platinum Charge Card gives you grand set of elite tier benefits that you can enjoy as long as you hold the platinum card. To avail the tier benefits,
- Login to your Amex a/c
- Signup for respective benefits
| HOTEL LOYALTY PROGRAM | TIER | VALUE |
|---|---|---|
| Marriott Bonvoy | Gold | ~ 20,000 INR |
| Hilton Honors | Gold | ~ 20,000 INR |
| Radisson Rewards | Gold | – |
| Taj Epicure | – | – |
Marriott Bonvoy:
This is the most important benefit that you can get with the platinum card. The combination of Gold Elite status & 100K welcome bonus points makes this card highly valuable.
Considering you stay 10 nights a year with 5 successful upgrades, you can get minimum of 20K INR value out of Marriott Gold tier but there are many who could get more than 50K INR a year just with this single benefit.
I enjoy this benefit quite often. This usually gets me upgrades, breakfast and few other benefits.
Hilton Honours:
This is yet another amazing hotel loyalty program which I’m yet to explore. Remember Gold tier gets you complimentary breakfast benefit and that’s what gives you the value.
If you do 5 nights a year, you can easily get Rs.10k value with breakfast benefit alone. If you put a value on upgrades, then you could save a lot more.
Taj Epicure:
It’s usually beneficial for those who avail the Spa and Salon services at Taj properties as the services are discounted at 20% on the bill.
You may buy Taj vouchers to settle these bills (during the stay) to save even more.
Radisson Rewards
If you’re someone who’s already loyal to Radisson it does help you with room upgrades & more.
The gold tier helped me to request for an upgrade at Radiassion blue Guhati but well no one cared about the tier at Radiassion Blue Banglore outer Ring Road, so it all depends.
Golf Benefits
- Complimentary Games: 4 per month
- Complimentary Lessons: 2 per month
Enjoy complimentary games and lessons across 30+ domestic Golf Courses in India. Limiting lessons to 2 per month along with many other restrictions is actually not so good for a card that costs this high.
Since early 2022, you can now book golf games online by yourself without having to call the customer care.
Dining Benefits
- EazyDiner Prime
- Taj Epicure
Eazydiner Prime is a solid benefit to have without a doubt as it could help us save ~45% on the bill easily when coupled with PayEazy offers.
Platinum Concierge
American Express Concierge service is one of the most under-rated and under-utilized benefit on this card.
Nope, you don’t need to use it for collecting sand from the sea. It can also be used for all the regular needs.
American Express India has about ~200 dedicated employees handling the Concierge services for both Platinum & Centurion Cards.
Amex Concierge Service is broadly divided into travel & lifestyle. More about the respective services here:
Travel Concierge
Typically all concierge requests related to travel goes through this team. The services includes but not limited to:
- Visa Services
- Planning for an Itinerary
- Complimentary First Class Upgrade on Etihad
Lifestyle Concierge
They can do pretty much anything under the sun with their Do-Anything Platinum Concierge. In most cases you need a lifestyle of its own to get value out of it.
However, you can also use them to delegate small works that could save you time. That’s how I use them.
My Concierge experience: I’ve sent them over 100 requests in last 2 years and what I’ve noticed is that they were under-performing in 2019 but surprisingly the response was super fast during peak Covid-19 period. Now in 2022 the response speed is decent.
American Express Invites®
A unique programme that gives Platinum Cardmembers a chance to purchase tickets to some of the most popular events, often before they go on sale to the general public.
This is quite rare but it does happen once in a while. For example, they recently sent out an invite for a dinning experience at various luxury properties across the country.
These kind of dining experiences are great, except that I wish that they could do it more often and at better rates as we could anyway get ~50% off these days with Eazydiner Prime.
Airport Fast Track
American Express Platinum cards issued in certain countries comes with the ability to access the fast track security lanes in respective countries and fortunately this applies to all American Express Platinum cards issued globally as well.
If you’re interested in this benefit, do check out the Amex landing pages in these respective countries: Amex Canada, Amex Italy, Amex Sweden. This benefit is also applicable at Austria & Belgium airports.
That’s not a great coverage but if you’re flying to these countries, it’s worth knowing.
Companion card
With Amex Platinum, you can choose one of the other Amex credit cards as a companion card which remains free for life as long as you hold the Platinum Card.
Usually Amex Reserve is given as a companion card but if you would like to maximise the value, Amex platinum Travel Card is the best one (assuming you like plat travel card benefits).
Supplementary Cards
- 4 Supplementary cards
- 1 additional card for Business Expenses
You can get up to 4 supplementary cards, which are also metal cards with your American Express Platinum charge card.
Supplementary card holders can also enjoy most of the above benefits that a primary cardholder enjoys, including the hotel privileges.
Unboxing
The packaging remains largely the same in 2022 as well.
Renewal
The welcome bonus of 100K MR Points is great for the first year without a doubt. For 2nd year though, it depends on the renewal/retention offer you receive.
Many card members that renewed during Covid-19 got very good retention offers (usually with a voucher/points value that’s about half of the fee, varies with profile) which makes sense to hold on to the card.
Is it Worth 70,800 INR?
So now we’re coming to the tricky question!
Tricky because I’ve spoken to over 50+ Amex Platinum Cardholders in the past 7 years during my credit card counsultation sessions and each one has their own reason to hold on to the card because it has given then memorable “experiences”.
While we can’t put a value on those experiences as it’s different for each, let’s see what the card can offer with it’s primary benefits.
Let’s analyse the total value of the card by placing an “average” price on each of the benefit we saw above. Here we go,
| BENEFIT | DESCRIPTION | VALUE (INR) |
|---|---|---|
| Welcome benefit | 45K Taj Voucher | 45,000 |
| Birthday benefit | 10K Taj Voucher | 10,000 |
| Marriott Bonvoy Gold | 20K INR value | 20,000 |
| Home Assistance | 1200 INR *2 | 2,400 |
| Total | 77,400 |
- Total Value: 77,400 INR + Lounge + Golf + Concierge
So you get bit more than what you pay, assuming you make use of the Marriott Bonvoy Gold benefit just as most other card holders do.
Travel spend benefit is another lucrative benefit to look at.
And then if you play golf 10 times (or) use lounge 10 times (or) avail concierge services often, that’s another 20K INR savings easily for “each” of the services mentioned.
If you avail all these services, then the overall value you get is huge!
