For me the card pays for itself between the free night and the $300 incidental credit, plus some of the other benefits. I also have the Amex trifecta, which is not great for hotel stays besides the Fine Hotels and Resorts program so it meshes well with that.
Cstrrider
joined 2 years ago
To clarify that's only for the Maldives reservation that you do. Generally, you are going to get 6x Bonvoy points per dollar spent and the value is 0.7-0.9 vs 3x at 1.5-2.0.
Hotel points are worth what they are worth and you have to just factor that in when you get them. The earnings rate for Marriott Hyatt and Hilton are basically the same for the $95 cards once you factor in the point value, and they will be a bit more for hotel spending than a card like the CSR. I will definitely have to look into the Maldives trip at some point though.
Also who care about down votes there's no karma here ;)
How did chase trim their bonus categories?
Realistically everyone who is going to daily drive a trifecta should categorize their current spending, assign a value to points, and see which card sets maximize their value with google sheets or something. Make sure you factor in all of the credits you can reasonably spend and try to assign a conservative value to things like priority pass, travel insurance, hotel/rental status, etc. If you don't care much about that make it zero.
When I did this Chase was second to the Amex trifecta because I can enough of the credits to cover the AF with minimal work.
In general the CSR is a good option but if you are justifying the coat with insurance and PP dining options, you may want to look into the Ritz card, it gets the same insurance and techically a better priority pass vs the CSR, because your free AU gets their own pass, and supposedly you have unlimited guests but YMMV. You get a free Marriott night on your anniversary for 85k bonvoy points and the $300 airline incidental is very broad, I have been successful so far in using it for United travel bank for instance, but the AF is $450.
To answer your original question I was under the impression that you have to downgrade and apply for a new card and I would make sure to wait to the beginning of the first month after your 4 year anniversary.
I really dual daily the Amex Gold and BBP. Most of my monthly spending falls into the Dinning/grocery spending for 4 MR, then everything else gets 2 MR.
I have and like the Ritz card but that is a had sell on the use case lol
I have stayed at 6 FHR resorts in the last 2 years since getting the Platinum (using 3x $200 credits). All of them cost $200-$350 per night which was a bit more but well worth it for a weekend trip because early checkin to late check out nets you 28 hrs at the resort (12pm-4pm). The dining credit and breakfast make it roughly equivalent in price to the reasonably nice hotels that we would have stayed at. It gets less cost effective for multiple days but its great for a one night weekend trip. Really depends where you live though.
And lol that's great about the lounges.