What's your gold charge retention offer?

[helloworld]

American Express® Gold Card​

Annual Fee: 5310

		18k/24k Collection
Welcome Gift (Spend 5k in 90days)	4000 MR	-
Referral Benefit (Spend 5k in 90days)	2000 MR	-
Regular Reward (Incl. Fuel and Utility)	1 MR/50	0.33 - 0.58 (Amzn - Taj)
Milestone benefits (6 transactions of 1000 each in a calendar month)	1000 MR	-
Spend 72000 in a year (6000x12)
Reward Rate	Regular 1x purchases (1440 MR + 12000 MR = 13440 MR)	6.16% - 10.83%
	Reward Multiplier 5x purchases (7200 MR + 12000 MR = 19200 MR)	8.8% - 15.47%
Net Reward Rate for 1st Year 1180 (JF) + 72000 (Spends)	4000 MR + 2000 MR + (13440 MR to 19200 MR)	8.76% - 19.97%

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Problem: Above returns drastically changes based on retention offer because there is no annual fee waiver based on spend amount in Gold charge.

- If the fee waived full, then above are your return rate on this card.

Note: If accumulation takes multiple years then multiple retention offers needs to be considered.

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Sample retention offers (may vary from p2p depends on association, spends etc.):

1. Pay Full Fee (5310) and get 10000 MR (Net Return*: 9.4% - 20.96%)
2. Pay Half Fee (2655) (Net Return*: 7.34% - 17.42%)
3. Full Fee Reversal on 1.5L spend in next 3M (Net Return*: 4.22% - 12.05%)

Based on these offers, actual reward rate will vary.

* Calculated based on 1st year spends + 2nd year spends along with respective retention offer with lowest and highest reward option in Gold collection.

So, whats your gold charge retention offer?

 

[sousnake]

If they just could bring the 20k spend milestone to Gold as well, I would close MRCC in a heartbeat to happily live with the fantastic combination of Plat Travel credit and Gold charge cards.

Yeah agreed. 4.5k fees for spending 6000 month that too 6 transaction seems too much. I settled for MRCC + Plat travel.
If I think this 6k benefit is same on both MRCC & Gold but MRCC has an additional milestone. Both have gold collection.
Yes gold has 5x RP but difference in fee is huge. Also no waiver criteria. Personally fells like MRCC is better.

 

[R@ndomiz€r]

This applies all AMEX cards, so leaving this option.





I don't know whether its correct or not, I'm thinking that 'Gold charge' doesn't have fixed credit limit to that user and vary month on month basis. So, asking us to spend 5L in a year, or put some limits to achieve milestone may not work for all users. 20K may work for most of them but not sure about 4L.

I can wish, kept fee around 2.5k and waive as per customer spends.

Ideally AMEX needs to find the right reward to fee ratio. Spending X amount should give Y tangible + intangible benefits. Currently, if you have 2-3 cards and one of them is Gold charge then as soon FYF is over it is going to be the first card you will cut loose from your collection. With current milestones and benefits, even a 1.5k fees sounds a lot considering you don't get anything except accelerated MR points.

Standard Chartered's Ultimate card comes with 6k fees and has host lot of a more benefits especially when someone wants them to redeem for vouchers and not hotel points. It's also a top tier card unlike Gold which is an entry level card