Did Capital One Just RUIN This Credit Card?

In this video, we are going to talk about some serious cutbacks in lounge access that Capital One has just made to its credit cards. The Capital One Venture X has been known as the best credit card for lounge access, costing only $400 a year and offering membership of several different lounge programs. Well, that is changing. And in this video, we are going to ask the question, did Capital One just ruin this credit card? Hey, credit warriors. Welcome to the show. My name is Ben Hedges, aka The Credit Shofu, and on this channel, I cover US credit cards and how to use credit card points and miles for free travel. I've redeemed credit card points for over $60,000 worth of free travel, and you can too. If you like the sound of that, please subscribe for new videos several times a week. OK, so we have two changes to the lounge access offered by the Capital One Venture X and Venture X business card. The first one, which was discovered about two weeks ago and posted on Reddit, is that Capital One cards are losing access to Plaza Premium lounges as of March 1st, 2025. Now, before you cancel your card, though, they are right to point out that most of these lounges can now be accessed through your Priority Pass membership. You see, for a while, Plaza Premium pulled out of Priority Pass, but as of 2023, a load of Plaza Premium lounges rejoined the Priority Pass program. So according to Priority Pass themselves, you can now access over 60 Plaza Premium lounges with Priority Pass membership. I think the exact number is 63. You are still losing out a little bit. For example, if you search on Plaza Premium's website for Hong Kong Airport, there are four Plaza Premium lounges showing up. But if you search on Priority Pass, you only get three of them that you can go to with Priority Pass membership. It's the ultimate first world problem, right? Boo hoo! My luxury $400 credit card only lets me go to three airport lounges in the same terminal instead of four. I mean, how many do you want to go to? How early are you arriving for your flight anyway? Five hours so you can go to all the lounges? Saying that, I did actually go to two Plaza Premium lounges last time I visited Hong Kong, but that was because I ate at one of the lounges and then it didn't have a shower or there was too long of a wait for the shower. And so I went to a different one to take a shower. Anyway, there may be a few airports where you lose a lounge altogether. But at many, it's just that you don't have access to every single Plaza Premium lounge on offer at that location. And as you can see, Plaza Premium does like to stick a load of lounges in one airport, one terminal, right? They seem to have these kind of hubs where they have three, four. I've even seen like six lounges at some airports. Now, why would Capital One do this? Well, I'm guessing that since Plaza Premium allowed over 60 lounges to rejoin Priority Pass, Capital One has been looking at the data and they are probably seeing that a large percentage of the Plaza Premium lounges people are going to and directly showing their VentureX cards to get in could be accessed with Priority Pass anyway. So what is the point in Capital One paying for Plaza Premium directly when they're also paying Priority Pass? Why pay twice? Of course, I'm not sure what their exact deal is, whether they are paying an annual flat rate with these two companies or they pay each time a card member accesses a lounge or perhaps a hybrid of both, a small annual fee and then a per time fee. I don't know. But that's the principle. If, say, 70 percent of the Plaza Premium lounges accessed by Capital One cardholders are in Priority Pass anyway, might as well just cancel Plaza Premium and trade that 30 percent for a cut in costs. So that is the first of two changes that we're talking about with lounge access on the Capital One VentureX and VentureX business. It's not a disaster for most card members, but it may affect some people who fly certain routes that are losing their lounge. You have until March 1st to still access Plaza Premium lounges with your VentureX and VentureX business cards. But if the lounge is in Priority Pass anyway, you can already access it with your Priority Pass card anyway. So you could just start doing that to form the habit for March 1st. I don't know, whatever you want. All right, let's move on to the second negative change with Capital One's lounge access. But first, if you're looking to get value out of your credit cards, the sponsor of today's video can help you do just that. Max Rewards is a credit card management software used by the pros. It links to all of your banks and displays all the info such as balances, transactions, rewards, balances, etc. all in one place. 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Now, this was another thing that was just discovered and it was posted on Reddit three days ago. Here is what the person who found the changes to the wording in the terms and conditions said. I called and spoke to a rep who didn't even know about this change, but she looked into it and found that the unlimited guest benefit ends December 31st. Starting in the new year will be limited to two guests. She didn't have more details, but hypothesized that it was because of lounge crowding. She also suggested that this may not be a hard limit, i.e. the card may still allow unlimited guests, but lounges may turn away additional guests. That is pretty standard, okay? Reps often don't know that much, but it seems this now is in effect since they did say December 31st. I'm guessing you get the first two guests for free, but then would get charged after that if you want to bring in additional people. And depending on the lounge, the lounge could turn away additional guests after two, especially if the lounge is busy. It was hard to find where this is actually mentioned in the terms and conditions, but I did find the two guest language on this page on priority pass access for the VentureX. VentureX and VentureX business card holders can bring two guests to priority pass lounges. So it seems it was quietly updated by Capital One, but it does remain a little vague. With priority pass membership from another card that supposedly only allows two free guests, I just brought in three guests to number one lounge at London Heathrow on January 1st when I flew back here, and I wasn't charged for my extra guests. Looking at the lounge on priority passes website, only children under two years old are admitted for free. Neither of my children are. My wife obviously isn't under two years old, so I should have been charged, all right, for that extra guest after two people, but I wasn't. So it really depends on the lounge and even on how the person at the front desk feels too. I guess the guy just felt like giving me one free guest. I don't know. In the past, I did actually once bring in six people on the Sapphire Reserves priority pass membership when that allowed free guests, but then that changed too. So I think with this one, guys, these changes were bound to happen. If, like me, you've been doing this game long enough, you will have seen many cards do the exact same thing, okay, launch with a very generous offering and then make little tweaks here and there, making them slightly not as good. A great example is the Chase Sapphire Reserve, which I just talked about. That launched a few years back also with unlimited guests on priority pass, and it limited it to two guests a year or so later. It's sad, but it's not a deal breaker on that card. I kept it for many years. I only cancelled it much later on when they increased the annual fee to 550, and I also had other premium credit cards, so it didn't make sense to have more than one. So it's not going to be a deal breaker on the Venture X either, unless you are a person who solely had the Venture X to get your family of 10 into a lounge all at the same time. In that case, maybe you could look into giving some family members authorised user cards as well to get around it. Please subscribe to the channel if you're new. I'll see you in the next video. Bye-bye.