CONFIRMED: Big Changes to the Amex Platinum - Card RUINED?

So it's official. The Amex Platinum is ruined. We reported on rumors about this a few weeks ago, but finally it has happened. When I woke up this morning and opened my Amex account, I was greeted by this carousel of images detailing new changes that Amex has brought in on the Platinum card. Now, some of these changes sound pretty good. There is a new Airbnb credit. You can now earn extra points on Airbnb, et cetera. But there is one thing that I really think is a downgrade and will probably cost me several hundred dollars a year. Anyway, in this video, we are gonna go through all of it. The good, the bad, and I don't even know what I'm doing here. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Hey, credit warriors, welcome to the show. My name is Ben Hedges, aka The Credit Shifu. And on this channel, we cover US credit cards, personal finance, and luxury travel. If you like the sound of that, please subscribe. But let's get into it. And this video is brought to you by Max Rewards, but more on that later. So let's talk about the new Airbnb benefits first. These are good updates. So the first thing is that you can now earn five points per dollar booking Airbnb properties with your Platinum card. Now, Airbnb homes are now bookable on Amex Travel, and you do actually have to search on Amex Travel for the properties first in order to get the five points per dollar. So you're going to notice that there is now this little homes tab on Amex Travel. And if I search, for example, Ellenville, New York, let's just check that out. Let's zoom in a little more since we're in the mountains outside of Ellenville. And boom, there's my cabin, right? And you can scroll down and click reserve with Airbnb. And you'll then need to link your Airbnb account if this is your first time doing it. But you are going to earn five points per dollar when you book with your Platinum card. If you're asking, can you book with points right now? The answer is no. Since once you click on reserve on Airbnb, Amex asks you to choose a card to pay with. and then it actually takes you off-site to Airbnb where you can only book with that specific credit card. So right now you can earn five points per dollar but not book with points but this could be just the start and maybe in the future Airbnb will be fully integrated into Amex travel with the ability to use points for bookings as well. Still even this new benefit the ability to earn five points per dollar on Airbnb bookings is a really big win for people who do a lot of Airbnb stays and don't have a card that gets them a bonus. The Amex Platinum just dethroned Chase's Sapphire Reserve, which earns 3X on Airbnb, to become the best credit card to use at Airbnb. And you've got all the travel protections from American Express on the Platinum card as well. And it was cool to see both of my Airbnb cabins, which are in the Catskill Mountains, north of New York City, on Amex Travel too. If you wanna book either of them, links are always in the descriptions of the videos, but just use those links to check them out find out the name or the approximate location and then you can search them again through Amex Travel so that you can click through from there and get the five points per dollar bonus if you have the Amex Platinum. Also reach out to me if you book for a 10% discount for Credit Warriors. Now let's move on to the next positive change which is also connected to Airbnb. Now the hotel credit which previously was only valid for fine hotels and resorts collection and hotel collection bookings has expanded to include Airbnb Luxe bookings as long as they are booked through Amex Travel. Now, Airbnb Luxe is a collection of very high-end homes and Airbnb sends someone to personally inspect them for quality. But because of that, they are obviously very expensive. So you won't be able to just casually use the hotel credit to get a free stay at any old Airbnb. It'll be like $300 off somewhere that maybe costs like five, six, $700 or $1,000 a night. the sort of place average people would book for maybe a special occasion. So this is great for big spenders who would book this kind of place normally, but not really a benefit that the average person would use on a regular basis. Maybe not even once a year. It might be like once every several years, right? Let me know in the comments if you think that you would stay at one of these or not. If you want to book Lux, you need to search on Amex Travel and you click this little Lux option in the filters. There's currently a little bit of a glitch that happens when you are searching on the map and it actually turns gray for some reason. I don't know why when I do certain things like zooming in and out too much, it turns gray. I couldn't find any lux properties in New York. I'm sure there are some, but it kept doing the turning gray thing. So I searched like Palm Springs, California. I found one in Joshua Tree, which actually was reasonably priced just over $600 a night, although it was a midweek night. So at a weekend, it'd probably be, you know, seven, 800 or a thousand. But anyway, in addition to using the hotel credit at Airbnb Lux, there is actually now an additional $250 Airbnb credit on top of the use of the hotel credit. Let's take a look at that now. But first, if you're serious about getting every little bit of value out of your rewards credit cards, like the Amex Platinum, you have to check out the app Max Rewards. Not only does it show you your balances, your transactions, your points and rewards balances across all your credit cards, even if they're from different issuers, so you can see everything in one clear dashboard inside one app, but it also incorporates really useful features like the card value tracker, where you can clearly see the value you got back in a year versus the annual fee. You can see on my Amex Gold, we have the value of the points I earned, the offers and the credits I used. In their most recent update, they've redesigned the benefits page to give you a very clear picture of your coupon book style credits. You can browse across all your cards like the Amex Dining Credit, the Lululemon Credit. You can even see your spend progress towards a free night on this Hilton card. So it's very easy to see where you can maximize value and where you missed out. Look, I forgot to use my Amex Dining Credit in April. And that's exactly what the credit card companies want you to do. Forget about those benefits. Let them reset next month so you lose out. So this really helps you outsmart the corporations. In addition, the offers page still lets you search your offers across all of your cards from different banks there is the for you tab which finds offers based on your past spending the popular tab showing you offers popular with other Max Rewards users and the value tab showing you the offers where you can get the most cash back or rewards and these offers are from all your banks look here is an Amex one and the next one is on my Chase cards some of these are premium features and require Max Rewards Gold but you get a free trial and then a three month discount after the trial ends with my link below. Or if you search it directly on the App Store, use code Ben when you sign up for the same deal. There are also a load of free features that you can try out as well. So there is actually a new Airbnb credit on the Platinum Card now too. But don't get too excited. It is for Airbnb experiences, not regular or even Lux bookings. And there is a big hoop that you need to jump through first to unlock it. So let's go look at this on our benefits page. Scroll down for ages and here it is. We finally found it. Let's click in and I'll read you the terms. Book a prepaid Airbnb Lux stay with Airbnb through Amex Travel or the Amex Travel app with your Platinum card each year to unlock access to the $250 Airbnb Experiences credit benefit. Once your booking is confirmed, you can get up to $250 in statement credits through the remainder of that calendar year after you use your card to purchase Airbnb Experiences directly with Airbnb. So presumably, once you have stayed once at an Airbnb Lux property booked through Amex Travel, this little thing here will change from not unlocked to unlocked. Then for the rest of that calendar year, you will have the option to book an Airbnb experience and get refunded. On the surface, this sounds kind of lame, like, well, I don't, you know, what if I don't want to do one of the activities that are provided in the local area by Airbnb hosts? But actually, in big cities, just like some hotel rooms put their rooms on Airbnb, it seems that many common attractions are now selling through Airbnb. Like if we look at New York, we can book the observation deck at the Empire State Building through Airbnb. Or we can book a sunset cruise to see the Statue of Liberty. So this may now be a case of if you're going to a certain city as a tourist and you know some of the activities that you want to do, search them first on Airbnb experiences to see if they're there. and if they are, you'll be able to use the credit for them. All right, let's now talk about the one change that is really pretty negative. So the one big negative change is to do with the hotel credit, which is $600 per year split into $300 every six months. This isn't to do with Airbnb, okay? So we covered the positive part already. You can use it for Airbnb Lux, but here's the negative thing. Starting on January 1st, 2027, stays at fine hotels and resorts collection properties will now require a two-night stay to trigger the $300 hotel credit. Now, the hotel collection, that's Amex's slightly cheaper collection of hotels, already requires this, okay, a two-night stay. But the fine hotels and resorts collection of slightly more expensive properties has always just been one night to trigger the credit. I used this credit at the Conrad DC in the summer. I booked two nights in late July, booking one of them at the end of June. And then in early July, once the credit reset, I got another $300. I booked the following night in late July. That way I was able to get a two night stay almost completely paid for. But now I would have to do a two night stay as one booking to get just one $300 credit. And I would have to do two separate two night stays. So a total of four nights to get $600. So this is a really big deal for me personally, since the hotel credit actually cancels out two thirds of the annual fee on the card. It's one of the main ways I claw back a large portion of my annual fee. Now I'm going to have to do more trips to use the whole thing, spending more money out of pocket and just getting a, you know, a partial refund rather than something that's pretty much completely paid for. So definitely a negative change. Will I cancel the card because of it? No, definitely not. This card has so many useful benefits, but I am pretty annoyed about it. However, this could be because Chase requires a two night stay at their hotel collection, The Edit, to activate their credit on the Sapphire Reserve. So maybe Amex saw this and was like, well, they're not really competing with us. So if we just match them, we'll make more money. And as long as we're matching them, people can't really complain because there's, you know, they can't go to Chase for a better deal. So we're all good, right? And if Chase changes it in the future, who knows, maybe Amex will go back down to one night too. But who knows, maybe the CEOs were like golfing together and Amex's CEO is like, you know, you're not thinking of changing your two night thing on the hotel credit, are you? And you know, the Chase, you know, Jamie Dimon is like, no, no, no, no. Okay, we'll just match you on that. Let's kind of have a little bit of a gentleman's agreement. Who knows, right? So those are the changes, guys. All of them are active now, except for the one negative change, the two night minimum at FHR properties that will come in on January 1st. Let me know what you think about all this in the comments below. If you want a free trial of Max Rewards Gold and then a three month discount, do click the link below. Or if you download it directly from the App Store. Use code Ben when you sign up for the same deal. Please subscribe to our channel if you're new. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.