Why We Downgraded From the Amex Platinum Card to the Amex Green Card

If you haven’t heard me say it before, here’s another reminder: I believe in reevaluating your credit cards and determining which cards should make the team for the next year. The best time to make that decision is when your card’s annual fee is due, assuming it has one.

The Platinum Card^® from American Express has a $695 annual fee (rates & fees), and it hit my wife’s account last month. After taking a serious look at the benefits and the value she was obtaining from them, we decided to downgrade to the American Express^® Green Card*, with a much more reasonable $150 annual fee (rates & fees).

Yes, there are some benefits we’ll lose. However, some benefits remain the same, and we think we’ll come out ahead with new perks after this change. Here’s why we made the switch.

*The information regarding the American Express^® Green Card was independently collected by Upgraded Points and not provided nor reviewed by the issuer.

Amex Platinum Card vs. Amex Green Card: Key Differences

The Amex Platinum card and Amex Green card share several important features. For example, both cards earn Membership Rewards points and both offer insurance and shopping protections. Neither card has foreign transaction fees, either (see rates & fees of the Amex Green card and rates & fees of the Amex Platinum card).

Additionally, both cards offer access to Amex Offers upon enrollment, an annual statement credit toward CLEAR Plus membership, and don’t come with a preset spending limit* — unlike traditional credit cards.

However, these cards also have big differences.

The Amex Platinum card has a greater annual fee of $695 and earns 5x points on flights booked directly with airlines or through AmexTravel.com — up to $500,000 of these purchases annually, then 1x. You also earn 5x on prepaid hotels booked at AmexTravel.com and 1x on other purchases.

With the Amex Platinum card, you get numerous perks not included with the Amex Green card, such as annual shopping credits with Saks Fifth Avenue, Uber Cash, up to $200 as an airline fee credit, access to the American Express Global Lounge Collection, up to $200 as a prepaid hotel booking credit, up to $240 in digital entertainment credits, and much more. Note that many of these benefits require enrollment prior to using them.

The Amex Green card, in contrast, has an annual fee of $150 (rates & fees) and a very different earning structure. It earns 3x points on travel, transit, and dining, plus 1x on other qualifying purchases. The 3x categories include trains, taxis, buses, subways, restaurants worldwide, takeout and delivery in the U.S., campgrounds, cruises, vacation rentals, and more.

However, the Amex Green card isn’t without its own lounge benefit. This comes in the form of up to $100 in Lounge Buddy credits each calendar year, received as statement credits after you pay for lounge passes directly through the Lounge Buddy website or mobile app.

Is the Amex Platinum Card Worth It?

When the annual fee posted to my wife’s Amex Platinum card this year, we analyzed the benefits to see what value we were obtaining from them.

Remember that many of these statement credits below require enrollment. Here’s an overview of each perk and their value according to our travel and lifestyle habits.

1. Access to 1,400+ Airport Lounges

The American Express Global Lounge Collection gives no value to us. My wife also has The Business Platinum Card^® from American Express and I have the Amex Platinum card, already covering this benefit.

2. Walmart+ Credit

With the Walmart+ credit, you can get up to $12.95 plus applicable taxes back on 1 Walmart+ membership (excluding Plus Ups) each month, totaling $155 per year. This is another benefit with no value to us, as we don’t need 2 accounts.

3. Prepaid Hotel Credit

The prepaid hotel credit offers up to $200 back annually in statement credits on prepaid Fine Hotels + Resorts or The Hotel Collection bookings (min. 2-night stay) with AmexTravel.com. We attempted to use this benefit because it was there, but we felt it only had $100 in value.

4. Airline Fee Credit

The airline incidental credit provides up to $200 in statement credits per year when incidental fees on a one selected qualifying airline. We used it in a “just because it’s there” format for Wi-Fi and snacks, but it didn’t provide actual value in our eyes.

5. Saks Credit

Upon enrollment, get up to $100 in statement credits annually for purchases in Saks Fifth Avenue stores or at saks.com; the Saks credit is distributed as a $50 credit semi-annually. This has no value for us — we never shop here and struggled to find items we liked for less than the credit’s value.

6. Digital Entertainment Credit

Upon enrollment, get up to $20 back in statement credits each month on eligible purchases from Disney+, a Disney Bundle, ESPN+, Hulu, The New York Times, Peacock, and The Wall Street Journal. With the recent changes to the digital entertainment credit, it lost value for us when SiriusXM and Audible left the list of eligible partners.

7. Clear Plus Credit

You’ll get up to $199 back per calendar year on your CLEAR Plus Membership. There’s no additional value here since my wife also has the Clear Plus credit on her Amex Business Platinum card. Plus, the Amex Green card will offer this perk to my wife going forward.

8. Uber Cash Credit

You’ll need to add your card as a payment method in your Uber account to receive the monthly Uber Cash allotment. As such, you can get up to $200 in Uber Cash for rides or eats orders in the U.S. annually, and it’s the only benefit we actively used. We assigned the Uber Cash credit the full value of $200 since we used it for rides to the airport nearly every month.

Effective 11/8/2024, an Amex Card must be selected as the payment method for your Uber or Uber Eats transaction to redeem the Amex Uber Cash benefit.

Closing the Amex Platinum Card

Looking across the impressive list of benefits, the value for us wasn’t worthwhile in the end. We assigned just $300 in value to these benefits — well below the Amex Platinum card’s $695 annual fee.

To be clear, much of our “no value to us” view of these benefits came because they overlapped with other cards in our wallets. For example, there’s no need to have 2 Walmart+ accounts for grocery delivery perks when we live together, and my wife can’t get any value from having 2 cards that get her into a lounge at the airport when she can’t be in 2 places at the same time.

When deciding whether to keep or cancel her Amex Platinum card, my wife opened a chat after logging in to her account at AmericanExpress.com. She told the agent she was considering closing the card and asked if there were any retention offers available on her account before making a final decision.

There weren’t any offers available. Thus, our decision was between closing the account or downgrading to another card that offered something more valuable in our situation.

Hot Tip:

Keeping a card account open, rather than closing it, can help improve your credit score by preserving your length of credit history — one of the elements that make up your credit score in the U.S.

Why We Downgraded to the Amex Green Card (Instead of Canceling)

At this point, we knew the Amex Platinum card was no longer a good fit for my wife’s credit card portfolio. We wanted to avoid paying the annual fee for another year.

If we wanted to preserve the account history, there were 2 options for downgrading to cards with lower annual fees: the American Express^® Gold Card, with a $325 annual fee (rates & fees), and the Amex Green card, with a $150 annual fee.

A few unique features drew us to the Amex Green card. First, it earns well on a wide range of travel and transit purchases. We can already earn 3x points (or higher) on dining with our other credit cards, but we were excited by the prospect of bonus earnings on taxis, tolls, subways, campgrounds, and similar expenses with the Amex Green card.

Moreover, the unique lounge benefit sealed the deal for us. Despite having access to Amex’s own brand of lounges and Priority Pass lounges (after enrolling for this benefit with American Express), we feel that doesn’t cover everything. Considering how often my wife and I travel, we’ve found ourselves in terminals with lounges that we can’t access for free with our current lounge benefits. The Amex Green card provides a solid Plan B.

We can now pay for access to additional lounges and be reimbursed via a statement credit. We like the idea that this can provide a lounge visit at no out-of-pocket cost when there’s no American Express or Priority Pass lounge available.

If we can get $150 in value each year from my wife’s Amex Green card, it will be worth it. Given our increased earning power on travel and transit, we think we’ll come out ahead if we use the LoungeBuddy benefit just once per year on a trip together.

Final Thoughts

I’m very happy with my Amex Platinum card — I paid the annual fee just 2 months ago to keep it in my wallet for another year. However, the valuation was vastly different when my wife’s annual fee was due. We weren’t using many of the benefits, either because they don’t match our lifestyle or because we could replicate them with other credit cards.

For us, downgrading to the Amex Green card made sense, offering a benefit we don’t already have and expanded earning power for our future travels.

The cards we had in our wallets last year won’t always make sense going forward. You should evaluate them each year to make sure they’re providing value; just because a card was the all-star in your credit card team last year doesn’t mean it will make the team this year. That happened with my wife’s Amex Platinum card this year, and the Amex Green card provided a better option for the year to come.

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*No Preset Spending Limit means your spending limit is flexible. Unlike a traditional card with a set limit, the amount you can spend adapts based on factors such as your purchase, payment, and credit history.