News and notes from around the interweb:
- Germany should give up on the new Berlin airport and start from scratch
- Delta launched optional finger print in lieu of boarding pass boarding at Washington National airport
- I write predominantly about travel in premium cabins, so I thought it would be useful to link to the best options to fly cross country in economy.
- United names a 16 year ExxonMobile executive as new head of government relations. For 10 of those years current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was ExxonMobil CEO. That makes her a hot commodity for anyone seeing to curry favor with the Department of State.
- Amtrak MasterCard 30,000 points after $1000 minimum spend
Copyright: tdezenzio / 123RF Stock Photo - AmEx Is in Hand-to-Hand Combat With JPMorgan Over Rewards Cards
American Express Co. spent the most in at least nine years on rewards last quarter as it worked to retain customers lured by a spate of recent offerings from competitors. AmEx, which has described its core U.S. card holders as those with annual income over $200,000, has seen wealthy customers flock to new products like JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Sapphire Reserve.
AmEx’s Doug Buckminster, the president of global consumer services, said in March that his company has been in “hand-to-hand combat” with JPMorgan as issuers sweeten rewards to attract business.
- Senator Ted Cruz wrote a hack letter in favor of protectionism against Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar. He is Senator from American’s home state, and has proven himself ideologically ‘flexible’ over the past couple of years.
The AmEx spend must explain while I was solicited and now have new Gold card with big sign up bonus and waived annual fee even though I’ve had Gold cards before
Why? How much do you spend on your Amex cards? How come I didn’t get that offer?
Speaking of hand to hand combat with Chase, I haven’t used my Business Platinum at all in the last 6 months after charging 20k in the first month and they just sent me a 50k bonus point offer to start spending on it again. It’s 40k pts for 5k and another 10k pts for 5k more spend. Yes please!
They would get more sign ups if they ended the only one sign up per lifetime of each card type. I keep getting offers for the Deltas cards except I had all of them at one time another. Though Delta emails me quarterly for a Gold Delta card for 50k, 60k at Xmas. I’m hesitant to apply, but $1k spend is an easy to achieve….
Odd I thought the republicans were supposed to be for less regulation and letting the market sort itself out. Hypocrites.
@Bill – huh? ha?, where in the hell did that come from? hahaha……I thought we were talking about AMEX vs. Chase! You’re in the wrong blog forum buddy. I think you meant to go to HuffPost.
Whew! anyway, if AMEX considers themselves to be in combat with Chase, the, first, they have to get rid of the “OIAL” rule. Secondly, they must improve there Platinum offerings by way of bonus categories and not increase the fee on the Personal version…and stop giving candy and deciding to slice the candy in half. Chase CSR just beats the crap out of the Platinums. Hey AMEX, this is a war that you are clearly losing and you look foolish at it.
@Bill
Foreign governments using their national wealth to bankroll massive losses aimed at bankrupting companies that have to raise capital on the merits of their profitability is not competition, it’s espionage.
I got the same offer as Rob yesterday by email, no sign-up or registration necessary, for a business platinum that I carry for the benefits and almost never use.