MOST UNDERRATED CREDIT CARDS REVIEW | BENEFITS | ANNUAL FEE IN 2023

January 09, 2023 MOST UNDERRATED CREDIT CARDS 0 Comments

MOST UNDERRATED CREDIT CARDS REVIEW | BENEFITS | ANNUAL FEE IN 2023

MOST UNDERRATED CREDIT CARDS | Here I have explained according to my honest review of one of the best underrated cards with benefits, signup bonus & annual fee in 2023.

UNDERRATED CREDIT CARDS COMPLETE GUIDE FOR BEGINNERS

As of a little before this morning I applied for and got approved for arguably one of the most underrated credit cards of 2023 in the crazier part is that this card could pay me potentially up to $724 just to have it in the first yea!

I know you're probably thinking there's no way I know my credit cards and there's no possible way there's a card that could pay me up to potentially over $600 Yes, why?

We're going to break down the ultra-premium luxury travel credit card that could potentially put 700 bucks back in your pocket in the first year.

Introducing the American Express business platinum help. You are thinking of clicking off because you don't think you have a proper business.

But before you do, let me just explain to you exactly what is a business card. And I think you'd be surprised because more of you might qualify than you think about most business cards, like registered LLCs or corporations to apply for business credit cards.

In fact, any sort of side hustle with the intention of making a profit in the past year can be categorised as a business for the purposes of applying for a business credit card.

Have you sold things on the Facebook marketplace? I mean flip items on Craigslist. Have you done freelance work as a writer or those qualify as businesses basically in the past year?

Have you sold any good or service with the intent to generate profit? have you consulted let's say for interior design or for travel if so, then you can apply for a business card using your social security number as a surprise data point?

I have been applying for and getting approved for business cards long before I had my formalised S corporation set up for my social media business.

Back in the day. It was just flipping items online. I ran as a sole proprietor I didn't travel and I was looking for business cards when I was getting approved.

Hopefully, that gives you some clarity as to who can actually get a credit card. So with the housekeeping out of the way, let's go into what we're going to talk about today we're talking about the AmericanExpress business platinum.

We're going to talk about the signup bonus, the earnings potential, the benefits, the annual fee, and of course my final verdict.

The signup bonus for Americans does vary depending on when you're looking how you're looking at who you are, but right now the publicly available offer that I can find is slightly elevated at about 120,000 points after spending $15,000 In the first 3 months.

However, the specific offer that I applied for was actually 50,000 points signup bonus for spending $30,000 Within the first six months what is important to note about American Express is the fact that the signup bonuses are available once and once per lifetime ever.

So let's read through the publicly available offer here it's okay to have or have had this card before but there is a workaround around that in which you actually get a mailer.

Same as I did in the mailer, the terms and conditions are actually a little bit while smaller & there's actually no language that limits how often you can get the bonus right.

So there is no once-per-lifetime language on this mailer's terms and conditions. So that is something interesting to note in that mailers don't seem to play by the publicly available offer, just know that you can get one of those ever.

So you're probably wondering, well, how do you actually target for a mailer? That I'm not so sure about I think the reason I was given this mailer offer was money on my personal platinum and so a mix all said hey, listen, it looks like he has a business.

He spent a lot of his personal we won't get into spend more on his business with us and they gave me this targeted mailer.

So that's how I'm actually going to hit my signup bonus. Pretty big ask but for a lot of businesses, it's something very doable for me specifically, I'm actually going to pay my tax bill with the credit card now paying your taxes typically occurs like a 1.87% processing fee.

But I think fortunate enough that this year, social media has done very well and I have a very big tax bill well over six figures.

So, I'm gonna be able to put $30,000 of it right onto the platinum and be able to hit that 250,000 Point signup bonus now if you don't have that available to you, so I try to get the signup bonus.

Otherwise, obviously just general spend, right if you have a business putting the spend through the business or anytime you're going out with friends, make sure that you're putting as much of the spend on this card as possible and then just demoing people.

I think it's kind of a pain when you're going to look at an Amex offer to ever that I'm gonna get or is the highest available publicly ever.

So there are a lot of walls these different kinds of hoops you have to jump through to locate a good offer and another 50,000 points signup bonus offer that I got in the mail because that's very specific to me.

Not many people are going to be able to pull that through. So at 125,000 points after 15k spin in three months.

That's a four out of five I have seen offers float as high as 150. And then again, once you get higher than that you're gonna have to get targeted mailers and that's just not a guarantee that will be down consistently.

As far as their earnings 250 membership or points per dollar spent for booking flights and prepaid hotels.

Direct through Amex travel.com You will earn 1.5x membership reward points for the following categories here you will also earn 1.5 points which are spent as long as a single purchase is over $5,000 & you earn 1.5 spent everywhere else as an overall rating for this card.

I give it just three out of five as you might have heard earlier, I alluded to the fact that this is a travel-oriented business card.

So it would have been nice to see some better travel categories five points per dollar for a flight is good but you have to book it through a mixed travel if you've just booked it which I think is just a bit of an annoying thing to have to remember when you're booking travel, in addition, the 1.5 points per dollar spent on anything over $5,000.

Again, I understand what AIMEX is trying to do they want you to spend more on the guard but they also have cards that are just going to give you two points but that's not as a spend. I feel like something like that could have been introduced here.

Next up you have benefits now this is we're really in a sink our teeth in because this is where I think the card truly shines above everything else out on the marketplace.

So we're going to talk about it in three categories.

1. I'm just gonna talk about general travel perks.

2. The credits that the card offers.

3. And three is just going to be all the other types of benefits and don't fit neatly into one of those two travel benefits.

 

TYPES OF BENEFITS

The first one is pretty straightforward. You probably could have guessed it is the fact that you have transfer Partners eligible for your membership reward points that you earn we're gonna get into too much detail about exactly who is best and where you should transfer and how but just know if some of the programmes that I really value are defined blue programme which is going to be Air France as well as Royal Dutch tail and there's going to be your single poor Chris flyer miles.

There's also British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and a&m I really like those programmes. So typically what I do is I take my membership more points I transfer those programmes and then I just make my award bookings next travel perk we have is the global lounge collection.

So this is where this card I think really beautiful air airport lounges that you have access to just by way of having a business plan.

So one pretty standard you're gonna get a priority pass select membership, basically, you have access to all of the lounges within the priority pass network with the exception of actually getting a restaurant credit. Unfortunately, that is only now reserved for the Chase Sapphire reserve to get access to American Express's Centurion lounges, which I would argue are some of the domestic lounges in the United States.

Period. There's also one in Hong Kong so they haven't an international footprint but I would say domestically they are some of the best find out of JFK flying out of LaGuardia flying out to SF Oh, those are places that I've used it pretty frequently and they are starting to expand a little bit more on that but absolutely love this entire image and this is one of honestly my key drop, like business platinum.

Next up you also have access to Delta sky club. So if you are flying Delta and you have an American Express business platinum card, you can go in and access any of the Delta sky club lounges.

And one of the more underrated lounges, I think is the Lufthansa lounges. So Lufthansa Group is comprised of all the airlines.

The two to call out are either Lufthansa you have an Amex business platinum and you're flying one of these airlines you can get access either to the Lufthansa business lounge or to their senator Lounge, which is kind of like a first-class lounge.

Now, they technically have a truly first class, but this is kind of their first class for everyone else.

We're not going to get into it. But all you need to know is if you're flying on any of these airlines as shown there. This is platinum you're eligible to access either their business lounge on any ticket or their senator lounge if you're already flying in a business class configuration.

The next travel perk you have is status specifically you get gold status to add Hilton as well as Marriott. Now, to me, that's not that valuable, honestly. Because you can get Hilton platinum status just by getting one of the more top-to-your-Amex cards offered specifically to that hotel chain. However, if you want to keep it light, you want to keep it simple, good way to get statuses.

Now don't expect to get any perks or really that much special treatment, especially if you're in the US with this.

However, if you are abroad, you might actually recognise and you might even be able to pull in an upgrade with just the gold status.

Next up we have a car rental, if you book with Avis and you have an Amex business platinum, you can get up to a 25% discount.

National enrolled could actually get you a free rental day and if you use hertz, you actually have a four hour Grace window meaning if you're renting from 12 to 12, you're actually renting from 12 to four without getting charged for another full day and you can get a discount of up to 20 base rate.

This card also offers trip delay coverage, which starts at six hours as long as you're booking a round trip ticket using the AMEX business platinum and it will cover you up to $500 max per trip and allows for up to two claims per 12-month rolling cycle.

Next up you also have baggage insurance. So this covers up to $2,000 per check bag or $3 Check bag and a carry on and the last part to call out is the AIMEX fine hotel and resorts perk.

Now there is a credit in here and I know I'd say the credits but we'll transition nicely into our next section.

So the finance and rewards Park basically allows you to choose resort programme and within there you're going to get offered a $100 experience credit that you can use at the hotel.

So as an example we actually use this perk when we stayed at the Shangri La in Sydney as a $100 credit we use it at the spa.

Next benefit category credits the first card I want to call out is the $400 pretty cool so you get $20 per half.

Now what I will look to spend it on it's probably going to be accessories I've become a Mac guy myself, so probably not buying any laptops from Dell anytime soon. But for me, this is a super useful credit for accessories.

The next credit is a $360 credit to non as $90 per quarter. So you'd have to use it four times per year as far as how this should be used as probably for the job posting.

So for example, obviously it's free to post jobs on indeed as an employer but if you want to get your job notice if you want to boost it basically you're kind of sponsoring the posts you're gonna have to pay to look to use this credit specifically.

The next business credit is $120 to Adobe so I pay for all my subscriptions to Photoshop as well as Lightroom in addition to Adobe Acrobat Pro, so this easily covers me and what I like about this credit is that you don't have to split it up you can just use it one time upfront.

However, I haven't actually figured out a way to actually charge it one time upfront because Adobe just likes to build per month so inadvertently works out to be a monthly thing but again, note that you don't have to actually wait in specific intervals you can just go with business credit to highlight is the wireless credit.

So basically use this card to pay for your phone bill and you get credit for it and it's $120 Wireless credit that gets split out into $10 per month.

The next three credits are all related to meaning $100 airline incidental credit now this credit as the pro tip used to be a lot easier to extract value from basically you pick an airline of choice at the beginning of the year.

And if you have incidental savings, like a seat upgrade a checked bag, buying food on the plane.

Back in the day like three or four years ago, you could also just buy a gift card because you weren't allowed to use this credit to book for flights.

Now the slight workaround is specific to Delta. Here's a pro tip when you can do is buy a Delta gift card normally go ahead and let's say you find a I don't know $500 Delta flight and you have a $400 Delta gift card you can charge $100 on an Amex business platinum that $100 Looks like an incidental and so you would get the credit now who knows when this loophole is going to be closed.

Obviously, you shouldn't be doing this but it works and that's one way that you could look to maximise this airline's incidental credit.

Next up you have a $189 credit to clear so clear front and you also have a $100 credit to Global Entry or TSA PreCheck.

I recommend doing it for Global Entry because Global Entry comes with TSA PreCheck in my pro tip for Global Entry is to do your interviews on arrival don't wait to schedule interviews because they're scheduled for six months in advance.

So, if we look at all the credits in aggregate of just the business credit unit, dollars of credits are about $1030 every year and if we look at all of the credits in the first year you will get about $1,519 worth of credits.

The third category of benefits we have is just others I don't know where else to put these guys.

So the first ones to call out are kind of where a Max has special pop ups if you will, at certain when or at Coachella if you have an MX card you can go into a kind of a specific section in which maybe there's food maybe there's a sea maybe there's kind of bathrooms.

So that's a pretty cool perk of having an Amex next you can get a 35% point rebate as long as you book your flight using the pay with points.

Calm you can pay for a flight with cash or you can use your points to book now it's not always advisable to pay with points because paying with points is going down.

It's where it's really cheap and it's close enough it could make sense to do this so that then you get the 35% point rebate as long as you book your flight using the pay with points option. So you can go to amextravel.com.

You can pay for a fight with cash or you can use your points above. Now, it's not always advisable to pay with points because anybody with points isn't going to give you the best cent per point value, however, where it's really cheap and it's close enough, it could make sense to do this so that then you get the 35% point rebate.

The card also comes with purchase protection, which is one of my favourites. Basically, you buy an item with your Amex business platinum, and the item gets stolen, it gets damaged or it gets lost. You can now claim for up to $10,000 per item up to $50,000 I think in total claims in a month.

This card also offers return protection basically you buy an item let's say from Apple because Apple typically has a pretty stringent two week return policy and after say four weeks you wanted to return the item.

Well if you bought it with the AMEX business platinum, you could actually file a claim in which you're covered per item for basically returns the vendor or merchant is not willing to accept your return a Max would basically then allow you to file a claim for that and you can get the return process and oftentimes as you say to keep the item anyway.

So an aggregate as I looked at a whole lot of the benefits of this card is absolutely stacked and unlike the personal flavour where the credits honestly our coupon book, the credit in the business flavour is actually useful especially for folks who are running a business.

And so taking a look at that I would give this five I get easy. Finally, we have the annual fee.

His card comes with a hefty annual fee but again, it's a hefty card at $695 on the year who remembers those credits now if we just look at the business credits, which you'll have given $1,030 of business credits, take out the $695 you actually end up with $335 back in your pocket, but in your first year assume you take advantage of all of the travel credits at $1519 worth of credits take away that $695 You could potentially be getting paid over $100 to have this card specifically $824.

That's insane. Now is everyone going to be pulling out all of those travel credits? Maybe maybe not.

I would say probably the one that you could pull off, you know, winter is was TSA PreCheck.

And so that gets us closer to that $724 of total credits in the first year. I think most people can't advantage up for that considering this is a top-to-your-premium travel business card yet you can get paid either something dollars $300, or $700 for it.

This is definitely going to be a five out of five stars it is. The final verdict on the American Express business platinum is 17 out of 20 stars.

For this card for year one, I would absolutely jump on this card compared to the personal finance because again, the personal platinum, it's just so much harder to extract value from those credits.

Whereas this I think is so much easier especially if you're operating as a business now as far as keeping it for a year 234 And 5.

This is actually one that I personally would continue to keep because I would continue using those business cards and I would kind of quote-unquote go ahead and use the card let me know in the comment section down below.

What are your thoughts would you use all this credit and if you are interested in this card, feel free.

IF YOU WANT TO LEARN WHAT ARE THE WORST CREDIT CARDS IN 2023 THEN YOU CAN READ IT IN THE NEXT ARTICLE N THIS SITE.

*Declaimer – for your selected airlines.

Conclude – Here I have explained in full detail about which is the most underrated credit card in 2023 with a signup bonus, benefits & annual fees for beginners according to my honest review.