Why I Am Cheering the Amex Platinum Fee Hike: It’s About Lounge Access

by Robert McGarvey

Howls are heard across the Internet about Amex’s move to hike the fees for additional card holders. Right now I pay $175 for my wife’s card. When it next renews I’ll be dinged $195, $20 more.

Big deal? You are right so far as that math goes but that same $175 could have bought me cards for two additional cardholders at no extra charge., Now Amex wants $195 for each cardholder.

The applause you hear are mine and I will take you back to Denver Airport a short time ago when I started towards the Centurion Club but as I was about to take an escalator to the lounge level I saw a person holding a sign indicating the wait to get in the Centurion Lounge was 30 minutes.

I stopped in my tracks and sought other amusements at the airport.

Let’s be honest: for at least a year screams have been loud that the onetime glorious Amex Plat perk, admission to the Centurion Lounge, was now of little appeal – long wait times to get in and often crowding inside the lounge had ruined the experience. Personally I had begun to not even think of the Centurion Lounge and I wasn’t alone. Amex knew it had a problem here. Angry posts were plastered on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, you name it.

Earlier this year a big shoe dropped when Amex ended free Centurion access to guests of the cardholder unless the cardholder spends at least $75,000 per year on the card. Guests now cost $50 ($30 for minors). That had been a major shift – but it obviously was insufficient (witness the wait time I experienced at Denver).

Now Amex has dropped this other shoe. Will it be sufficient to fix the overcrowding problem?

Experts believe the point of this fee hike wasn’t simply to increase Amex revenues, but in fact to cut down on the bodies in the lounges. Will it work?

There’s some skepticism about that. There’s no evidence to suggest secondary Plat cardholders in fact make heavy use of the lounge perk.

For that matter, however, I am unaware of any public tally of the number of secondary Plat cardholders. Is this in fact a sizable number?

Without some basic data it’s not possible to forecast what difference this change in how additional cards are dealt will in fact lead to more reliable lounge access.

But, again, I applaud this step because it at least is an acknowledgement that the lounge situation is out of control. And it will result in some decrease in the number of cardholders seeking access.

Amex probably will have to take still more steps to return us to a time when I walked up to a Centurion Lounge and within minutes was inside and seated and might already have had a beverage in hand.

Personally, I already am dusting off my Priority Pass card – which comes with the Amex Plat – and using those lounges when there is no availability at Centurion. I also often choose to fly Delta which gives access to its lounges to Amex Plat card holders, although I will say recent experiences at Delta also have featured long waits for entrance (so I just walked away).

I also am looking at my Diners Club card which offers lounge access, much the same as Priority Pass if my memory serves, but another quiver is useful in times of scarcity.

Should I get a Chase Sapphire card and/or a Venture X card? Nah, neither has enough lounges to justify getting a new card, at least not yet. But keep an eye on both as they announce plans for new clubs and if there’s one at your home airport, well, that may be a persuader.

That’s because, yes, probably the solution will be more airport clubs, with more fees and, yes, that will bring complaints but already there are so many complaints about lounges, a few more won’t amount to much consequential. The situation needs fixing, no question about that, but fixes won’t be cheap. If we want more, better lounges we’ll have to pay up. There’s no other answer.