credit card benefits

Are the Changes to Citi AAdvantage Business World Elite Mastercard a game changer?

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I have a couple of small businesses and like all good churners I have a few business credit cards for those purposes. This includes the Citibank American Airlines Work Elite Mastercard. It’s always been an OK card with decent earn rates towards American Airlines AAdvantage miles and the sign-up bonus was good. It’s good for small businesses where you can add and manage additional cardholders. To me, it was about like their other personal platinum-flavored cards. It usually offers a SUB of around 70,000’ish miles and a low annual fee. Earns 2x on some things like telecommunications and 2x on gas as long as you only want 1x loyalty points for that with the other 1x being “bonus” miles only. Yawn.

This card is not to be confused with the Barclay Aviator Business card but yet it’s about the same.

So why are we talking about this card now and how could it be a game changer for a few select people chasing status or benefits?

They are changing this card and how it’s going to reward you.

Citibank just released changes to this card as follows:

Enjoy your new, exclusive AAdvantage Business™ membership benefits as a Citi® / AAdvantage Business™ cardmember, now available to you and your Authorized Users.

 
 What’s new 
 
 • We’ve updated our name to Citi®/ AAdvantage Business™ World Elite Mastercard® to better reflect the new value of your added benefits with the AAdvantage Business™ program. You will not be immediately reissued a new card with this change. 
 
 • With your AAdvantage Business™ membership, miles your company earns from eligible purchases made with the Citi® / AAdvantage Business™ card will now accrue to your AAdvantage Business™ account. They can be distributed to any registered employee at no cost, for use on flights, upgrades, car rentals and more. 
 
 • Each registered cardmember, the Primary and any Authorized Users, earns Loyalty Points toward status from eligible purchases made with the Citi® / AAdvantage Business™ card in their name. 
 
 
 • As a Citi® / AAdvantage Business™ cardmember, your company enjoys waived program requirements. Your miles are always available for you to use, no need to meet the $5,000 spend and 5 traveler minimums. 
 
 Same great benefits 
 
 • Continue to earn 2X miles on eligible American Airlines purchases, 2X miles at telecommunications merchants and cable and satellite providers, and 2X miles on car rental merchants and at gas stations 
 
 • Earn 1 mile for every $1 spent on all other eligible purchases made with your Citi® / AAdvantage Business™ card. 
 
 • As the Primary Cardmember, you’ll continue to enjoy your first checked bag free on domestic American Airlines itineraries, plus preferred boarding on American Airlines flights. 
 
 If you haven’t already, invite your Authorized Users and employees to register with your AAdvantage Business™ account and start earning miles for your business right away. Authorized Users must register to participate in the AAdvantage Business™ program, or their card account may be closed. Visit the travel management portal to get started.

So what? Well, look at the fine print. “In Theory” it seems that your employees (or other additional cardholders in 2-player mode) will earn 1x loyalty points on purchases but as the “business owner,” you will also earn 1x loyalty points on those purchases. While higher-level cards may earn high-level spending bonuses this is pretty sweet but not unusual.

But…Imagine if you will, you have a small business and you have your wife, your college student child, and your deadbeat cousin, and some actual, good employees all spending on this card. It “seems” like “In Theory” that all that cash flow going through those employee cards you would earn extra loyalty points plus business points for what they are doing daily like buying gas. Imagine you have a thriving small business where you have 10 or 20 employees doing this. Citi includes a graphic on this as well to prove my point.

Here it is again from their FAQ:

“Miles earned from the Primary Cardmember and Authorized Users post to the company’s AAdvantage Business™ account. Each card member (Primary and employee) earns Loyalty Points on their card purchases. Loyalty Points earned by the Primary Cardmember post to the Primary’s AAdvantage® account. Loyalty Points earned by the employee post to the employee’s AAdvantage® account.”

Now, maybe it’s not the big of a deal as a standard additional cardholder on your personal account would also contribute to your loyalty points but this allows you to have many employees contribute from the way I read this.

If you are looking to sign up and get the best sign-up bonus for such a card I’d suggest checking out the Frequent Miler blog’s “Best Offers” page as a good place to start your research.

Why Amex Platinum Fine Hotels and Resorts Benefit is worthless to me.

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So I found myself at 7pm on 12-31-22, once again trying to figure out a way to use the American Express Personal Platinum card Fine Hotel and Resorts $200 annual credit. For those living under a rock, this benefit is supposed to be a way to claw back some of the overpriced annual fee. It is basically as useful as most hotel discount rates. I’d compare it to the IHG Ambassador free weekend night benefit but less useful due to the limited locations for the average person.

So I sound really negative but here is why. If you look at the entire list of FHR or Hotel Collection locations there are entire states and major cities without a single location. The Proud Money blog has a nice list for example. Sure California, New York, and Florida all do pretty well but 1 location in Indiana and none in Kansas are just a few examples of holes in this program. This doesn’t even mention locations all over the world that either lack any locations or only have a few (which are all super expensive of course).

Ok so I’m mad I couldn’t figure out how to use this again for the 2nd year in a row and 2023 isn’t looking promising. Maybe I’m just bitter so I’ll give you an example of why this program isn’t worth anything to me.

This is a summary from the Amex website that makes this sound awesome. I’ll overlook the fact that it’s now 2023 and Wi-Fi, like Color TV, should be included at all hotels for free anyway. In some odd way, Amex is promising “strong coffee” but I assume that comes at a price.

Amex promises extra benefits on FHR 1-night prepaid stays or Hotel Collection 2-night stays in addition to the $200 rebate. You can book it far in advance and get the benefit once per calendar year so you could book your 2022 benefit into 2023 and then use the 2023 credit as well. This all sounds good but unless you are already planning to pay for a stay at one of these higher-end properties it might not be your best rate, by far.

So one potential location that would have worked for me is an upcoming trip to Israel that I’m considering so I checked Israel. I was in luck as there are several properties there that could work. Let’s compare the rate for one.

A web search finds the IHG Intercontinental Tel Aviv for $314 per night on Google Maps. Now, this isn’t 100% fair since the $314 is a prepaid 3rd party OTA site and doesn’t include taxes most likely but even the IHG website has it for less than about $350 a night for most nights. But let’s look at the Amex website. Keep in mind that as an IHG member with just about any status at all you will earn bonus IHG points., late check-out, etc. so this offsets any Amex 5x benefits except for the food credit which is usually around $100 if you want to eat at the hotel while in Tel Aviv.

$415 seems high compared to the $314 on Google? Weird that this is around a $100 difference, huh… Now I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that not all FHR properties are like this. I have found a few that are about the same but at the end of the day, you still aren’t getting the best rate. No such thing as a free lunch as they say.

For this hotel, I could also use around 60,000 IHG points for a free night which I could likely buy at around .5 cents per point or less so about $300. Since I’m an IHG Ambassador status person I’ll likely skip the Amex benefit but this is just one example of many that I’ve found.

I’ve been able to use the $200 airline credit at less than $200 in value for misc junk like miles and such. I’ve also made good use of the Saks $50 credit but I bought stuff I really didn’t need at a store I don’t love, at prices that are much too high so I don’t value that at $100 per year. I think I’m going to have to downgrade my Platinum card for 2023 back to Gold so I at least get 4x at restaurants.

Bottom line: Are there some deals and value to be found with this benefit? Sure, but not for most people, and certainly not for me. When combined with the higher fees and the new 2023 limits on Centurion Lounge access the Amex Platinum card is no longer worth it to me.