Doctor of Credit is reporting on some rumored changes to the Amex Gold card. Apparently, the CEO of American Express recently teased an announcement about Amex’s “refreshed U.S. Consumer Gold Card in the coming weeks” and now Doctor of Credit has also reported on what those changes might be. I want to emphasize that all of this is rumor at this point and there has been no official communication from Amex about specifics changing on the card. That said, if these turn out to be the actual changes, I think the Amex Gold card might come out better for me but I have to question the broader market for it.
The rumored changes to the Amex Gold card
Doctor of Credit reports the following rumored changes coming to the Amex Gold card:
- $325 annual fee ($75 increase from the current $250 annual fee)
- Option of white gold card
- $7 monthly Dunkin donuts credit
- $50 semi-annual Resy credit
- 4x points at restaurants will be limited to $50,000 in purchases per year
- Up to $10 monthly Uber cash credit remains unchanged
- Up to $10 monthly dining credit for select dining purchases, which will continue to include GrubHub and a number of other merchants. Milk Bar and Shake Shack will be removed from this credit but Five Guys will be added as an option
Essentially, the card is increasing in price by $75 a year while adding a $50 semi-annual Resy credit and a $7 monthly Dunkin Donuts credit. The other two key changes for some will be the new $50K annual cap on earning 4x at restaurants and the addition of Five Guys as an option for using the second dining credit (and loss of Milk Bar / Shake Shack if those were favorites of yours).
Quick thoughts on the rumored changes
My first reaction is that while I’m not surprised to see a rumored increase in annual fee (as that has become Amex’s MO when refreshing a card), I simultaneously question the wisdom of increasing the fee on what I consider to be their core grocery & dining card to a price that I think many average folks will find hard to swallow.
That’s to say that while I like the card and I find the Amex Gold card to be the backbone of an Amex strategy for most Membership Rewards fans, I think the price tag was already on the high end for many people. I feel like the increase to an annual fee that is “more than three hundred dollars” makes this a card that won’t feel compelling to anyone who isn’t doing the math and making a focused effort to come out ahead. While $250 was already high, I think that $325 is likely to turn people off pretty strongly unless they are very confident that they’ll use the credits.
Speaking of the credits, I’m sure that some will also be turned off by the further cuponification of Amex cards. On the one hand, I agree. If I wanted to buy an Entertainment Book, I’d buy one. But I don’t.
On the other hand, I’m sure that some folks will be pretty satisfied with the additions. If you regularly make Resy reservations, you’ll probably be happy with what could be an extra $100 back per year. And if America truly does run on Dunkin, that’s another potential $84 per year if you use it every month (and I wouldn’t be shocked if it ends up being pretty easy to use that in the Dunkin app).
Personally, I think the math is going to work out better for me and it’s not because of the Resy credit. In fact, I’ve never used Resy and I’m not going to count on using it even if that credit does get added. However, I’m sure I’ll use the Dunkin credit if that gets added. I actually don’t really like Dunkin coffee, but I don’t dislike it strongly enough to choose Statbucks over Dunkin if this credit gets added. I’m not excited, but I’m already spending more than $7 a month on coffee and making that a stop at Dunkin once a month wouldn’t hurt me.
More importantly for me, I don’t currently use the secondary $10 monthly “Grubhub et al” dining credit at all. However, we do end up going to Five Guys about once a month as-is. I was on the edge before between the Amex Gold card and going to the SavorOne as my primary grocery and dining card, but the additional value I’d stand to get between Dunkin and Five Guys means that even after the $75 annual fee increase, I’ll probably come out a bit farther ahead than before. If I also use one or both of the Resy credits, it might seem like an improvement for me.
However, I expect that I’m probably an edge case in that the addition of Five Guys makes a big difference for me on a dining credit that I wasn’t using and that I’m easily willing to switch one coffee stop a month to Dunkin. I imagine many people will not like paying more for increased couponification.
Obviously the new cap on dining is also a problem for anyone who had very high dining expenses. I think a reader once mentioned being in a position to frequently hire out catering for filming productions or being a caterer who occasionally has to order out from restaurants to fulfill all of their needs. If you were in that type of circumstance, the cap on dining here would be a huge bummer. That said, you could switch over to the Business Gold card for significantly increased capacity so long as dining remains one of your two two categories each month.
We’ll see whether rumors prove to be true. I suspect that existing cardholders will keep their annual fee through next renewal after some as yet unannounced date in the future. Again, it’s all rumored changes and we don’t yet have a timeline, so there is no sense in panicking just yet even if you don’t like the changes. At the very least, existing cardholders will probably get a chance to eke a little value out before being confronted at renewal with any annual fee increase that may be announced.
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