Credit Cards

You can ask for the Black American Express Centurion Card

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$10000 initiation fee and $5000 annually, Authorized Users are another $2500. The Black Card is for those who have some cash to spare. That…or you have a business that processes a lot via Amex and you have decided that the 2 cent redemption rate Amex Business Black Card holders get on premium flights outweighs the annual fee. Either way…it used to be that you needed to wait to get an invitation and those came if you spent more than $250k to $500k.

A few things to know about Black Cards – American Express Centurion Cards

  • Personal Centurion: 20% points back when used for premium flights or selected airline
    • 1.25c per point
  •  Business Centurion: 50% points back premium flights or selected airline
    • 2c per point
  • IHG Platinum Elite
  • Hilton Honors Diamond
  • Marriott Bonvoy Gold
  • Earn 1.5X Membership Rewards points per dollar on purchases over $5,000
    • (Up to 1 million additional points per calendar year)
  • Delta SkyMiles Platinum Medallion status,
  • Hertz Platinum
  • Avis President’s Club

Why a Black Card could actually make financial sense to you…

You’d need to be able to out-redeem the Amex Business Platinum + your initiation and annual fee, which is $15000 less the business platinum which is $595 and become $695 next year. Let’s use $695…so you’d need $14305 in added value. In the first year that would be roughly 3.2 Million in spend at 1x.  After that it would be significantly less – roughly 957k. Those would be breakeven and the residuals bennies from Hilton Diamond, Delta Plat, etc would outweigh the fees. That really isn’t that much for business spend…

  • 3.2 Million Amex points
    • $64k in value with Biz Black
    • $49,600 with Biz Plat
  • 957k Amex Points
    • $19,140
    • $14,835

 

Sound Good? You can go here to request an invitation:

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No guarantees…

H/T ZDNet

Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

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Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card


4.8
4.8/5
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is a great starter card that earns Premium Ultimate Rewards that can be transferred into over a dozen partners many of which are US based including Hyatt, Southwest, United, IHG, and Marriott.

Welcome Offer

60k Points after $4k spend in 3 months

Annual Fee

$95

Points Earned

Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards

  • 3x on dining
    •  including eligible delivery services for takeout
  • 3x on select streaming services
  • 3x on online grocery purchases
    • (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
  • 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel Portal
  • 2x on all other travel
  • $50 Annual Credit on hotel stays purchased via Chase Travel
    • The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
  • 10% Anniversary Bonus
    • Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
  • Chase Sapphire Preferred® continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel Portal and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including primary rental car insurance, purchase protections, etc.
  • Points are transferrable to 13 Ultimate Rewards partners
  • Redeem in the Chase Travel center for 1.25 cents per point
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
    • Primary rental car coverage is my favorite

We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.

Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.

Main Cast: 

Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.

Supporting Cast:

Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on. 

The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.

If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex℠and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners

Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.

The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

8 Comments

  • […] This was published by Monkey Miles, to read the complete post please visit https://monkeymiles.boardingarea.com/ask-black-american-express-centurion-card/. […]

  • […] spend is required to get a Black Card ( estimates of $250k to $500k in a year on an Amex card ). You can actually request one now…it used to be invitation only. I thought it was very interesting to see what the average […]

  • Arosan January 4, 2022

    As a Centurion cardholder of 22 years, I finally gave up my Centurion membership. I don’t recommend it to anyone.

    As a loyal Amex customer since 1988, I worked hard to help the team at Centurion understand how appalling their customer service had become, how untrained their agents were, and how their new team structure vs dedicated contacts has led to booking errors, mistakes, and the general feeling one gets when calling a remote call center that knows nothing about you.

    This is everything Centurion claims it is not. Its become robotic and not worth the fee anymore.

    I tried reaching out to senior team members at Amex with no response. They simply don’t care.

    I finally spoke at length with a very sweet and nice “executive customer service” team member I had spoken to a year ago when things started going off the rails and she promised me that she would discuss my issues with “management”, but in the end was given the run around with the obligatory “I’m so sorry we can’t meet your needs and that we are losing you.

    I personally was mentored and coached for years by an old leader of American Express named Alan Loren. He would be turning in his grave if he knew how terrible the Centurion product had become. He was a believer in the customer experience and in those days management was willing to speak directly to a customer to understand their concerns. No longer 🙁

    AEXP happily lost me as a Centurion customer after 22 years, without doing anything to try to make amends for the terrible service received.

    Here are some of the shortfalls:

    – Multiple booking errors leading to problems with travel, lost seats, lost flights, etc.

    – Multiple times I received no call back from an agent I had spoken to at length and literally no way to get back in touch with them, since there is no longer a personal point of contact for Centurion members (just a large team who often isn’t available anyways and then your call goes into a pool). Centurion has become a faceless, nameless call center experience.

    – There’s been a dramatic elimination of historical benefits, personalized events, and special perks – only to be replaced by a complicated grouping of “experiences”, which quickly become unavailable anyway – “Oh sorry”, they say on the same morning an event becomes available for booking, “the event you want isn’t available anymore We can put you on a waitlist”. They should be ashamed of this new experience program.

    – Gone is Hyatt, United, and other airline and hotel programs where status was afforded.

    – When booking flights, almost always, the travel team couldn’t even find the same rates I could find online. I literally booked 5 business class seats to Turkey last summer for 1/2 the cost they quoted. When I pointed it out and showed them, they simply said they couldn’t get the same rates – baffling, as they are supposed to be the experts. They don’t even take the time to shop, offer creative suggestions that any pro would offer, or even understand or know the properties and routes they are quoting.

    – When trying to book a difficult restaurant reservation through the “concierge” they called back a day later saying that nothing was available, but when I called the restaurant right afterwards, they gave me a table.

    Their concierges can’t even get what any normal person can get, making you wonder why they are even there. It’s become better to simply do things yourself vs working with the Centurion team.

    – When I cut my spend a year ago, in protest of their terrible service, saying I would up it again when they proved they would improve, I never even got a call asking why. They simply don’t care and Centurion cardholders are treated like everyone else. There is no more special treatment or special feeling.

    Which begs the question – what is one paying $5000 for each year? Do they even really want to have this offering anymore? Do they still care about the customer experience or is it just about the bottom line? Do they even customer Customer Lifetime Value anymore?

    There are so many more examples of terrible service, whittled down options comparable to Platinum and many more instances of a lack of travel knowledge by their team.

    It seems Amex has given up on their Centurion cardholders, many of whom are their most loyal supporters and brand ambassadors. I feel given up on and am saddened by what has become of this iconic card.

  • askmrlee October 26, 2021

    Hasn’t the link been around forever?

    • Miles October 26, 2021

      There has been a way to “request more information” which is a similar thing, but this, from my understanding, is more like saying hey I want an invite. Semantics I suppose, but I’d never seen a page orchestrated like this

  • RMF October 26, 2021

    Great way for Amex to gauge how many people are willing to pay for the card and their profiles to see if they would make more money by expanding the cardmember base. It does ‘dumb down’ the uniqueness of the card, however.

    Also, didn’t R&C cancel the 5C program 2 years ago?

    • Miles October 26, 2021

      Good catch – updated and removed R/C

  • David October 26, 2021

    Did the Relais & Châteaux 5C end in 2019 as advertised? Or is there still some way to join?

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