American Express (U.S) is adding more benefits to their Platinum charge card and this time it’s a membership for Walmart+ as well as a SoulCycle credit that cardholders receive .
The Walmart+ benefit will be added automatically without prior manual enrollment, just charge the respective service to your Platinum account and a monthly credit will be provided, for the SoulCycle credit prior enrollment is required.
In the U.S. American Express has really transformed the Platinum Card into a giant coupon book when you really have to go on a scavenger hunt to squeeze every little benefit out.
Of course additional benefits and free credits are always great, especially when trying to justify the high annual card fee but the portfolio is so wide nowadays that one has to wonder who exactly the target group is.
These are the benefits as listed on Amex website when logging into your Platinum account:
The two new benefits basically are:
- $300 credit when purchasing a SoulCycle at-home bike (not cheap – $2500)
- $12.95 + tax monthly ($14.18 total in my case) for the Walmart+ membership
I have enrolled in the WalMart+ membership today just because I can and it’s basically free while earning a few extra points in the process. I doubt I’ll ever use it but for those living near a WalMart the benefits are pretty good including preferential pricing for fuel, free shipping and free grocery delivery.
It’s a simple enrollment process and I have a feeling this will be a lot more useful that the Equinox and SoulBike credits for the vast majority of cardholders.
Conclusion
American Express USA has added additional credits for their Platinum cardholders which at least theoretically represents additional value when making use of the benefits.
It became somewhat of a chase to constantly having to run after certain items just to feel better about using the benefits rather than letting them expire unused. I’m in the comfortable situation that I paid the old annual fee of $550 and got very good value this year (airline credit, FHR hotel credit, some amex offers etc) but this whola calculation might change next year and I’ll look at it again.
