My wife and I currently have four Delta cards. We each have a consumer Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card and a Delta SkyMiles® Platinum Business American Express Card. With the latest Delta credit card changes, the annual fees for these cards have increased. Platinum cards cost $350 (up from $250) and Reserve cards cost $650 (up from $550). If we don’t make changes to our Delta card lineup, we’ll be looking at $2,000 in annual fees each year. That’s insane.
Over the years, my wife and I regularly product changed our cards back and forth between the Delta Platinum and Reserve variations in order to max out the status boosts that were available from spend with each type of card. Now, all that has changed even without considering the new annual fees. First, for those interested in earning elite status from spend, there’s no longer any reason to use more than one Reserve card since elite earnings are now uncapped. Second, my wife and I have no plans to spend towards Delta status ever again. Through our last great mileage runs (details here and here), we have secured Diamond status for several years and should each have lifetime Platinum Medallion status by the time our Diamond status runs out (actually, depending on how much I fly Delta in that time, I’ll probably still be short of lifetime Platinum, but my wife will still have Diamond status for a while and so while I’m traveling with her I’ll be treated like a Diamond Medallion as well).
So, it’s clear that we no longer have to keep all four cards. Should we keep any? And if so, which type of card is best?
General Delta card advice
Before I get into whether my wife and I should keep any Delta cards, here first is some advice about each card and who each is best for:
Business is better
Delta Gold, Platinum, and Reserve cards each are available either as a consumer card or business card. The features are very similar either way, but the business cards offer $50 more annual hotel credit than their consumer counterpart.
Gold is good for most
The $150 Gold card is a good choice for most people. It can easily pay for itself thanks to offering the first checked bag free, 15% off awards, and up to $150 in hotel rebates for the business Gold ($100 for the consumer version).
Platinum is good for companion tickets & elite pursuits
The $350 SkyMiles Platinum card is a good choice for those who highly value the card’s annual companion ticket and/or the card’s annual $2,500 MQD Headstart (towards elite status). The card’s hotel, rideshare, and Resy dining credits can help defray the annual fee.
Reserve is good for Sky Club access & spending to elite status
The $650 Delta Reserve card is a good choice for those who highly value Sky Club access and/or highly value the ability to spend towards elite status. Yes, the SkyMiles Platinum card also allows spending towards elite status, but the Reserve card offers twice as many MQDs for the same amount of spend. The card’s hotel, rideshare, and Resy dining credits can help defray the annual fee.
Do we need Delta cards at all?
With general advice out of the way… let’s get back to me and my wife…
We each already have lifetime Medallion status thanks to being Million Milers. That gives us most of the perks that we’d otherwise get with a Delta credit card: free checked bags, priority boarding, etc. Plus, we each have multiple Amex Platinum cards (not to be confused with SkyMiles Platinum cards) which we can use for Delta Sky Club access. Even with the Sky Club access changes coming in February 2025, we should be fine even without Delta Reserve cards. Note that I don’t generally recommend that people keep multiple Amex Platinum cards. I have them because I’m a blogger and podcaster in this space and find it valuable to be able to talk from experience about all significant rewards cards.
We do need TakeOff 15 (15% award discounts)
The only Delta credit card feature that I can think of that we really need is the 15% award discount available to Delta Gold, Platinum, and Reserve cardholders. We each have large Delta SkyMiles balances and those balances will go farther with the discount.
One Gold card each is all we need
If we want to minimize annual fees, we could each drop down to a single Delta Gold card. Since the Delta Gold Business card offers bigger hotel rebates ($150 per year vs. $100 per year with the consumer Delta Gold), we’d go with those.
With just one Delta Gold Business card each, we’d pay a total of $300 per year in annual fees and we’d get $300 per year in rebates for hotels booked through Delta Stays. Perfect!
With one Delta Gold Business card each as the baseline, the next question is whether the SkyMiles Platinum or Reserve card perks offer enough value for us to consider keeping those cards instead despite their higher annual fees…
Is the SkyMiles Platinum Card worth $200 more?
The SkyMiles Platinum cards cost $200 more than the Delta Gold cards and offer perks that make them more valuable than Delta Gold cards:
- Annual $2,500 MQD Headstart: This is great for those chasing elite status but since my wife and I have already secured status, this is meaningless to us.
- $150 or $200 Prepaid hotel credit ($50 more than the Gold card counterparts): Get up to $150 back (consumer card) or $200 back (business card) per year as a statement credit for prepaid hotels or vacation rentals booked through Delta Stays on delta.com/stays.
- $120 Rideshare Credit: Enroll and earn up to $10 in statement credits each month after using your Card on U.S. rideshare purchases with Uber, Lyft, Curb, Revel, or Alt.
- $120 Dining Credit: Up to $10 per month in statement credits on eligible purchases with U.S. Resy restaurants
- Annual companion ticket: Get an economy companion ticket (subject to taxes & fees) each year upon card renewal.
The SkyMiles Platinum cards cost $200 more per year than the Delta Gold cards ($350 vs. $150). The question for me is whether I value the enhanced Platinum card perks more than that $200 difference. A good way to think about it is this: If Delta let me keep the Gold card and optionally pay more for each of the enhanced SkyMiles Platinum perks, how much would I be willing to pay?
- Annual $2,500 MQD Headstart: $0. I’m no longer chasing status.
- Additional $50 hotel credit: $25. I wouldn’t prepay $50 for the chance of getting $50 more in credit, but I think I’d take it for $25.
- $120 Rideshare Credit: $0. I wouldn’t pay for this. It would be more of a headache each month to figure out how to use it than much of a benefit. This is doled out $10 per month and I already have tons of Uber credits thanks to Platinum cards.
- $120 Dining Credit: $0. I’m more likely to get value from this than from the rideshare credit, but since it’s also doled out monthly, it would be a pain to make sure to use it every month.
- Annual companion ticket: $250. These can be a pain to use since they’re limited to round-trip and only available when the lowest fares are available. But now that they can be used to fly to Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America, the opportunities for great value are dramatically higher than before. See: Delta’s Enhanced Companion Certificates.
Based on the above analysis, I’d be willing to pay $275 per year for the extra perks that the SkyMiles Platinum card offers over and above the Delta Gold card’s perks. Therefore, paying $350 per year for the SkyMiles Platinum Business card (which offers higher hotel rebates than the personal version) absolutely makes sense for me!
My new baseline now is for my wife and I to have one SkyMiles Platinum Business card each for a total annual cost of $700. In exchange, we’ll get $400 back in hotel credits, two valuable companion certificates, and rideshare and dining credits that we may get some value from but which are not considered in the decision to keep our SkyMiles Platinum cards.
Is the Reserve Card worth $300 more?
The Reserve cards cost $300 per year more than SkyMiles Platinum cards and offer perks that make them more valuable than SkyMiles Platinum cards:
- Earn 1 MQD towards elite status per $10 spend: This is great for those chasing elite status but since my wife and I have already secured status, this is meaningless to us. For comparison, the SkyMiles Platinum cards earn half as much as Reserve cards: 1 MQD per $20 spend.
- Sky Club Access when flying Delta plus 4 guest visits
- $200 or $250 Prepaid hotel credit ($50 more than the SkyMiles Platinum counterparts): Get up to $200 back (consumer card) or $250 back (business card) per year as a statement credit for prepaid hotels or vacation rentals booked through Delta Stays on delta.com/stays.
- $240 Dining Credit ($120 more than the SkyMiles Platinum): Up to $20 per month in statement credits on eligible purchases with U.S. Resy restaurants.
- Annual first class companion ticket: Unlike the SkyMiles Platinum’s companion ticket, this one can be used to book first class, premium select, or comfort+.
The Reserve cards cost $300 more per year than the Delta SkyMiles Platinum cards ($650 vs. $350). The question for me is whether I value the enhanced Reserve card perks more than that $300 difference. A good way to think about it is this: If Delta let me keep the SkyMiles Platinum card and optionally pay more for each of the enhanced Reserve card perks, how much would I be willing to pay?
- Earn 1 MQD towards elite status per $10 spend: $0. I’m no longer chasing status going forward.
- Sky Club Access when flying Delta: $0. While I think that most people would be right to highly value this, I expect to keep several Platinum cards in our family for the foreseeable future and so I expect those will give us all of the Sky Club access that we need.
- Additional $50 hotel credit: $25. I wouldn’t prepay $50 for the chance of getting $50 more in credit, but I think I’d take it for $25.
- $240 Dining Credit: $50. The fact that this offers $20 per month instead of the SkyMiles Platinum card’s $10 per month makes the feature almost workable. I could see myself planning a stop at a Resy restaurant once per month in order to get this rebate. Still, I don’t value this anywhere near its $240 face value.
- Annual companion ticket: $50. Remember: this is how much I’d pay for the incremental benefit of the Reserve companion ticket over the SkyMiles Platinum companion ticket. I like the fact that this could be used for first class or premium select, but I don’t know how often I’m likely to actually book anything but main cabin.
Based on the above analysis, I’d be willing to pay only $125 per year for the extra perks that the Reserve card offers over and above the SkyMiles Platinum card’s perks. Therefore, paying $300 more for the Reserve card doesn’t make sense.
Final Answer
Based on our current situation, the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum Business American Express Card is the right card for both me and my wife. When the next annual fees come due, we’ll cancel our Delta Reserve cards.
If we didn’t think we’d be able to take full advantage of two companion tickets each year, I’d look to downgrade one or both of us to the Delta Gold Business card (or cancel the SkyMiles Platinum card and sign up new for the Gold).
At the other extreme, if we were still actively chasing Delta elite status or if we needed the cards for Sky Club access we’d want to upgrade our business cards to Delta Reserve Business cards and cancel our consumer Delta Reserve cards when the next annual fees came due.
What about you? I know that a lot of readers have Delta cards and are pondering next steps. What have you decided? Please comment below.
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This was an excellent article with all the information I needed. Thank you! I have been very confused I have the additional spouse reserve card and get so frustrated when I do not share all the benefits and am considering getting a business reserve or business Amex. This helped me sift through a lot of what I needed and I learned about a few perks as well.
I am DL Amex Gold member and my husband is my co-signer. We both have DL sky miles number. We live in Mpls, where Delta is biggest hub. I am not upgrading my card to Platinum, because of limitations on when you can use that once a year free companion ticket. And…, if you don’t use it you loose it. Paying $250.00 a year, plus full price for one ticket to get 1 for free? It’s not that free, considering the yearly fee for card. Staying with my Gold card, using my miles or cash and miles and there are all kinds of way, how to buy cheap domestic and international tickets flying Delta, and Delta partners excluding Basic Economy.
Going fro. $99. to $150 on my Gold card. Thats a lot for me…Looking at Southwest now.
Hi, I’m a new reserve card member. I didn’t realize about the hotel credit and dining credit. How do you use them? Thanks from a newbie.
First log into your Amex account, go to card benefits and enroll in these benefits. Then:
Hotel credit: book hotels through delta.com/stays and select to pay in advance. When you pay with your Delta card you’ll automatically get reimbursed within a few days or weeks on up to the amount allowed annually by your Delta card.
Dining credit: Look up restaurants on the Resy app. As long as a restaurant is on there, when you pay with your Delta card at that restaurant, you should qualify for the rebate.
There are no restaurants on Resy close to where I live. I don’t see any advantage to that. I have the Platinum card and a $100 increase with fewer benefits doesn’t seem worth it.
Excellent summary and analysis.
I concur with most of your points.
I live near DTW and therefore am somewhat hostage to DL.
I am also Lifetime Platinum thanks to my 2M miler status. I don’t expect to chase Diamond in my retirement years.
I currently hold DL Reserve and Platinum AMEX cards and would allocate my spending in order to gain the most MQM spending bonuses (now a thing of the past).
Since I still have over 650,000 Sky Miles, after spending a bunch on a Family Trip to Europe, I still value the 15% discount on award mile flights. Therefore, I would consider downgrading to a DL AMEX Gold. I get the discount on award trips and the free luggage.
As for Sky Club access, rather than spend $75,000 on a DL Amex card for unlimited access, I would rather spend it on a AMEX Business Platinum card, getting the same unlimited access and also building up Membership Rewards which, if desired, can be converted to Delta Award Miles in the future (or tranfered to one of the many other airlines in the AMEX program).
Sorry to say goodbye to the prime DL AMEX cards, but the fee increase is simply too high.
Doesn’t the Reserve card include trip cancellation insurance? If so, shouldn’t this be included in your analysis?
Yes, for a general analysis that makes sense to include it. I’ll have to try to remember that in the future. for myself, I prefer to pay for flights with a card like the Chase Sapphire reserve which has great travel, protections and earns more valuable, ultimate rewards points. When paying for companion tickets where I have to use an AMEX card I’ll use a personal platinum card so that’ll earn 5X membership rewards points.
I am prepaired to dump all, except my Hilton Aspire card of my American express cards by the end of this year.
I have been a faithful member but they are not loyal to me.
They play games with credit limits and the
Looking at other options. Never missed a payment, pay 2 times or more than minimum payment on their cards.
They have cost me my credit score by their games.
They were pay a membership fees and they lowered lines.
If you are not rich do not waste your time having a Amex card.
The better high end cards are in my opinon comes from Citibank, Barcleys.
The best card for your money is Dinners Club especially if you travel internationally.
Get yourself a Visa and Mastercard and you do not need a American Express card. Its not presigeous.
To many rules.They use expedia insted of American Express travel, they do not have a way on line to place your loyal numbers in the bookings and you can not do multiple city bookings.
The best part of American Express is their customer service reps.
They only want millionaires
I agree with most of what you stated about Amex CCs. I think the whole “coupon book” approach to benefits leans too far into benefitting Delta/Amex, than the cardholder.
I’m prepared to leave Delta’s reserve card. It’s not worth it anymore. Plus, their flights are so much expensive than others to the point where I’m better off transferring my loyalty to another airlines. Now is the time to invest in the low cost airlines. They offer more direct flight options and people like me, who are fed up with paying more and getting less, are making peace with flying on the low cost carriers.
Plat Skymiles Amex is my longest held card (grabbed the Gold Skymiles in 1998 with no SUB, upgraded to Platinum card when that launched). I’ll likely downgrade all the way down. It’s been hard for me to get good value from the comp certs, rarely getting the AF value from them. Plus since we’ve had WN companion pass for 5 years now we rarely fly Delta even though we’re at a Delta hub. It was questionable for me in the past to keep passing $250 for the card, it’s def not worth it at $350.
Man, this really felt like talking yourself into a $700 “business expense” that you are really doing just for content.
With years of Diamond + lifetime status, a mountain of SkyMiles, and a mountain of other points currencies, and no actual intention of spending on the cards again, the real answer here seems to be: “No.”
Even if you did squeeze more than $700 of “value” out of the 15% SkyMile discount and companion passes (as many commenters have noted, why not just burn through your SkyMiles and keep the cash?), the mental energy and time value of money are probably too high of a tax to pay for this “value.” The hotel credit? Seriously? The only way you are using this is if (1) you don’t care about Globalist perks for a given stay, (2) you have burned all of your FHR credits, (3) you don’t want to do the Citi/Choice thing for some reason, and/or (4) you are deliberately going out of your way to do so.
Just say you’re keeping the cards because it helps you blog about them. That makes sense. The rest of this is just noise.
lol. Really? I promise you this was a real thought exercise and not done for content.
Companion tickets vs SkyMiles: We have a mountain of SkyMiles because we’ve spent our way to elite status for many years. That won’t be the case going forward and so we’ll spend SkyMiles whenever a companion ticket isn’t an option. In fact, we did that recently for a flight to Seoul. I have no doubt we’ll deplete our piles in a few years anyway. It would be such a waste to accelerate the depletion on very expensive awards where we could have used the free companion ticket. And, by the way, we also each have Delta flight credits which we need to use: using them with companion tickets is ideal.
And yes, I really believe we have a chance of getting fantastic value from those companion tickets for things like flights to Hawaii, central America, etc.
Hotel credit: there are plenty of times every year when we stay in independent hotels that aren’t bookable with points. Preferred Hotels, FHR hotels, etc. simply aren’t everywhere we go. In fact, twice every year we stay in an independent hotel near my niece where we could easily use these credits! Additionally we often just need a one night stay somewhere (like near an airport) were elite status is may be meaningless either because the hotel provides free breakfast to everyone or because our flight is so early we’ll miss breakfast anyway, etc.
Fair enough; mea culpa. You certainly know your situation and thought processes better than I. And it wouldn’t be the first time I was too cynical.
I’m genuinely curious about this thought experiment though: How would your 2024 travel be different if you just cancelled the Delta cards? And is that difference worth $700+?
I would have bet that you’d take the same or similar flights, stay at the same or similar hotels, and these bookings wouldn’t cost you more cash than the annual fees on these tertiary cards. E.g., the airport hotels would via FNC, or 3.5k URs at a HP, or after buying IHG points at half a cent each, or burning some Cap1 portal gift card or a CIC fee-free Visa + shopping portal bonus, or something like that; positioning flights would be paid for by flight credits or SkyMiles [either as awards or at 1 CPP paying w/ miles] or Amex Plat incidentals-cum-DL-flight-credits, the hypothetical DTW-AK/HI/MEX/etc companion pass flight could be as little as 8-10k points (each way) in any of a number of currencies that – again – you have mountains of and the ability to easily replenish (if we are comparing Y/saver apples to apples anyway), etc etc etc.
Or perhaps put another way: how many years would it take to burn through all SkyMiles and Delta flight credits and Amex Plat incidental fees with current usage levels? If the answer is at least one, then does it really make sense to keep paying $700+ in annual fees? And if so, at what point does it not? 2 years/$1400? 3 years/$2100? Etc. (Again, for you specifically, it very well may make sense; I’d just have thought that was at least as much because of what you do than any ‘value’ proposition.)
In other words, the question isn’t “can someone extract $x+ in ‘value’ out of these cards.” It’s “does paying $x+ to renew these cards make someone’s annual travel plans $x+ better (or ($x+1) cheaper, if that’s your bag).” And the comparison is exacerbated when you can replenish points with no effective limit, since the six figures of spend you were running through Delta Reserves can be put on an Ink or a DC or Biz Gold or whatever.
Anyway, I digress. Please don’t take this as a criticism – I sincerely apologize if I came off that way.
I think you guys are the best in this business and I support you every way I can. Clearly I’m just in a salty mood or something.
Great post, being honest and rational to yourself and not blindly go for “seemingly” more prestigious Delta Reserve Card!
But for those who DO want to chase Status, I think those headstart MQD can be really useful. Delta Medallion Gold aka SkyTeam Elite Plus can be useful for some frequent traveler.
I’m still in the process of figuring out whether Delta Platinum consumer (what I have now) or downgrading to Gold consumer / applying for a Gold Business makes the most sense for me. Think the Amex Platinum is more useful to me than Delta Reserve but will evaluate that one too. My Amex cards have similar anniversary dates so I should have a clearer picture of what is best by then.
Good post , Greg. I ditched all of my Delta cards and burned my miles . The cards are over-priced and the miles have very limited value. I am loyal to American now as they have made me feel valued while Delta doesn’t .
I’m close to MM, I used the MQM calc and it made no difference in earnable status wether I had the plat or reserve based on my typical spend. I would drop another status tier if I downgraded to gold DL Amex. I fly twice a week and connect every time so 15 SC visits isn’t enough. So I downgraded to DL Plat Amex and will use miles for an unlimited SC pass.