Best earning Australian Amex card

[dalereardon]

Hi,

I currently use the Commonwealth Bank Diamond Mastercard with Amex card which earns me 1.5 Qantas points per dollar. However I finally got fed up with the poor Mastercard earn rate and just got a Woolworths card which earns 1 to 1.

Wondering if there is an Amex card with as good an earn rate or better and more flexibility - can you choose AAdvantage miles or stuck with Qantas?

The fee on the CBA Diamond is around $300 per year currently. I do make use of the international travel insurance though.

Thanks,
Dale.

 

[significance]

An option is to get one of the Amex cards directly from Amex, rather than through a bank. They have some very good earn rates and may be a good complement for your Woollies Mastercard. The ones with the highest earn rates (like the Amex Qantas Ultimate) also have very high annual fees, but come with other perks like a free return flight each year, which could be worth the fee if you manage the reward well, despite all the limitations that apply.

Another nice thing about the cards directly from Amex is that they seem to work better than bank-issued cards if you are trying to get around geographic restrictions buying things from some US sites.

 

[Beta4Me]

You need to know, firstly, what you're looking for. If you want AA miles than you're essentially stuck with an Amex-issued Amex and get the points by laundering them through SPG. 1 MR to 0.625 AA is the ratio. Then, you need to look at the options...e.g. Plat Reserve for 3/2/1/0.5ppd on restaurants/travel/everything/ATO & utilities & insurance respectively. Plat Edge same 1/0.5ppd with 3ppd at supermarkets and 2ppd at service stations. Other options such as Business Accelerator (if you have an ABN) with 2ppd on everything (excepting the same 0.5ppd restrictions) capped at 100K points.
Amex-issued cards are great for Velocity (the cobranded ones) and the now-unavailable Qantas Ultimate was a great 1.5ppd card--all the cobranded ones avoiding the 0.5ppd restriction.