Downgrade Bus Plat to Bus Gold & Bus Explorer?

[tassie6]

Hi All,

Just a quick sanity check on this plan, have business Plat but the annual fee doesn't really line up for the benefits we use.

My thoughts:

• Downgrade Bus Plat to Bus Gold
• A new application for the Bus Explorer

Why do this when going to earn less points over the year?

• A lot lower fees (taking into account useful credits, AF goes from $1750 to $344 for both cards)
• I know the non-plat MR points cant transfer to QF, but we have a US Amex and as far as I know the standard MR points transfer over to US just the same
• Useful perks will lose: lounge access (Virgin and Centurion, handy but not a deal breaker with our travel patterns mainly being redemption in J), Accor Plus (nominal value to us)
• Only reason for Bus Gold is the 3x points on Meta/Google (and annual credits), would use this card just for these merchants up to the 200k points cap limit as past that drops to 1x on all spend
  • Then default all spend to Bus Explorer at 2x (lower rate than plat at 2.25x)
  • This results, depending on spend, in about a 5-10% reduction in overall MR points earned PA

My actual questions:

1. Am I correct that can downgrade the plat to gold but would need a new application for Bus Explorer?
2. Am I correct that standard MR points transfer just the same to US as the platinum MR points?
3. Any other holes in my logic?

(I know would not be eligible for any SUBs on the new cards)

Thanks!