At first glance, it may look like U.S Bank is cutting a ton of the Altitude Connect’s benefits and providing little in return. But remember that the $95 annual fee is going away, too. And I suspect that a few of these lost benefits won’t be a big deal for a lot of cardholders.
Let’s start with the $1,000 quarterly bonus cap on gas stations and EV charging station purchases. According to Forbes Advisor’s spending estimates, the 70th percentile of wage-earning households spend $3,562 per year on gas. Divide that number by four, and you get a quarterly spending total of $890.50. So while road warriors may be negatively affected, the average household isn’t likely to exceed the card’s $1,000 quarterly spending cap anyway.
The loss of the $30 streaming credit could be a loss for some cardholders. But it’s worth noting this credit is unusual in that you can only earn it after 11 consecutive months of eligible streaming purchases. If you take a month’s pause from all your streaming subscriptions for budgeting or other reasons, the clock restarts. Similarly, the card’s cellphone protection doesn’t cover cracked screens, which is the most common reason that yours truly would need to make a cellphone insurance claim—and there’s a $100 deductible to use the benefit.
The point is that many of these changes either won’t affect the majority of cardholders or are removals of benefits that already had their fair share of gotchas. So many may feel like losing these ancillaries is worth it if they’re getting a $0 annual fee in return, while retaining valuable travel perks.
That said, the devaluation of nontravel redemptions is disappointing and could be a deal-breaker. While 50,000 points is worth $500 toward Altitude Rewards Center travel bookings, it will only get you $400 in cash after the redemption value is reduced to 0.8 cents per point. That $100 loss in value more than washes out the $95 gain from the removed annual fee. So if you earn at least that many points per year and you’re not interested in redeeming them through the Altitude Rewards Center, it might be time to consider looking for a different travel credit card.
