nberry:
Free business class tickets to Europe? Please explain.
Free breakfast? Meh. Most hotels do that with whatever card you're using.
What you're paying for is the appearance of status and frankly waiter, hotel clerks and other businesses gloss over the card you're using. As long as the charge is approved, that's all that matters.
Not free. They are usually things like buy one full fare business class ticket, get the second one for free. I used to pay about $3K per round trip trans-Pacific flight due to the flying status that came with it. Those were normally like $7-10k tickets. So SciFrog isn't saving money per se, he's just getting more for his money. He might spend $20K on 4 business class tickets when he could have flown coach for $8K or something like that. They give you free upgrades to business on full-fare domestic flights, then again, business on a short-haul domestic flight is like 1 inch more leg room than coach and the full-fare ticket is way more than a coach ticket anyway. I would never use that perk since I see no value in it, but there probably are people who will pay $300 more for those seats and save $100 or something.
The Centurion doesn't give you free stuff, it just gives you better stuff when you're already paying something (usually a lot) anyway. For example, a couple months ago they sent me a $500 gift card to Roche Bobois or whatever it's called. Did I use it? No, because there is nothing in Roche Bobois that's $500 or less that I actually wanted. Had you actually wanted a $4K chair or something, then sure, it's $500 of free money.
I just used my President's Club status with Avis a couple weeks ago. Paid for a small sedan and they upgraded me to an SUV for free. Probably saved me a couple hundred dollars. I wouldn't have paid for an SUV in the first place, so I didn't really save money, but I just got something better for the same price.
The Centurion value really depends on what you normally use for travel. If you fly Delta a lot, then you get the flight status of someone who flies like 100K miles per year. Free economy comfort, access to all the Skyteam lounges, etc. If you fly United though, then no, the card loses an insane amount of value since they don't give you any United perks.