Over the past year, my experiences with CLEAR and those of my wife, Sharon, have been complicated. While we’ve found our membership incredibly helpful to get into Madison Square Garden to see Billy Joel, our airport experiences haven’t been as pleasant. We’ve found that CLEAR oftentimes saves us no time at the TSA checkpoint, like when we raced at ATL to see which line – Pre-Check or CLEAR + PreCheck, was faster.
However, CLEAR might make sense to keep after Sharon skipped a massive TSA Precheck line in Austin, TX. I still had questions after receiving an email about our upcoming renewal.
Renewal
As a reminder, your membership renews in 30 days. Unless your Delta SkyMiles® status changes before that time, you will be billed a total of $278 on September 21, 2024. We have updated our pricing for Delta SkyMiles members. If you are a:
- Platinum, Gold or Silver Medallion Member, the price for your primary account will increase from $149 to $159 on your renewal date.
- Delta SkyMiles American Express Card Member, the price for your primary account will increase from $149 to $159 on your renewal date.
- General SkyMiles member, the price for your primary account will increase from $179 to $189 on your renewal date.
- Diamond Medallion Member, the price for your primary account will remain at $0.
The Family Membership price has also been updated to $119 per member added. As a reminder, with your American Express Platinum Card® card on file, you’ll get up to $199 in statement credits per year after you pay for CLEAR.
Splitting Payment
I recently mentioned how I’d have to pay $79 for CLEAR after the price increase, to which an eagle-eyed reader commented about why we didn’t pay for the extra cost with the AMEX Green Card, which also has a $189 CLEAR statement credit. When we were only paying $20 extra per year, I contacted CLEAR to ask if we could split our payment and use the statement credits from each of our AMEX cards.
According to them, splitting a payment between two credit cards is impossible. We could only drop Sharon from my “family plan” and have her sign up for her account. That way, I can pay with my card, and she can pay with her card.
Canceling CLEAR
Unfortunately, CLEAR is unable to split the payment between two cards, so I’m going to have to cancel our CLEAR membership. Then, Sharon and I will re-enroll as individual members, paying with the AMEX credits we have from our respective Platinum and Green cards. It’s not what I want to do, but I’m not willing to pay $80 extra for a family membership when I’m questioning whether keeping CLEAR for another year is worth it since I have to show my ID almost half the time I go through the checkpoint, anyway (“Random screening, sir.”).
Final Thought
While there are various ways to expedite the TSA checkpoint process, CLEAR is no longer the time saver it used to be. Due to an increase in program enrollees without a corresponding increase in airport agents, lines for eye or fingerprint scanning have become longer. In many cases, going through the TSA PreCheck line is just as fast as waiting for a CLEAR kiosk. Furthermore, CLEAR has raised its prices to the extent that only a single membership is covered by the AMEX credit. As a result, we have opted to cancel our family plan and sign up individually in order to charge our memberships to different AMEX cards. Although this may add some time during our next trip, I’d rather spend 10 minutes re-registering with CLEAR than pay $80 for the family plan.
Want to comment on this post? Great! Read this first to help ensure it gets approved.
Want to sponsor a post, write something for Your Mileage May Vary, or put ads on our site? Click here for more info.
Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and sign up to get emailed notifications of when we post.
Whether you’ve read our articles before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
7 comments
What exactly is the deal with Amex and Clear? By nearly all measures – Clear has no reason to even exist. I’d say 90% of the time TSA looks to be quicker or at worst the same time. Even when Clear saves me a little time – it’s really negligible as TSA is usually pretty quick anyway. I would think the vast majority of people with CLEAR are getting it as a perk of something but would never choose to actually spend money for it. With rapidly rising annual fees – should they even be propping up a company which is rarely offering value and that they’d never pay for?
$0 net for two cards and all can be done online with your existing account
A) remove Family member from your account
B) renew for single member (first CC will be charged $159 fully covered)
C) change CC to second one
D) re-add Sharon to your account (second CC will be charged $119 fully covered)
Note: Clear works very slow with processing changes so I would leave aday between the above steps
Have you used this method? It sounds like it should work.
Yes last year. Was too fast in doing A > D and needed to involve someone from their help desk. Just going through the steps again and get some weird transactions (in the end they look ok, but not sure why they show me certain in/out that are more internal)
@Joe, just adding to the above comment. Another option:
1) Remove Sharon as a family member
2) Have Sharon register for her own account (IIRC, she should already have her email on file with CLEAR, so the process should be simple) with the 2nd card
The benefit of this is that you can align your renewal dates. (I vaguely recall that they’re based on when you add them, so it can be a bit annoying)
Regardless of how you go about it, there should be no need to cancel your account.
I was thinking of canceling our CLEAR as well, we used it less than a handful of times, TSA pre was much faster and the line shorter, in major airports like IAH, AUS and DEN these past couple of months. Might cancel before our February renewal date though and re enroll on separate cards.
CLear is much longer in many larger airports as they almost always require ID check along with your eyeball scan…then they herd you into the rgular Pre-Check line… to WAIT,, nuts I wish TSA and CLear could call a TRUCE on this…