Amex yearly standing charge

dfranklin1

Apologies if this has been posted already, but I just found out that American Express have introduced a £20 yearly 'dormancy fee' if you don't use the card in a year. This could be of particular interest to people like me who got an Amex Platinum this time last year, taking advantage of their 5% cashback for three months deal. I don't recall getting any email or anything through the post from Amex announcing this. Could be really problematic if you only take out cards for short term cashback deals then pay them off and basically forget about them. Here's what they say on the FAQ:

FAQs search results

Your Question
charge
Our Answer
I don’t understand why I have to now pay a £20 DORMANCY FEE, if I haven’t spent anything on my Cashback Card in the year. We are introducing a Dormancy Fee of £20 per year which will be payable if you have not made any transactions (excluding cash advances and balance transfers) on your cashback card in the preceding 12 month period. If you do not spend over 0p in a 12 month period, this £20 inactive fee will be charged to cover the administration costs associated with handling your account. The dormancy fee is effective from 1 October 2009. If applicable, the fee will be charged 12 months following your next anniversary date.
We encourage cardmembers to consolidate their spending onto one card and to take advantage of cashback for doing so, and to continue to benefit from this on an ongoing basis. We are confident that most Cardmembers will not have to incur this dormancy fee.

Hugh_Jass

For once I'm surprised they actually gave notice! I avoid this by making a small purchase on cards where 0% deals have expired or if I haven't used the cards in ages.

dfranklin1

Thing is to my knowledge they didn't actually give notice - I stumbled across it when looking at their FAQ for info on cash advance fees from cash machines. Luckily I haven't been stung but I'm sure many may have been.

KonkyWonky

They sent me a letter explaining my T&C's had changed, detailing what the changes were.

Paul_Herring

I too got notification in the post. Do you get paper statements off them?