American Express Discussion Area

DaveO

JohalaReewi wrote:

In my experience, you end up with two amex cards. One blue, one platinum. You can transfer your balance and credit limit between the two but not (AFAIK) any moneyback points. When I asked Amex, they said it wasn't actually an upgrade. You basically apply for another amex card. The trick is apply for the platinum so you have it in time for your blue anniversary (mine took 1 week to come through). Check your blue card online and when you see the moneyback reward on your account, stop using the blue and start using the platinum. Phone amex to close the blue and transfer the credit limit across to the platinum (ie add it on). Any residual balance on the blue will be collected by the direct debit (or maybe BT it to the platinum - check for charges first).

Right, thanks for that. I will have to check when my last moneyback points were awarded for my annivesary date.

Han_naH

I applied for and used this card a couple of years ago.

I pay the owed amount off in full each month. I never pay a penny in interest.

However, even if you do track the transactions, as you reach the end of the period for this month, you don't know which debits will appear on this month's statement and which ones on next month's/ And they won't tell you!
The transactions you miss you will pay interest on.

Amex ensure that they earn some interest this way.

I also recall the debit date was variable, so again you cannot precisely ensure the full amount is paid off each month.

I decided this was nonsense and pulled the plug on them.

I'm not sure if Amex still rely on this strategy?

Lee.

JoseChungsDoomsday

JohalaReewi wrote:

You could check with Amex to find out what they have done. Maybe the second amount hasn't reached your debit card yet? If you take the money and run, be aware if Amex later discover the error they can come after you for it back (although there is a time limit - not sure what it is though)!!

afer 3 calls to their challanged staff they have fixed the error, shame really!

JoseChungsDoomsday

nibelung wrote:

I applied for the Amex Blue card last month to take advantage of the 2% cashback offer. I got my card a few days ago and just called customer services to confirm it, but they've told me I get double cashback (ie 1% on spending less than £2,000) and not 2% as the site orginally said. The woman on customer services wouldn't accept that I'd applied for a different offer, ie 2% on everything for three months.

I just logged on and in the corner of the screen it told me that the 2% offer is still going...

nibelung

I logged into my account but I can't see any mention of any offers anywhere.

If you head over to the website at http://www.americanexpress.com/pes/uk/benefits/blue_credit.cgi you'll see they've now changed the offer to double cashback instead of 2%. The woman I spoke to said I would earn 1% for spending up to £2,000 and 2% over that for the first three months. I told her when I applied the information said 2% on all spending, but she said that wasn't the case. I am guessing I will have to write to customer services instead.

DaveO

leejp wrote:

I applied for and used this card a couple of years ago.

I pay the owed amount off in full each month. I never pay a penny in interest.

However, even if you do track the transactions, as you reach the end of the period for this month, you don't know which debits will appear on this month's statement and which ones on next month's/ And they won't tell you!

Eh? The card has a fixed statement date (e.g. 15th of the month) and any transactions that have cleared onto the card by that date appear on the statement. So you know they will be there.

Any in the process of clearing on your statement date won't.

That is exactly how all credit cards work.

You don't pay interest on transactions you made before the statement date that don't clear in time for the statement. If they clear the day after your statement date you get the maximum interest free period on those transactions which I think is 56 days, similar to other credit cards

The transactions you miss you will pay interest on.

Not in my experience you don't because you don't actually miss any. I have had an Amex Blue since 2001 and have never paid a penny interest. They sit on your account and go onto your next statement and you do not pay interest on them in the meantime.

I used to pay the minumum amount by direct debit and the rest of the balance off in full by an electronic bill payment by the date given on the statement that the payment should arrive by.

That date is a few days later than the direct debit date but so long as you pay off the card in full by the latest of the two dates you won't pay any interest.

Amex ensure that they earn some interest this way.

No they don't. They do not work like this. Are you sure you are talking about the Amex Blue card?

I also recall the debit date was variable, so again you cannot precisely ensure the full amount is paid off each month.

The date does vary but so does that of my Egg money card. If the date falls on a weekend Egg debit you on the Monday. I can't recall if this is how Amex vary the date or not but it doesn't matter anyway.

You can elect to have the direct debit be for the full amount owed, which is what I do now. So yes you can be sure the full amount is paid off every month.

I decided this was nonsense and pulled the plug on them.

I'm not sure if Amex still rely on this strategy?

I am not being funny but your post seems nonsense to me given my experience since 2001. If you are talking about a different card than Amex Blue with different T&C, which one? It would certainly be one to avoid.

Dave

dazinoz27

Hi, sorry if you already read this some place else but my excuse is I'm new and just trying to be helpful! :beer:

I've had an Amec Blue card for several years now and called them today to see when i activated my new card and therefore the date by which I need to spend £500 so not to get the £15 annual fee. They told me that this fee no longer applies and there is no minimum spend. Can anyone confirm this, or was this Amec call centre advisor just an evil liar?!

Thanks

nibelung

The £500 minimum spend is still there. You've been given incorrect information unless they've waived it on your account for some reason (maybe for having the card for several years).

mcampney

Hi, I'm new to all this money saving and having browsed the site decided that an AMEX card was for me instead of my charity card which gives a miniscule amount to charity in response to my spending. I planned to donate the cash back to my favoured charities.
My experience with AMEX to date has not been the best. It seemed to take ages for the card to arrive and then nearly a month for the pin number to turn up! I have also found that AMEX is the least available card when spending at my regular stores. A retailer told me they wouldn't carry it because AMEX charged too much. By the way if you register your AMEX card for Paypal purchases on EBay it automatically assumes you want to pay in dollars!!
Therefore my conclusion to date is that although it looks goods financially it isn't that good because it is difficult to use! Has anyone any comments on this?
Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere, it seems that AMEX has generated many pages of chat.

DaveO

mcampney wrote:

Therefore my conclusion to date is that although it looks goods financially it isn't that good because it is difficult to use! Has anyone any comments on this?

I suppose it depends where you shop. Our regular spending tends to be at places like Tesco, the Co-op and Shell. They all take it so the majority of our regular day-to-day shopping can go on the Amex and it doesn't take long to get up to a level if spending that makes the Amex worthwhile :rolleyes:

We have Egg Money cards for when Amex is not accepted.

The PayPal thig is a bit irksome and I gave been caught with that once but have not investigated if you can change the currency your Amex card is debited with.

The most annoying thing with Amex is that I am stuck without chip and pin intil the card expieres which is not for some time yet.

Dave