Card Loyalty and 'prestige'

_Andy_

Stompa wrote:

A card would have to have some very serious benefits to justify paying a fee.

The VA Black Amex has very good VA FC miles earning potential - especially for those of us who converted over from the previous Mastercard - until July next year, 4 miles per £ spend (6 per £ on transactions with VA or VH).

Phoenix79_2

Interesting thread.

A few years ago I thought having a wallet full of gold and platinum cards was 'cool' and impressed people. Now i'm more secure with myself I couldn't really care less! I'd have a wallet full of pink supermarket cards if it offered me the best rates and rewards.

Oh...hi by the way. Its my first post after a sustained period of lurking!

Neil_H_2

Stompa wrote:

Not true.

Annual income: £0-25k
Liquid assets: £200k-300k
Fixed assets: £0-1m

gets you past the first hurdle.

My Dad has an account with Coutts, and he works for them. Apparently to open an account it is over £500k liquid assets and you have to have around £2million total assets. Whether this is some kind of special acount I don't know.

For your information, he said that if you have that kind of money, avoid Coutts. He's worked there for 40 years and said as soon as RBS got involved, the level of service has deteriotated massively. It is no longer a such a 'personal' bank...

CopperPlate_2

MoneyMagnet wrote:

I don't care what my card looks like - I'm more interested in how much money it can save/make me. (Although I do quite like the sound of that pink & lilac one that was mentioned - my favourite colours! )

smile Classic Visa. There was bound to be someone who liked it

MoneyMagnet

lol, thank you Copperplate, might have guessed it was Smile, with their bright pink website!

h4nym

What an interesting thread - I've never seen such loud apathy!

I'm a Natwest Black cardholder, having been "invited" to apply when they first came out. In fact, looking at the card number, I was one of the very first to open an account.

Anyway- the annual fee - £250 - gives me:

Full annual travel insurance for myself, my wife and our daughter
Roadside breakdown recovery
Membership of Priority Pass which gives me access to airport lounges regardless of airline or class of travel
Personal concierge service - utterly pointless until you really need them - like when I'd missed my 4am flight back from a holiday in Tunisia in July and needed to be rebooked onto the next available flight back to London. As it happened, it was an Alitalia leaving two hours later and it was all done over the phone. Try doing that at 4am on a Monday morning!

And - if I were to - I'd pay a lower interest rate - 11.9% if I recall.

Yes I recognise that I could buy each of these individually and probably save a tenner. But having one number to phone, one set of people who understand that I recognise the value of great customer service and that I'm prepared to pay for it makes it eminently worthwhile.

Can't say I've noticed anyone treat me any different when I produce the card to pay for something though!

eagle

Astaroth wrote:

No, black cards have been around for a long time it is just they have exceptionally high requirements (normally salary £80k+ before they will even consider you, getting accepted normally requires much higher) and so arent really discussed much.

Yep, so you mean like AmEx Centurion?

Astaroth wrote:

Platinum are generally now the new standard cards where as Black have (for now) remained the Black cards.

I agree. Just about every card company, bank or financial institution (generally speaking) has a Platinum card, and the criteria for getting one is pretty avergae compared to other, non-Platinum cards.

I suppose the only exception I know of this is AmEx Platinum charge card.

eagle

Wouldn't care how prestigious a Smile card is, or how much cashback it would give me, I just wouldn't get one. Not after those stupid adverts - esp. the one with the guy who's nose was shaped like the Smile card.

Astaroth

Chris2000 wrote:

On the contrary I find that black cards are now the standard. Black is the new platinum...

Others have made the same mistake.... we are talking about the "account" colour rather than the physical colour of the piece of plastic - though traditionally these matched for prestige cards with all "classic" or standard cards just being a colour approriate to the brand

Bernard_Coleslaw

eagle wrote:

Wouldn't care how prestigious a Smile card is, or how much cashback it would give me, I just wouldn't get one. Not after those stupid adverts - esp. the one with the guy who's nose was shaped like the Smile card.

Erm..that was Mint.

Their advertising worked on you, then!