American Express Preferred Rewards Gold Card

loobs40

Amex are advertising this charge card with

1) annual fee free in 1st year (normally £125)
2) 20,000 points if you spend £1000 in the first three months
3) Transfer points to over 15 major frequent flyer and hotel programmes

I am only interested in the 20,000 points to transfer them over to the BA Exec Club, and I will be spending £1000 booking a holiday(just need to check that NCL will accept Amex) . I will almost certainly cancel the card before the year is up

Are there any catches ? Looking at the T&Cs it implies I also have to pay £20+vat to participate in the Membership Rewards programme. Do I need to enrol in that ?

thanks

OllyM

There aren't any catches, you don't have to pay to join Membership Rewards either.

If you are referred by an existing cardmember you get 22,000 points instead of the 20,000 if you apply directly, but you won't get Quidco. I'm not sure what the offer is on Quidco at the moment though.

loobs40

I have got myself an Amex card and very happy I am with it. I will be paying an American company in US dollars for my holiday and I can't find out with any certainty from the Amex site what exchange rate they will use for the payment from dollars to Sterling.

The phrase 'based on our reference exchange rate which is set daily' is used extensively, but does anyone know if this rate is a wholesale rate or an 'Amex' rate loaded with commission ?

thanks

InsideInsurance

You can find out exactly the rate by logging into your account and going to the Account Summary and then on the right hand nav at the bottom is Foreign Transaction Calculator where you enter the date, amount and currency and it will give you the exchange rate and the fee - obviously you cannot use it for future dated transactions.

Winter_Jasmine

The spending on this is now £2,000 over three months, does anyone know if it's likely to go back down?

Winter_Jasmine

Will do, thanks. If it was £1,000 over three months, that'd be easy but I might struggle to hit £2,000 and don't want to spend for the sake of it. I'll hang on a bit until they either drop it or I know I'm going to be making some big purchases. I will PM you if/when I decide to go for it