Amazon Platinum Card vs Amex Gold

qoutp

Hi there !

I recently saw the ad for the Amazon Platinum card (Mastercard) and it just so happens that my Amex Gold card first year free is about to expire, which means that I will soon have to pay the 1st year membership fees (£100, i got a small discount).

I was very happy with my Amex card and I think I spent about £15k with it over 12 months, I never had any issues and I'm lucky enough to live in a place where Amex is accepted almost everywhere. I'm the kind of person who pays everything with his card, from a £1 coffee all the way to my monthly rent (through paypal) ! I never carry cash with me, as a matter of fact i don't think I have used an ATM over the last 5 months!

As much as I love my Amex card i feel like I'm not using then product to its full potential, and therefore I would "waste" some of my money if I pay the yearly membership fees. For example the card comes with a Lounge club cars (access to 2 airport lounges/year) that I'm not using. I also rarely use the amex offers (which are good, but they are targeting "older" people, things like eurostar or hotels discounts) or things like that. Pretty much the only thing I'm using is the points scheme.

I roughly earn 25k pts per year with the different bonuses, and i'm only using them on amazon where you need 1000pts in order to get a £5 voucher. That's a total of about £125, minus the membership fees, Which gives me a net profit of £25.
Now with the Amazon Platinum card (the UK one) i'll get 0.5 pts per £1 spent or 0.75pts per £1 spent on amazon. Considering i spend about £2000 on amazon out of my £15k, and that you earn a £10 voucher per 1000pts that'd give me an equivalent of £80.
It's basically a matter of getting £80 out of the Amazon Platinum card vs. £25 out of the Amex Gold one.

So my question is simple : what should I do ? I don't care about the fact that one is a charge card and the other one is a credit card since I ALWAYS pay the full balance at the end of the month, I will NEVER ever use the "credit" part of the amazon credit card. Also my experience with credit/charge cards is super limited since before my Amex card, all I had was debit cards.
Regarding the mastercard vs. amex network, well it's obvious that I will be able to use mastercard in more place but as i said, almost all the shops/places i'm going to on a daily basis accept my amex card.

The only thing I am a little bit worried about is the insurances that come with the Mastercard. I know that a friend of mine who also has an Amex Gold card never had any issues whatsoever when had to dispute an amount. How good is the Mastercard dispute system compared to the Amex one (not that I intent to use it, but we never know !) ?
Also I couldn't find the page related to the insurrances regarding the amazon mastercard, do you guys have any idea what they look like ?

Thanks for your help guys, I'm really new to the "credit card optimization" game and I don't want to screw up !

qoutp

I'm actually replying to my own thread

I had a look at a product I completely ignored so far, the Amex Cashback cards (the standard one and the everyday one) and it's actuallly.... very very interesting.

Going back to my example with my yearly spendings of around £15K.

With the Amazon Platinum card, I get £80 back (assuming I spend £2k on amazon out my £15k) and a £10 voucher, for a total of £90.

Now with the Platinum Cashback Everyday (5% until £100 cashback, then 0.5% on spend up to £5k, then a 1% cashback rate) I get 5% on my first £2K, for a total of £100 and then 0.5% for the next £3k spent, which gives me another £15 and finally a 1% rate on the next £10k, for a total of 100.
That's 100+15+100= £215 back !

Now without going into the details, the standard Platinum Cashback gives me £237.5 back (£262.5 minus the £25 membership fees).

Both cards are MUCH more interesting than the Amazon Platinum card.

Am I missing something somewhere ? Looking at numbers it feels like it's a no brainer. Is there a huge difference between the services or the insurrances provided by the mastercard that would justify such a gap in terms of cashback ?

Yawn

Yes, they both are much better value. One thing though that occurred to me while reading your account was that I'd make doubly sure that your rent payments don't count as cash payments. Something similar happened to me recently (though not via PayPal but another site)...

qoutp

Hey,

Thanks for your reply. I have checked the T and Cs and it seems like paying a rent through eBay is eligible for cashback, so that's a good news !

Something that concerns me though (bear in mind this will be my first proper credit card, all I had so far was a Charge card) is the utilization ratio.

Since I use my card for absolutely everything, I expect to have a very high utilization ratio and from what I've seen this hurts your credit score, eventhough I expect to pay the full balance every months.

Is there any way around this ?

Anthorn

qoutp wrote: »

Something that concerns me though (bear in mind this will be my first proper credit card, all I had so far was a Charge card) is the utilization ratio.

Something of a contradiction regarding credit utilisation especially regarding credit cards: We are told that high utilisation adversely affects credit and that is certainly the position taken by for example Clearscore. Yet we are otherwise told that one of the ways to get a credit limit increase on a card is to fully utilise the existing credit limit. That would appear to indicate that a high utilisation is advised when a credit limit increase is wanted! Certainly high utilisation is one of the methods I use to get a limit increase on a credit card which is lagging in that respect.

qoutp

Yes, it doesn't make much sense.

Anyway I've applied for the standard Platinum Cashback card (the £25 one) and... 30sec later I got the approval.

Hope I made the right decision, what made me go for the Amex card instead of the Amazon Mastercard one at the end of the day is the lack of information regarding insurances on the Mastercard.

I've looked up everywhere, Amazon, Newday, Mastercard, I couldn't find a single bit of information related to the insurances.

Also my experience with Amex has been really positive so far so I got no reason to leave them. I hope it's not gonna be too complicated to cancel the Gold card though.

concernedSaver

I will soon have to pay the 1st year membership fees (£100, i got a small discount).

Out of curiosity, how did you manage to get that discount?

qoutp

Through the company I'm working for (which has Amex as a client)

theburningcat

Canceling should be very easy. I think you were right to stick with Amex as you said you value their service. I would wait until just after renewal to cancel, so you get the annual bonus, then transfer them out and they should refund the fee pro rata (free money).

You should also be able to use Amazon's £15 off £25 twice (once for each card), in case you want something from Amazon.

Anthorn

theburningcat wrote: »

Canceling should be very easy. I think you were right to stick with Amex as you said you value their service. I would wait until just after renewal to cancel, so you get the annual bonus, then transfer them out and they should refund the fee pro rata (free money).

You should also be able to use Amazon's £15 off £25 twice (once for each card), in case you want something from Amazon.

But the Amazon offer expires at 23:59 on 31 January 2017 or when 33,333 customers have claimed the discount. Don't know if it's to be extended/replaced.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/shopwithpoints/marketing.html?inc=swpamexukmr&pr=swpamexukmr&plattr=vanamexuk1309

qoutp

Yeah the offer ends too soon for me.

Out of curiosity, you guys have any idea where I can find more about the insurances related to the Amazon Platinum card ? I may very well apply for one as well so I can use it in the rare shops where my Amex isn't accepted.

I'm really surprised there's so little information available about this card (granted, it has been released quite recently).