Using Amex To Pay The Monthly Bills

AnotherPaul

I'll have to look into that further - thanks.
The law (and the article) talk about "hidden costs"...

Some retailers have been known to add charges which are far higher than it costs them to process a payment

The 2% for credit cards and the 3% for Amex are (as far as I am aware) the "process costs" for the organisation taking the payment, i.e. Amex charge 3% to the organisation for using Amex.
So I'm not sure if it is illegal for companies to charge the process cost for them to the customer?
Thanks for the info!

Paul

System

AnotherPaul wrote: »

So I'm not sure if it is illegal for companies to charge the process cost for them to the customer?

It is. Black & white. I even put a link to an article.

[Deleted User]

They cannot charge you the fee for paying by CC.

They either have to accept it or not

AnotherPaul

Interesting. Here's what the water company said..

Yes, XXXXX accept payments by credit and debit card. There is a 2% charge for payments made by credit card. You can make a payment in a number of ways....

Well I guess I'll get back to them and query that charge....

AnotherPaul

Well... after phoning the water company and asking them directly they said:

• We can take a credit card to make a payment
• There is no charge
• But... we don't take American Express

Ah well, good to know if I wanted to pay with Mastercard and still get some Avios points. The downside is that I would have to do it manually each month.

Ngozi

Don't forget to make the most of your BA Miles.

Look at booking flights with Iberia (awful website unfortunately) as they usually charge less miles and quite a bit less tax than BA.
Iberia let you transfer miles from the BA scheme to Avios, just register as an Iberia Plus member using same info as your BA account (email etc...).
Also look at breaking your flight up, if flying beyond Europe and going Asia way, look at flying to Germany first on a seperate ticket, then use the miles to fly from Germany or where ever. This might help reduce what band you fall under based on the distance.

People who say collecting AirMiles are not worth the effort just don't know how to make the most of the system.

The_Urbanite

zagubov wrote: »

2) It'll take an eternity to get enough Avios to get some flights. Potentially more like decades than years. I've been collecting them since the 90s and only got a couple of return flights to Europe out of it (for both me and mrs zag).

Are you also looking into other cheap ways of getting flights e.g via
https://www.secretflying.com/euro-deals/ and such like.

It doesn't have to. I've been collecting since 2016 and redeemed loads of flights to Europe and Asia, the Caribbean and the USA in business/First/Suites class.

Every single penny I spend accrues Amex points in one way or another, be that cash withdrawals, bill payments, income tax payments, arbitrage betting, paying off other credit cards etc. I think the OP has the right idea - every little helps.

AnotherPaul

Ngozi & The Urbanite - hi.
I've been collecting Avios for years. My wife & I travel to the USA every other year. It takes us 2 years to save up the 50,000 air miles (plus about £800) to get two return trips to Texas in August. Normally it's not been a problem as I used to use my own CC for business trips (just to get the points on the card). Recently there's been less business trips, so I've had to resort to finding the best ways to get large buckets of points quickly.
With regards to what I can't use the Amex card for to get points with, Amex told me the exceptions are...

Balance Transfers, Cash Withdrawals, American Express Travellers Cheques purchases, Foreign Exchange, interest, any spending in excess of your credit limit, charges for returned payments, late payment or referral charges and American Express Credit Card finance charges.

Yes - I've got my Iberian membership as well. We used to take indirect US flights, but in the end it wasn't really worth it because we'd lose time on the holiday and what we saved on the flights going indirectly (not that much to be honest) we'd end up spending in layovers or just eating etc in airports.
I consider it a challenge
Thanks again peeps.

Paul