Meet your Amex sign-up bonus spend with a home delivery of £ travellers cheques

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• Mark says:

  4 Feb4 February 07:47

  I’ve now completed 3 Sterling T/C purchases from Amex by home delivery, on both platinum and gold rewards cards. For my newly received gold rewards card, my first transaction was for £550, and then, a second for £1450 about two weeks later. Both approved no problem – now have 24030 MR points showing on balance within three weeks of getting the card (22000 sign up, 2030 from T/C spend).

  • Raffles says:

    4 Feb4 February 09:40

    Very nice! I’m impressed they let you do that on a new card. Perhaps I am too cautious with my advice, although there are numerous reports on FT of people not being able to get transactions through.

• Mr Bridge says:

  4 Feb4 February 09:33

  I purcahsed £1000 in Thai bart 2 weeks ago on plat amex..no probs

• tangey says:

  4 Feb4 February 09:49

  As the one who was the guinea pig for this on flyertalk, I can also confirm that if using a gold card (and I assume plat card) via the amex site directly, you also get points for the value of the purchase. Note for the free dellivery you must order OVER £500, ordering £500 will incur a £5 delivery charge.

• Ninmurai says:

  4 Feb4 February 10:14

  Raffles, I think you might have unearthed the UK’s equivalent of vanilla reload cards. Let the deluge of points begin!

  • Raffles says:

    4 Feb4 February 11:34

    As per my other comment, you can buy 10,000 MR points a year for 1.5p each by ringing up Amex. No need to muck about with TC’s! And 1.5p per MR point is not a great deal by any stretch – I consider myself lucky if I get 1p per point when I redeem them – although as a source of ‘topping off’ an account, or transferring during a bonus period, you can clearly do better.

• adey says:

  4 Feb4 February 10:24

  Does it make sense simply as a method of gaining Membership Reward Points.

  E.g. Virgin UC reward LAX return = 100,000 points ~ equiv £3500 to purchase cash.

  1.5% of £100,000 sterling TC = £1,500 fee for 100,000 points

  Better than half price….

  Not sure I’d be able to get £100K of TC in one go though 🙂

  Adey

  • Raffles says:

    4 Feb4 February 11:33

    You can buy 10,000 MR points a year for 1.5p each by ringing up Amex. No need to muck about with TC’s!

• Mark says:

  4 Feb4 February 10:33

  Just for information’s sake, (sadly I work in retail FX!) both Gatwick and Heathrow have recently announced new tender arrangements for their Foreign Exchange providers. At Gatwick, Moneycorp will be the exclusive provider from 1 April. At Heathrow, both Travelex and Moneycorp have won contracts – no more Amex at LHR, or Travelex at LGW. Not sure of date for changes at LHR yet.

  This of course won’t change the ability to order Amex FX and T/C online for home delivery though.

  • Raffles says:

    4 Feb4 February 11:36

    Seriously?!

    So BA has signed a multi-year deal with an FX partner who will no longer have a presence in either of BA’s main airports?!

• inflationbusting says:

  4 Feb4 February 11:08

  I’ve phoned up Card Services to get my Cash Advance enabled – they’re claiming that a purchase of TC’s still attracts the 3% cash advance fee as well as the 1.5% fee for Travellers Cheques.

  Perhaps there is a loophole for now, but if the cash advance fee is mandated the value largely is gone.

  • Raffles says:

    4 Feb4 February 11:31

    You don’t need Cash Advance enabled. Forget the rubbish the website tells you.

    I actually used to think that getting Cash Advance enabled WOULD lead to you getting charged, but since this also worth with Amex credit cards – which are set up to work in ATM’s from day one – I don’t think so.

• Georgie says:

  4 Feb4 February 12:10

  Whilst in theory this is a great idea to meet the £2000 or £3000 spend you require for an introductory bonus in the first three months or card ownership. In practice I would imagine if folk use it on an endless rinse and repeat cycle it will get pulled in a pretty short space of time.

  • Raffles says:

    4 Feb4 February 12:35

    Very true. That is actually why I am happy that the fee is 1.5 per cent and not 0.5 per cent! If it was 0.5 per cent everyone would be jumping onto it. At 1.5 per cent, it only makes sense for the small number of people who have sign-up bonuses to meet and can’t manage them from their day to day spending.

  • tangey says:

    4 Feb4 February 15:12

    AS I said in another place, £2,500 for what, 50 odd days at a cost of £37.50, makes Amex the lowest cost payday loan company in existence.

    • PJ says:

      4 Feb4 February 17:58

      Yeah but people who actually need a payday loan will never get an amex

  • Simon says:

    5 Feb5 February 07:31

    I imagine if people keep phoning AMEX to query if they will get charged a cash advance fee when purchasing from Amex Currency Exchange that might raise the profile of this and result in it being pulled as well.

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