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

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• Chris says:

  4 Feb4 February 11:38

  So Raffles – once again – thank you!

  I took a delivery of £550 of sterling travellers cheques as a test purchase. They have been treated as a purchase on my BA PP with no problems. As expected – you can pay these in as cheques.

  Hoping to put a couple of other slightly larger transactions through to help me trigger my companion voucher & happy to forefeit the 1.5% for this.

  Couple of Questions:

  1) Is this cash limit people are talking about the ‘available cash limit’ you see on your statement? If so, mine is £4,300 – which seems inconsitent with what other people mention.

  2) These are treated as cheques. I stood at the counter and signed all of them as I was paying in, however, the teller seemed uninterested in that & never asked for anything else other than my card to credit my account. If I just sign a batch of these (top and bottom) – can I pay in using the quick pay/deposit envolopes? Would save a bit of time. Has anyone done that & at which bank.

  Thanks

  • tangey says:

    4 Feb4 February 11:52

    The 2nd signature on the TC is supposed to be done at the time of lodgement/exchange.

  • Raffles says:

    4 Feb4 February 12:04

    Not sure what BAPP treats as ‘available cash’. As this is a credit card, it operates differently from the charge cards when it comes to cash. In theory, you can’t even get cash on your charge card until it is specifically activated.

    Years ago, I’m sure I did pay some into my account using the quick-pay machine. After all, they are going into a bank account so not exactly a fraud risk. Not sure I’d bother taking the risk of a problem, though.

  • 21h21j says:

    5 Feb5 February 13:13

    The “Available Cash Limit” shown on your statement is 20% of your credit limit and is the most you can withdraw in cash during a billing period.

    Your “Daily cash limit” is a value that Amex will share with you if you ask, but is not shown anywhere.

    • Raffles says:

      5 Feb5 February 13:28

      Thanks, very useful to get that clarified

• inflationbusting says:

  4 Feb4 February 11:40

  There seems to be a lot of confusion with the call centre staff. Anecdotal evidence so far indicated that these will track as purchases – the opposite of what they have told me.

  You may be right. I couldn’t get a £1,000 order accepted, but I could get one for just over £500 accepted. They enabled the cash advance for me but told me that it was up to 20% of your credit limit. This would explain the variance in people’s experiences.

• Dev says:

  4 Feb4 February 19:16

  Be aware of Santander accounts….the cashier’s can not take travellers cheques because of the smaller size of Amex t/c’s…..I found this out the hard way last year when I had excess t/c’s left over……ended up going down the post office route to cash them in so lost another 1.5%

• George the Travel Monkey says:

  4 Feb4 February 20:09

  Read this of BA’s website, “Purchases of Sterling are eligible for Avios by non UK residents. Sterling Travellers cheques are not eligible for an Avios award.”

  • Raffles says:

    4 Feb4 February 22:22

    Correct. But if all you want is to speed up spend on your new Amex card then they are very useful. And you still earn points or miles via your credit card.

• KimJ says:

  5 Feb5 February 23:20

  Raffles … can i presume that these “Sterling Travellers Cheques” can be paid into ANY banks ??

  One of your reader commented that Santander DO NOT accept smaller denominations of Amex T/C. Any idea how small is the denominations mentioned, so we can avoid getting one when ordering in future ??

  • Raffles says:

    6 Feb6 February 08:21

    Theoretically, a travellers cheque can be paid into any bank account. Even Santander, at a different branch, would have given a different answer I imagine. It is likely, of course, that the branch you visit will never have seen anyone try this before so there may be hiccups. A bank should also be willing, with a passport, to cash them over the counter for you.

  • Dev says:

    6 Feb6 February 16:22

    Not smaller denominations…….apparently the physical size of the t/c’s are incompatible with santander printers….at least that is what they told me.

    • KimJ says:

      6 Feb6 February 22:04

      Thanks Raffles / Dev for the info and advice … i seriously thought that all Amex T/C are the same physical size.

      • Dev says:

        7 Feb7 February 08:34

        Sorry badly worded again….I meant that t/c’s are physically smaller than normal cheques.

        • KimJ says:

          9 Feb9 February 21:07

          Dev, thanks again for the clarification …

• Thunderbirds says:

  6 Feb6 February 18:42

  Note that AMEX Platimum sign up offer ends…

  Earn 50,000 Membership Rewards points when you spend £2,000 in your first three months. Offer ends 3rd March 2013

  • Raffles says:

    6 Feb6 February 20:43

    Wow. Perhaps they are going back to 40,000 points, which is what is was before the fee went up last year?

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