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Diners Club stops free airport lounge access for cardholders

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A month ago, I wrote this piece about Diners Club.  In particular, I noted that the long-forgotten Diners Club charge card comes with one key benefit – airport lounge access.

In the article, though, I also noted that various European Diners Club cards had begun to introduce fees or spending criteria for accessing the lounges.  And, with poor timing, just a month after my article the UK card has followed suit.

As you can see here, there is now a £15 fee for visiting any of the 400 airport lounges in the Diners Club network.

This is still cheaper than getting a Priority Pass lounge card but not by much.  It was probably asking too much for Diners Club to continue to fund this benefit, though, given that the card only costs £50 per year.


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Comments (23)

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  • Jacqui says:

    I applied for a card + supplementary card after seeing the post here, purely to get lounge access, as I couldn’t see any other benefits to the card, so imagine my disgust to read that free lounge access has been discontinued! The cancellation period for the card had ended three days ago, but after a phone call to DC they have agreed to waive the fees and cancel the cards. Phew!

    • Rob says:

      The Swedish DC card has also imposed a fee (125 krona) this week, it seems. Must be a pan-European deal to bring in some restrictions, either annual spend or per visit.

  • Lady London says:

    It’s been hard to imagine any reason whatsoever why anyone would want a Diners Club card for very many years. They just removed the final supporting plank for the card. A fantastic brand that’s been mismanaged so far as I can tell.

    • Dave says:

      There is only one use for Diners Club, to annoy retailers that say “we accept every card but American Express”.

  • Steve says:

    I received notification, the same as everyone else this week, but notice on their terms and conditions 13.1 and 13.2 where it specifically says, ‘The notice will indicate the date from which the changes will apply, which will be earlier than 2 months, from the date of the notice’
    So, are they legally able to cancel with less than a weeks notice?

    • Rob says:

      Depends if the lounge privilege is part of the T&C’s. Amex, for eg, has just moved everything to do with points and miles collection and redemption outside its main rules to basically give them freedom to do anything with no notice.

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