Bits: good American Express / Amazon deal, 25% off Good To Go Parking at Heathrow

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• Tilly says:

  1 Nov1 November 08:01

  I don’t have the Amazon offer on any of my cards. Only the shop small and even that is only on my gold, not my BAPP.

  • Tilly says:

    1 Nov1 November 08:07

    Beginning to think Amex don’t like me.

  • the real harry1 says:

    1 Nov1 November 08:11

    Shop Small is/ will be available to all Amex cards, possible exception Lloyds (?) – so keep checking

    • mark2 says:

      1 Nov1 November 08:18

      It has not yet appeared on the Amex Connect web site, but that has changed since last year.
      We are probably too quick off the mark.

    • Tilly says:

      1 Nov1 November 16:58

      Thanks. The Amazon offer would be useful. Don’t shop on there much but would be nice to have.

• Jordan D says:

  1 Nov1 November 08:07

  Not on any of my Amex cards, alas.

• Darren says:

  1 Nov1 November 08:13

  O/T yesterday I mentioned that my wife’s boarding pass wasn’t available to save or print for a trip to the US. Today at bag drop we’ve received all CE & CW boarding passes with my wife’s marked SSSS for extra security checks.
  Happy days.
  Thanks to all that commented.

  • Anna says:

    1 Nov1 November 08:36

    Yay, have a fab birthday.

    • Stu N says:

      1 Nov1 November 09:40

      Excellent news, have a great birthday and a good flight.

      The extra security only takes 10 mins, she’ll be seated after the boarding pass check then taken aside and “interviewed” (mine was a “where are you going/ what’s the purpose of the trip” sort of thing) and gadgets swabbed.

      You might as well go ahead and get fired into the pre-flight bevvies! I’m sure that’s what she would want if it was the other way around!

      • Darren says:

        1 Nov1 November 12:06

        Hahaha! Well it is my Birthday.

  • Mick says:

    1 Nov1 November 08:39

    Offer on my BA Amex

    O/T Rob, for some reason I never received my usual daily emails from the site this morning. Not sure if it’s anything to do with the maintenance last night?

    • Rob says:

      1 Nov1 November 10:14

      No, that’s just the luck of the spam filter draw. I didn’t get 2/3 on Monday but all fine Tue and Wed ….

  • JamesB says:

    1 Nov1 November 09:11

    Cool, have a safe and pleasant trip.

  • TripRep says:

    1 Nov1 November 10:54

    Nice one, so I was right to give BA the benefit of the doubt as I mentioned yesterday. That definitely reflected my experience on my CW return from the Maldives (where I wasn’t downgraded), it also ties in with similar circumstances I’ve seen reported on FT.

    Enjoy your trip! 😀

    • Kinkell says:

      1 Nov1 November 13:52

      Delighted all is well, Darren. I’ll raise a glass later!

      BTW, TripRep, have i missed your eventual outcome/ resolution of your Maldives downgrade saga ? Always wondered what the outcome was and were you ‘happy’ with it.
      We’re off to Costa Rica in January on a 241, in CW, and BA fly 3x week! ( Scope for a downgrade !)

      • TripRep says:

        1 Nov1 November 15:20

        I put forward the case that myself as a companion on the BAPP 241 Voucher the downgraded sector should be valued equal to the Avios that I would of used to book a one-way flight. As CEDR stipulate you have to make a cash claim, following advice by CWS on FT I valued those Avios at the standard rate it costs to buy them on BA’s website. (1.6p/Avios)

        LGW – MLE is 62500 Avios in CW.

        EU261/2004 (echoed by the CAA) states you get a 75% compensation for a downgrade.

        So the maths for the EU261 element is roughly this;
        ie 62500 * 75% = 46875 Avios * 1.6p = £750

        FIVE months after the downgrade CEDR finally ruled in my favour. Despite claiming otherwise all along, BA were compelled to pay the cash compensation and made no further comments.

        In addition to the above, I also got a bit of a fare/tax refund + goodwill payments.

        5 months faff is ridiculous. If it ever happens again, I’ll consider requesting a rerouting with Qatar or similar. And avoid any claim with CEDR and go with MCOL after issuing 16days notice letter prior to legal action.

        As a side note we also got over £1000 in EU261 compensation for BA making our return home over 15 hours late, we missed our EDI connection so stayed in the LGW Hilton DBB courtesy of BA flew home the next morning.

        The total compensation received from BA for that trip almost covered my entire Conrad Rangali bill.

        As Barry Cutters put it to the BA rep in the LGW First lounge.

        “Seriously, you picked the wrong guy” 😀

      • Kinkell says:

        1 Nov1 November 17:38

        Thanks for reply TripRep, re: your Maldives saga. What a palaver. Well done for pursuing it. It becomes a point of principle and getting justice. I’m quite tenacious when i feel i have been ‘done over’ , so unlikely to lie down quietly! I do know that Iberia fly to Costa Rica daily from Madrid, so thats my fall back position for re-routing.

  • Darren says:

    1 Nov1 November 12:12

    Wow, too kind, thanks for the messages.

• RTS says:

  1 Nov1 November 09:02

  on neither my plat or bapp… jipped…

• Sarah says:

  1 Nov1 November 09:22

  It’s not on my BA or Gold card – bit fed up of not receiving these offers

• GB says:

  1 Nov1 November 09:25

  OT – I have churned my AMEX plat – does anyone know what happens to the hotel status eg gold hilton? do I have to relink the card or will the hotel statii renew for another year automatically? thanks

  • JamesB says:

    1 Nov1 November 10:22

    Once the hotel status triggers the hotel schem rules apply regardless of whether you continue to hold the platinum card. However, be aware that your priorith pass membership will expire as soon as you cancel the card unless you are lucky enougb to benefit from a rare error.

  • Sarah says:

    1 Nov1 November 10:52

    I gave up my Amex Platinum probably 3 years ago – I still receive Platinum status in Accor and got my new, very expensively packaged card through recently (not that it’s much use to me)

• Roger I* says:

  1 Nov1 November 09:56

  quasi OT (since Marriott has been mentioned)

  Snailmail offer from Creation yesterday for the Marriott MC: spend ‘at a grocery store or petrol station’ in November gets double points.

  Slightly curious terminology. I’m hoping that Waitrose, Sainsbury’s etc are ‘grocery stores’.

  • BLT says:

    1 Nov1 November 10:17

    Received the same. Trying to work out if it’s worth spending on this card now.

  • the_real_a says:

    1 Nov1 November 17:18

    Thanks for this. I’m not at home right now. What were the offer dates?

    • BLT says:

      1 Nov1 November 21:59

      1 -30 November.

• Liz says:

  1 Nov1 November 10:01

  I was on to online chat the other day asking them not to double our credit limit on our BAPP. On the off chance I asked if they could add the Amazon offer to our account – of course the answer was no. I asked them to feedback that the offers we receive are always useless to us and the ones we could use like Amazon and Tesco we never receive. He said they are targeted by spending patterns which is a load of nonsense! I haven’t heard of most of the companies on our list. Not that it will do much good! We don’t have the Tesco or Amazon offer on either our BAPP or SPG.

  • JamesB says:

    1 Nov1 November 10:13

    I’ve complained that our offers are dominated by Londin centric opportunities for years and suggested they make better use of postcodes to target offers. All to no avail, always seem to get London hotels, Heathrow express, Eurostar, London restaurants and the usual niche online retailers. Little on mainstream UK-wide retailers like amazon, tesco etc. I did get the esso one but never amazon, tesco, boots, whsmith. Best opportunities in past were Hilton, Debenhams and Harvey Nics.

  • HayMow says:

    1 Nov1 November 10:51

    Indeed, Liz – suspect spending patterns means non-spending patterns – ie. I’ve never shopped there so get offered it. … On your other point, noticed Amex had recently upped my credit limit to something crazy (that I don’t need) – but are there reasons I should be concerned about this and do as you have in asking for it to be reduced? TIA

    • Liz says:

      1 Nov1 November 11:38

      We got a letter in the post saying they were going to increase it from £8500 to £16500 – we had a month to tell them if we wanted it not. So we declined before it was increased as we are not high spenders. Only need £3k more spend on it before we do our next churn.

      • Tom says:

        1 Nov1 November 14:23

        I have a similar question.

        I have two credit cards with a combined limit of £30k but pretty much no borrowing on them (I pay off each month what is spent on my AMEX cards, don’t miss payments). I also have the Gold charge card. Applied for the SPG card which said I would be approved for only to then be knocked back they say due to the limits of the cards I have, even though there’s hardly anything on them and I earn close to 6 figures. All very odd. Just eeking out my final 1k MR points before shutting the GC down to see if that free some perceived spend ability.

        Should I ask AMEX to lower my BAPP limit? It’s currently £15k and only has £200 on it! I would only need it ever to be £5k to pay for holidays I guess.

      • Tom says:

        1 Nov1 November 14:26

        In fact just lower both credit card limits as they’re not needed?

      • Liz says:

        1 Nov1 November 15:52

        I would lower them if you don’t need that amount of credit. When I take an Amex in my name I only get a limit of £1500 as I have no income of my own. I just pay off some part way through the month and work around it that way.

  • Nick says:

    1 Nov1 November 10:54

    It is not a load of nonsense, it is absolutely true!!

    I have been involved in a company that has provided offers through Amex. We were totally clear that we wanted strict targeting, i.e. it was only to go to customers who had
    a) spent in our industry
    b) but not with us
    c) with our competitors
    … for the simple reason that we wanted incremental revenue from new customers, not to ‘reward’ existing customers or give a discount to those who would buy anyway. Agents manually adding offers bypasses all of that, and negates the purpose of spending on it.

    • HayMow says:

      1 Nov1 November 10:58

      Nick, have always wondered: who funds the cash back to card element – Amex or the merchant?

      • Nick says:

        1 Nov1 November 12:53

        For shop small it’s entirely Amex. For the rest, it’s the merchant. Occasionally Amex will contribute a small amount, depending what they get out of it, but for most companies it comes out of their marketing budget.

        At least with Amex it’s all done direct. With the visa offers (Halifax, Nationwide, etc) it’s often through a messy mix of affiliates.

    • Liz says:

      1 Nov1 November 11:47

      Well they appear nonsense to me. My spending patterns on my Amex are predominately paying for travel ie flights and hotels, council tax, supermarket spend, eating out. 99% of the offers we receive just don’t apply to me living in Dundee.

      • RussellH says:

        1 Nov1 November 17:12

        Most of the offers I guess are indeed totally irrelevant to me too, as most of the firms involved are ones I have never heard of. Currently eight offers on my SPG Amex; Virgin Wines I have heard of, but we do not buy wine in the UK. I have once seen mention of Byron Hamburgers in a newspaper, but never seen a shop. Otherwise it is a question off “who on earth is that?”

    • JamesB says:

      1 Nov1 November 13:44

      I think some merchants are less restrictive, e.g. I spend regularly at Debenhams and Hilton but always seem to get the offers. But the sort of restrictions yoj refer to are very obvious from offers on the nectar card.

  • Kinkell says:

    1 Nov1 November 13:39

    Well, like you, am fed up of useless( to us) offers. No Amazon on any cards. Majority I have never heard of! However, did manage to get a rep to add the Trailfinders offer onto my card just before it expired,at end of Sept , and had the devils job with another rep getting it added onto my husband’s card, which she eventually did. Amazing the reasons the CS folk give for not getting certain offers/ targetting. Laughably one reason for us we were such high spenders with Amex…..rubbish! ( retired NHS, leisure travellers)

  • Egg says:

    2 Nov2 November 06:53

    I think targeted spending patterns are based on where you are NOT using the Amex.
    I get tons of hotel offers, but I guess its because I use my card to book flights.
    None of the big chains have hotels in the backwaters I end up in!

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