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American Express changed the bonus rules when you are referred for an Amex Gold card

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Amex is clearly reading our articles.  The refer a friend rules for American Express Preferred Rewards Gold have been changed back this morning.  

They now say, as they used to:

“Please note, bonus points will appear in two instalments of 2,000 and 20,000 and can take up to four weeks to be awarded to your Account.”

The Gold Business card has NOT changed back.  It still says: “Please note, bonus points will appear in two instalments of 2,000 and 20,000. You will receive 2,000 points when you reach £1,000 spend – these points will appear on your fifth statement.”

It isn’t clear what is happening here.  Did someone at Amex make a mistake, or was a change rolled out early by mistake?

For the last couple of months, the American Express call centre has been occasionally warning people who ring up to cancel their cards that changes are coming to the rules regarding when you can re-apply.  You can read more about that here.

At present, you can re-apply for a card from the same card family (I explain ‘card families’ here) six months after cancelling your previous card.

The grapevine has gone a little quiet recently, although I am still getting occasional emails from readers who are being told – conflicting – stories by the call centre in Brighton.  A couple of weeks ago Amex emailed cardholders encouraging them to ‘refer a friend’ and said clearly in that email that anyone who has not had a card for six months was OK, so it would be odd if any changes were made in the short term.

One change may have gone through though.

Here are the rules for referring friends to American Express Preferred Rewards Gold.   You can see the rules here on the Amex website (click).

The bonus if you are referred is 22,000 Membership Rewards points compared to the standard bonus of 20,000 points.  If you are applying for Amex Gold – or any other Amex – and want a referral link sending across, drop me an email at rob [at] headforpoints.com.

1. Offer only available to new Cardmembers. The 22,000 Membership Rewards® bonus points will be awarded onto your Account once you have been approved and you have spent a minimum of £2,000 on goods and services purchased and charged to your Account within three months of Account opening. The annual fee is £140. With this offer, you will receive the first year of Cardmembership complimentary. From year two of your membership, a £140 annual fee will automatically be charged to your Account on or after the anniversary of your Account opening date. You must apply via the button on the previous page to ensure you both receive your bonus. Applicants must be UK residents aged 18 years old or over. If you have already applied for the Preferred Rewards Gold Card without using this referral, you will not be eligible for the bonus points. All introductory offers are subject to change, can be withdrawn at any time and are not available if you have held any other Membership Rewards enrolled American Express Cards in the past six months. Please note, bonus points will appear in two instalments of 2,000 and 20,000. You will receive 2,000 points when you reach £1,000 spend. You will receive the additional 20,000 points when you reach £2,000 spend – these points will appear on your fifth statement.

I am not certain if this last line is new or not.  The wording implies that you will need to wait for five months to receive the majority of your 22,000 Membership Rewards points.  They would usually appear as soon as you hit the £2,000 target.

If you apply for the card directly and so forgo the extra 2,000 referral points, this clause does not appear.

It could be a mistake, or a rule which is not enforced

The summary terms (as opposed to the full terms and conditions quoted above) for American Express Preferred Rewards Gold still say this:

Please note, bonus points will appear in two instalments of 2,000 and 20,000 and can take up to four weeks to be awarded to your Account.

There is no mention of waiting until your 5th statement.

The American Express Gold Business card has changed too

The American Express Gold Business card says, for referred cardholders:

Please note, bonus points will appear in two instalments of 2,000 and 20,000. You will receive 2,000 points when you reach £1,000 spend. You will receive the additional 20,000 points when you reach £3,000 spend – these points will appear on your fifth statement.

No other cards have got this wording

The American Express Platinum charge card says, for referred cardholders:

Please note, bonus points will appear in two instalments of 5,000 and 30,000 and can take up to four weeks to be awarded to your Account.

The American Express Platinum Business charge card says, for referred cardholders:

Please note, bonus points will appear in two instalments of 5,000 and 40,000 and can take up to four weeks to be awarded to your account.

The Starwood Preferred Guest American Express card says, for referred cardholders:

Please note, bonus points will appear in two instalments of 1,000 and 10,000 and can take up to 4 weeks to be awarded to your Account.

The free British Airways American Express card says, for referred cardholders:

Please note, bonus Avios will appear in two instalments of 1,000 and 5,000 and can take up to four weeks to be awarded to your Account.

The British Airways American Express Premium Plus card says, for referred cardholders:

Please note, bonus Avios will appear in two instalments of 1,000 and 25,000 and can take up to four weeks to be awarded to your Account.

The Nectar American Express card says, for referred cardholders:

Please note, bonus points will appear in two instalments of 1,000 and 20,000 and can take up to 4 weeks to be awarded to your Account.

Conclusion

If you are applying for an American Express Preferred Rewards Gold charge card (and this is why I think Amex Gold is your best choice for your first miles and points card) via a referral then be aware of this change to how the bonus is awarded.

As the card is free for the first year, you’re not losing out financially if you do have to wait five months to get the bulk of the sign-up bonus.

Whilst you should clearly take the T&C’s as gospel, let’s wait a few weeks to see if this is really being imposed.  My wife applied for a Gold this week so, if accepted (she was not immediately accepted), she will be a good test case.

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Category

American Express Gold card, American Express Membership Rewards, American Express Platinum card, British Airways American Express, Marriott Bonvoy American Express

Comments (131)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Alexander Craft says:
    23 Mar23 March 09:17

    OT – Setting up a lifetime ISA this week. Are there any implications of opening it with my curve card?

    Thanks

  • KevMc says:
    23 Mar23 March 09:45

    O/T Is there a way to see how many referrals you have in the last 12 months? The MR statement only goes back 3 months, where I have made 3 referrals. I think I only made 1 more prior to that, last year, but I want to double check I didn’t make 2 before I re-refer my wife for a Gold card next month.

    • Rob says:
      23 Mar23 March 09:56

      It is calendar year, so you only need to see back to 1 January.

      • KevMc says:
        23 Mar23 March 10:17

        Ah, brilliant. For some reason I assumed it was a rolling 12 month period.

        Thanks Rob

  • JamesB says:
    23 Mar23 March 09:57

    No offence to anybody but can we please try to keep the OT comments in Bits articles on the days Rob has one, which is now most days.

    • Leo says:
      23 Mar23 March 11:45

      Amen brother! We can all do our bit by only replying to OT comments in a Bits thread too.

  • Cate ⛱️ says:
    23 Mar23 March 11:01

    So you apply for the card, get the card, put the target money through it, wait 5 months for the 20,000 bonus to hit. Then what?

    If you are doing this in your first year then there is no fee. There would only be a fee if you kept it in year two. This would indicate that the card isn’t worth holding past the 1st years 5 month stage when all points have been deposited. If this rolls out to Platinum then I can see how they would make some money as you would have to hold the card waiting for the points i.e. 5 months = £187.50.

    • Genghis says:
      23 Mar23 March 11:11

      Delays people in “resetting the clock” = fewer points paid out and people maybe thinking that whilst I have to hold the card, “oh I might as well put £15k spend through…”?

      • Cate ⛱️ says:
        23 Mar23 March 11:30

        Difficult Genghis. People are more financially savvy than they used to be and a company relying on customer inertia to keep its books full is now bold. You wouldn’t keen an employee who wasn’t contributing to your bottom line so why keep a service provider? Besides by not holding the card you are in a stronger position to consider any raised bonuses that marketing send out.

        • Leo says:
          23 Mar23 March 11:43

          Erm….so what’s the alternative? Not apply for a Gold or Plat Amex? As Genghis says what this does is effectively slows down the ability to churn that’s all. What other product now exists to stop people relying on Amex for churning?

        • Cate ⛱️ says:
          23 Mar23 March 12:21

          I agree with Genghis that it would slow down people’s ability to churn. The difference seems to be do you hold that card in the hope you can make enough referrals to make it pay or, close it in the interim period avoiding the £150 fee.

      • luckyjim says:
        23 Mar23 March 11:55

        On the subject of churning. Has anybody bought Sterling Travellers cheques with Amex recently? Do they still get treated as a purchase?

  • Steve says:
    23 Mar23 March 12:13

    This is a little bit OT. What is your usual pattern when you close your Amex gold/plat cards? Where do you move your rewards points to get the best value?

    • Nick M says:
      23 Mar23 March 13:12

      It depends on how you intend on using them… I’m due to close my account shortly and will be sending
      – a few to to up my Eurostar account so I have enough for a 2/3 last minute trips with the new charging structure
      – a few to Club Carlson so that I have enough for a category of hotel that I’m likely to book
      – the rest will either be Avios or Virgin, but may go via SPG for a Marriott travel package (this will use pretty much all of my existing SPG though and need to check if we are actually likely to book a Cat 5 that’s suitable for 2+2 for a full week within the next year)

      • shd says:
        23 Mar23 March 14:38

        I always used to convert MTs to Avios without a second thought, but found over the years that that got less and less attractive (vs, say, buying Avios outright for ~1.1p via vente-privee or similar)

        Last year I pushed 150k Amex MRs to Krisflyer (Singapore) to use for *A redemptions. Might be worth a look?

    • Alex W says:
      23 Mar23 March 15:19

      SPG for Marriott travel package.

    • The_real_a says:
      24 Mar24 March 11:08

      I have made good use of delta transfers to reduce the cash/taxes needed for partner redemptions. Vietnam airlines is circa 75k for business hanoi to lhr (tax £80), also you can often bag virgin seats with very little tax. Korean air and china southern come in useful sometimes. I did find this gem for time rich / Hawaii – Lax – seattle – lhr was 70k miles (very little tax) in business. Long flight however.

  • Cheshire Pete says:
    23 Mar23 March 12:34

    I recently upgraded back to Premium Plus from the blue one. I think I downgraded over 12 months ago. When they processed the upgrade my 24 month companion voucher was generated as I’d already spent over £10,000. However, I was surprised to see a few days later that 6000 points posted as a BA Premium Plus bonus. I don’t see this advertised anywhere, so a nice surprise,

    • luckyjim says:
      23 Mar23 March 13:21

      Thats interesting. The usual tactic is to start with Plus, hit the 10K spend to receive the companion voucher then downgrade to blue – keeping the voucher with two-year validity.

      From what your are saying it is possible to start on Blue, upgrade when your spend is between 10k and 20k to trigger the voucher then immediately downgrade to blue again. You do miss out on the bigger sign up bonus this way but that is offset by the lower fees and 6k upgrade bonus.

      • Polly says:
        23 Mar23 March 15:54

        Yes it’s a useful way to avoid fees for a while. And you do miss out on the 26k bonus of course. But with cross referral at least you get 18k if referring from the plat. And the small spend bonus. Depends on how quickly you need the 26k avios or not. It’s pretty useful that the spend continues onto the next card too.

  • Jon says:
    23 Mar23 March 15:45

    OT but on a similar vein to the replies above. I currently have the free BA card only, but am within a few thousand pounds of hitting the £10k trigger for a 2-4-1. I also have a few large purchases lined up so will likely be able to hit £10k within a fortnight if I upgraded to the Premium BA card.

    Can I confirm- do I just go into chat and ask to be upgraded to the BA plus, spend the money to get me over the £10k limit (and get the 2-4-1 voucher I’m assuming fairly quickly), then ask to just be downgraded back to the free card? I feel I am overthinking a simple set of actions but want to make sure I am not doing anything silly! Thanks.

    • Rob says:
      23 Mar23 March 15:50

      Yes

      • Genghis says:
        23 Mar23 March 15:57

        Though they may ask you to apply online and you just put in your existing BA Blue / BAPP number

    • luckyjim says:
      23 Mar23 March 16:55

      You can’t do it via chat. You apply for the new card either on line or by phone. Online is quicker because you don’t have to listen to somebody reading out all the Ts and Cs. As you can only hold one BA card the new card replaces the old. Same process when you downgrade to blue.

      Having said all that, with anything like this I always get somebody on chat to confirm that I won’t lose my balance etc. and keep a screen dump in case something goes wrong.

  • Geoff says:
    23 Mar23 March 15:59

    We have BAPP and are thinking of an additional Amex – can I refer myself, and if so, would it need to be a different email address?

    • JamesB says:
      23 Mar23 March 17:07

      Yes you can and no it doesn’t. However, you referred to ‘we’ so why not get referred instead of running the risk that they ditch self-referral at any moment.

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