Amazon cuts the cashback earning rate on its Platinum Mastercard credit card

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• Rob says:

  28 Mar28 March 08:20

  It is, if you get a suitable limit, but a lot of people don’t like using niche issuers. I had a resder contact me yesterday who averages $5,000 per day spend on holiday (his family always take the top suite in whatever resort they are in) and cannot find a 0% issuer who gives chunky credit limits.

  • Lumma says:

    28 Mar28 March 08:50

    Oops, I read that as £500 a day 🙂

  • Lev441 says:

    28 Mar28 March 08:56

    Likewise except when I stopped using it they’ve been slowly dropping my credit limit without notice.. gone from £5,500 to £800 which is a bit of a pain…

  • Andy says:

    28 Mar28 March 11:54

    I’ve just spent 5 mins trying to work out what acronym “resder” was for a HNW person before realising it was a typo…

  • TGLoyalty says:

    28 Mar28 March 15:05

    Needs to get himself an IDC $ Card

• Crafty says:

  28 Mar28 March 08:49

  Bet you anything this also means the winter one will be “one and done” from now on. This will be a trial run for it.

  Looks like Amex has brought in someone bright to focus on the bottom line.

  • Lev441 says:

    28 Mar28 March 08:57

    That would be a pathetic promo if the case….

    • Alan says:

      28 Mar28 March 10:21

      Indeed. wouldn’t exactly encourage you not to cancel all your cards for 2 years.

  • Shoestring says:

    28 Mar28 March 09:02

    no chance – as Amex use SS to prove to retailers that they are supporting them by sending them extra customers

    • Andi says:

      28 Mar28 March 10:32

      Exactly – Shop Small is mainly about two things as far as I can see –

      1) Promoting wider acceptance of Amex by retailers in the small business market where Amex is traditionally lacking

      2) Promoting to the customer the fact that there are lots of opportunities to use your Amex in small shops around you and actively encouraging them to shop at Amex-accepting retailers.

      To a lesser extent the statement credit also creates some goodwill among Amex customers.

      Limiting the Winter promo to one and done would severely limit the effectiveness of this strategy.

      • Callum says:

        28 Mar28 March 10:55

        You’re making the assumption that it actually works. I wouldn’t be so convinced.

        – People on here just use it as a money generating machine.
        – Most other people probably don’t hear much about it (I certainly never see it mentioned outside of a select few blogs – not one person I know in real life has ever mentioned it to me). the
        – Every year there are dozens of posts here about how loads of retailers didn’t even know it was happening.

        In my (unqualified) opinion, Amex acceptance is pretty much as good as it’s going to get, and I don’t think giving out millions of pounds to people every year is going to have much impact on that. Perhaps this is a trial to test that theory?

  • Kevin C says:

    28 Mar28 March 11:36

    I see the Shop Small stickers around in London a lot and retailers keep them up all year. Amex obviously put a lot of effort into it.

    I don’t pretend to know what Amex are planning but if they restrict Shop Small to one transaction per card for the entire event they may as well not do it at all.

    • Rui N. says:

      28 Mar28 March 12:10

      They’ve done it before in the US, so wouldn’t be surprised if they went that way in here as well.
      There was one year (2017) when the “offer” was just asking you to shop small, no money offered.

      • ankomonkey says:

        28 Mar28 March 15:53

        Didn’t they do 5 or 10% off in the US one year? Nowhere near as generous as here. And they capped the sign-up bonuses in the US before they did here too…

    • Rob says:

      28 Mar28 March 12:16

      You probably can’t peel them off easily!

• AndyK says:

  28 Mar28 March 08:51

  OT. I need to cancel BA flights booked some time ago and paid for using BAPP. Card is cancelled now after earning 2-4-1 voucher.
  Am I in danger of losing it as a refund will definitely push the spend below 10K?

  • Lev441 says:

    28 Mar28 March 08:59

    as the voucher has gone into your ba account you’ll be fine

  • Anna says:

    28 Mar28 March 13:23

    Someone posted the same thing previously – as I recall all that happened was that they had to spend the extra amount in the next card year to get the next 2 4 1.

• kk says:

  28 Mar28 March 09:02

  I was BANNED by amex for getting about £1500 in Shop Small credits last December.

  Has anyone experienced this, and what to do about it?

  • Peter 64K says:

    28 Mar28 March 09:17

    They specifically said no gaming the system in the t&c.

    • kk says:

      28 Mar28 March 10:30

      A. What’s “gaming”? If they are concerned about their exposure, it is easy to design a program that limits it, rather than make do with vague terms interpreted post-hoc by only one party without any discussion with the other. It is especially easy to put limits on promotional spending in the age of computer systems, one would think?
      B. More importantly, their T&Cs only mention suspension of credits (or some such, I some remember). There’s nothing there that says one would be banned for “gaming.”

      • paul says:

        28 Mar28 March 11:21

        but its common sense, no? why you need to be TOLD that if you go over the top and take the P you will be banned/suspended/whatever? As i mention, i like to avail myself of offers as much as most people but at the end of that day if you go to far expect to be stopped. People seem to need to be told what to do and how to behave at every opportunity and seem unable to take the consequences of their own behaviour

        Its like all the moaners re Amex stopping more than 1 sign up bonus. i have signed up to the same card more than once in the past but now i can’t (apart from waiting 24 months). Their cards, their choice. they don’t owe us a card

      • Shoestring says:

        28 Mar28 March 16:35

        @kk – [what’s gaming?]

        easy – it’s 1. splitting up a big purchase across several cards & 2. using multiple cards at the same outlet

        so were you guilty of either of these, kk?

  • paul says:

    28 Mar28 March 09:33

    what to do about it? learn from your error of being greedy…i claimed around £150 over 4 cards and i thought that was erring on the slightly cheeky…we all like to take advantage of offers etc, but decency tells you when to stop surely??

    • Callum says:

      28 Mar28 March 10:59

      If unlimited credits are offered, how do you decide how much is too much?

      • paul says:

        28 Mar28 March 11:17

        in the same way that when there is a free bar, for whatever reason, do you attempt to drink the bar dry or do you enjoy yourself, have the same amount of drinks in the timeframe that you would normally happily pay for plus a couple more? its called not taking the P and trying to show a bit of self control

    • kk says:

      28 Mar28 March 12:02

      Thanks. But your comment is mostly about psychology rather than finance.

      I am happy to take the psychological aspects of it on-board, but “don’t rise above your station” / “know what’s due to you” is not a universally shared mental approach, nor is it a good guide for all the situations. (for some it might be).

      • paul says:

        28 Mar28 March 12:28

        psychology has a lot to do with finance and vice versa, its all about interpreting the behaviour of others. Its also not about “don’t rise above your station” / “know what’s due to you” its about displaying self control. If you cant, you lose access as proved by you losing access to Amex by getting banned

    • kk says:

      28 Mar28 March 14:35

      > Their cards, their choice. they don’t owe us a card

      By that logic, I don’t owe anything to Amex also?

      And by the same train of thought, Amex have set the *explicit* limits to their sign-up bonuses rather than rely on “common sense” – isn’t this what your example demonstrates in the first place? Why couldn’t they just rely on “common sense” to stop people from “going over the top”? (I didn’t understand the relevance of the “moaning” part of it).

      To express the same idea in less confrontational terms, I have zero telepathic knowledge about Amex’s expectations about my behaviour wrt this promotion. If they had a concern that they end up spending too much, they certainly didn’t signal it at all: instead, they heavily advertised it, encouraging cardmembers to avail of Shop Small as much as they can. In addition, they sent promotional emails encouraging friends and family to use the promotion as well.

      Re: common sense. I have friends who have obtained, over the years, close to £1000 in these credits from Amex, without any problem whatsoever while doing their regular shopping (and bar-hopping). The disparity between your pusillanimous £150 and the £1000 they received every year shows that there are downsides in the other direction, too. And it’s just as easy to get too carried away on the path of self-policing (and passively aggressively policing the others) as it is on the path of profligate spending or penny-pinching, or buying designer clothes, or what-not. Was was the first instinctive reaction to my question to turn it into a moral issue? (It’s an interesting question, actually)

      Now, does the above, tempt you to spend £200 next year instead of £150? Have the dials on your common-sense-meter been moved at all by this discussion, what is commonsense in 2019 that was not common sense to you in 2018? ; )) (P.S. I hope this whole thing isn’t a big deal for either of us – this discussion is just in the context of this web site — points, “deals”, etc).

      • paul says:

        28 Mar28 March 15:59

        No i’m certainly not upset by this conversation, its interesting to have such discussion and everyone has differing opinions on most things in life, that’s what keeps things interesting…but at the end of the day your points are all moot since by my behaving the way i have, my Amex cards/account have NOT been blocked, by you behaving the way you have, your Amex card/account HAVE been blocked. You are complaining about it saying that they should cover people taking the P in their t&c’s, im saying why should they and also saying anyone who behaved relatively normally wouldn’t be in that situation. You dont agree with me, as is your right, but i’m not the one who posed the original question of Has anyone experienced this, and what to do about it?

        I work in corporate finance and if people behave in a way that we deem improper then we don’t do business with them. There are enough other co. that want/need us. You need/want a relationship with Amex more than they want you

  • Frenske says:

    28 Mar28 March 11:56

    Spend less. No need to abuse the offer. AmEx are not making any profit on the shop small action and if there enough people abusing it they will simply cancel if for everybody.

    • kk says:

      28 Mar28 March 16:00

      You are right.
      By also note that almost everyone on this site is abusing an offer (of points) and they will simply cancel it for everybody. (In a sense)

  • SteveD says:

    28 Mar28 March 14:36

    We might hypothesise therefore that the current SS Offer is actually an IT test to ‘trap’ multiple attempted uses of the offer.

    They don’t need to offer it to everyone to do that, but they do need to have a large enough sample for any issues to show up.
    This time they have set the ‘number of credits permitted’ flag to 1. Come December, that flag may be set to something higher, but it suggests they are looking at a technological solution to the issue of gaming / abuse / legitimate maximisation of opportunity (delete as applicable), rather than relying on Dave from Accounts to run his report every morning.

    As a tactic, this obviously aligns with the recent bonus changes.

    • Memesweeper says:

      28 Mar28 March 15:49

      Nice theory. Maybe relaunched for the rest of us as max once per cardholder per day? Would annoy the ‘gamers’ and pretty much no one else.

  • Mary Berry says:

    28 Mar28 March 21:30

    Good, and so you should be.
    Taking the p*#s.

    • Shoestring says:

      28 Mar28 March 21:36

      as I mentioned earlier, ‘gaming’ is not a difficult concept to understand:

      [@kk – [what’s gaming?]

      easy – it’s 1. splitting up a big purchase across several cards & 2. using multiple cards at the same outlet

      so were you guilty of either of these, kk?]

      • Shoestring says:

        28 Mar28 March 21:45

        I don’t want to appear hypocritical – I’ve done both & I guess I also took it to the limit about 3 years ago when I got about £800+ in £5s from Amex, thanks Shop Small buddies.

        otoh I wouldn’t be so dumb as to claim that wasn’t gaming it 🙂

      • kk says:

        29 Mar29 March 10:30

        Yes, sure I was. (Just as many other cardmembers who have more than one card.). Viewing this as gaming is not unreasonable. But the issue is about something else.

        If the rule for gaming is as clear-cut as you are saying, it is worth asking: why didn’t AmEx put it in their rules, then? Is it so they can selectively apply it without any accountability?

        Why bother with a financial contract anyway, maybe we should all rely on “common sense” if everything is so obvious to everyone? (I think one big reason for it, apart from providing guidelines, is also this one: to prevent large companies/governments from abusing their position vis-a-vis relatively unimportant consumers/individuals).

        Regardless of the above, the “gaming” (whatever it might be) is not grounds for cancellation of the account.

    • kk says:

      29 Mar29 March 10:52

      EVeryone on this site is taking the p…: exploiting loopholes and inefficiencies for personal gain, while the rest of the society bears the costs, so to speak. It’s not like you are making the society better by applying for credit cards (unless you are donating your points to widows and orphanages, which is of course possible). Best regards!

• Nick G says:

  28 Mar28 March 09:06

  OT

  Just paid to stay at Hilton Syon park again in the sale. Great hotel. No credit from Amex for spending £250 or more as offered. Were staying in a couple of weeks. Am I best ringing Amex now to try and ask for the credit (yes I know it’s not valid on pre pay stays), or best to wait until I have a receipt? Then again I was thinking the receipt will show a check in and out date different to the transaction date, thereby rumbling my plans?

  Cheers

  • Alan says:

    28 Mar28 March 11:15

    If your stay is after the end of the promo then you’re technically not valid although as others have said if card charged you should be OK. Have Syon Park charged your Amex yet? If so which day did they do so? (can take a while for credits to appear) Are Syon Park on the list of approved hotels for the promo? (would imagine they are but obviously only applies if they are!)

  • Will says:

    28 Mar28 March 13:55

    Syron Park was not included in the list of hotels covered by the AMEX offer.

    • Cat says:

      28 Mar28 March 18:35

      Syron Park might not have been, but Syon Park was!

• Craig says:

  28 Mar28 March 09:41

  OT: Trying to order a Tesco sim, all seems well until I press the order button which greys out then nothing, any similar experiences?

• Russ says:

  28 Mar28 March 09:51

  What’s happening with Amex? Not so very long ago it was a highly respectable institution, noted for it’s outstanding service, a perceivable willingness to help and a genuine sounding apology when things broke down. Now not only are we seeing bouncy cash back offers, some of us appear to have to wait nine months to be eligible for a fiver off offer. Even that we’ll probably have to chase. What’s going on?

  • Nick_C says:

    28 Mar28 March 12:00

    I find service is still excellent if you are lucky enough to get through to Brighton. The Philippines Call Centre staff are polite but pretty useless.

    Oh and when I called last week to talk about an issue with a supplementary card, the CSA kept referring to my wife. Brighton staff would never assume a partner has to be opposite sex.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      28 Mar28 March 15:12

      or that a supp card holder of the opposite sex is your wife.

      Sister, Mum, girlfriend etc

• Ant says:

  28 Mar28 March 09:54

  OT: Malaysia Airlines. Trying to book seats – can we do this for free if we are BA SIlver? Online it keeps asking for £14 per seat even though it has our BA membership number linked to the booking.

  • Rob says:

    28 Mar28 March 09:55

    Malaysia rules, not BA rules, on a Malaysia plane.

  • marcw says:

    28 Mar28 March 10:16

    Only free seat selection if oneworld Emerald. Otherwise, AFAIK you can select seat for free 72-48 h before departure

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