American Express Platinum makes a big change to its travel insurance – but hasn’t told us (or you)

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• Ben says:

  6 Apr6 April 06:01

  Recently signed up for the Plat card, noticed that the medical coverage limit (£2 mil) is way lower than the limit (£10 mil) offered in the HSBC Premier policy. Is there anything I missed?

  • Roger* says:

    6 Apr6 April 08:20

    Even my Nationwide FlexPlus account (£7-ish per month net for me) offer £10k cover.

    Yes, Nationwide FlexAccount, the one whose importance rose fundamentally when AmEx excluded my family the last time plat cover was ‘enhanced’ – and lost a plat account in the process.

  • Anna says:

    6 Apr6 April 08:24

    £2 million is very low – I would always get £10 million cover for the US. A colleague contracted sepsis there and his costs were over £1 million for 2 weeks’ treatment and repatriation. If you required a lengthy hospital stay and surgery it would run to well over this.

  • Lady London says:

    6 Apr6 April 12:36

    IMV £2m is woefully underinsured for medical especially if you are going anywhere near North America. I didn’t know the limit was that low. For me it takes huge amount of value out of the insurance as I would have to arrange separate cover for any trip to North America.

• Lee says:

  6 Apr6 April 06:07

  Now that it has been posted here you can guarantee that the changes will now be notified.

• BlueHorizonUK says:

  6 Apr6 April 06:11

  Hasn’t the provider changed? Pretty sure it used to be AXA.

  Seems you have to call to make a claim and not online anymore? Seems a massive downgrade to services if so.

  • meta says:

    6 Apr6 April 06:52

    It was still Axa yesterday, not sure about today.

    • BlueHorizonUK says:

      6 Apr6 April 07:03

      AMEX shows it as being Chubb

      • Rob says:

        6 Apr6 April 09:19

        The new policy for new cardholders is not (as of today) what the rest of us have.

    • Symon says:

      7 Apr7 April 07:12

      It was Chubb in 2018 when my other half got the Plat. The change over from AXA to Chubb seems to have happened some time ago and just not been noticed.

• Murray says:

  6 Apr6 April 06:12

  Is it worth upgrading to the platinum card? We’d use the lounge visits and travel insurance – I’m guessing I wouldn’t get the bonus if I upgraded from my current gold card?

• Annih says:

  6 Apr6 April 06:21

  Another reason to avoid Amex don’t offer a benefit that is paid for as part of your fee and then make so Many odd rules that you can’t be sure you are covered. Insurance is complicated enough.

• Julian says:

  6 Apr6 April 06:32

  So another move quite clearly aimed at blocking constant churning between different cards in the Amex stable to avoid the massive cost they were facing from those who churned between different Amex cards to earn new signup bonuses.

  But given that they have done this when are they planning to increase the membership rewards rate by 50% to match with the BAPP product and/or when are they going to start issuing BA 2 for 1 vouchers to their cardholders and/or any equivalent of the Lloyds flight class upgrade voucher? But as they aren’t the BA issued Amex card and nor do they have a deal with avios.com (who are of course in any case owned by IAG) as Lloyds did then it may not be possible for them to offer anything equivalent to those particular upgrading deals?

  • Mark2 says:

    6 Apr6 April 07:24

    I always find it advisable to read a comment through to ensure that it makes sense before clicking ‘submit’.

    • Mikeact says:

      6 Apr6 April 07:54

      +1 Please translate.

  • AndyGWP says:

    6 Apr6 April 08:42

    A move quite clearly aimed at churners? Keep up man – I think they already did that a couple of weeks ago 😂😂

    (I know, I know… don’t feed the troll etc)

    • Disappointed says:

      6 Apr6 April 09:55

      Julian is not being a troll and I find the people who regularly jump on his comments are like playground bully’s. If you don’t like what is written in a comment – move on!

      • AndyGWP says:

        6 Apr6 April 10:40

        “Regularly”? I’m just responding to a comment where I can’t see how it is “quite clearly aimed at churners”

        Trollish behaviour is identified by people who continually try to upset people or start arguments. (Ie. By raising issues that aren’t pertinent to the article)

      • Alan says:

        6 Apr6 April 18:49

        I just genuinely can’t understand what point he’s making, esp the bit I quoted above.

      • Julian says:

        8 Apr8 April 15:29

        The point I’m making is that that part of Rob’s current business model is based on airlines points arbitrage where he earns commission by directing us to more efficient ways of collecting points quickly using oddities or loopholes in the current rules of the various schemes.

        But by doing so he then draws the attention of airlines points issuers (directly or indirectly – Amex is indirect) to deficiencies in their current model of bonus points issuing that are being unduly exploited and causing them to lose money and so hence those loopholes to be closed down much earlier than they otherwise would have been.

        Same thing happened exactly with bonus Tesco Clubcard points and even Curve’s loss of Amex acceptance may also be due to Rob’s over promotion of their product to an audience who tried to misuse Curve (repaying spend on one credit card from another credit card for instance, which was clearly not the product’s intention but that it currently facilitates).

        I’m just pointing out that actively promoting collection loopholes rather than quietly using them tends to cause those loopholes to disappear and hence may be self defeating for those who were previously happily quitely exploiting the anomalies in the collection scheme rules………………

        • Rob says:

          8 Apr8 April 18:19

          This is true, but there are some things we do not cover for this reason. You need to come to the parties to learn the darkest secrets 🙂

  • Alan says:

    6 Apr6 April 18:48

    “But given that they have done this when are they planning to increase the membership rewards rate by 50% to match with the BAPP product” – please explain?

    • Julian says:

      9 Apr9 April 10:35

      I meant Amex have now cut or restricted the introductory bonuses for card churning on their various direct Amex cards that could formerly be churned. So having done so can’t they afford to also increase their member points rewards rates (by 50%) to the same number of Avios per pound spent as BA. This is because earning on spend rather than churning cards is going to be more important going forwards.

      • Alan says:

        9 Apr9 April 17:20

        Sure they could but I’m guessing they don’t see the need to so far. From your posting I thought you meant there was some plan you’d read where they said they were going to!

  • Julian says:

    9 Apr9 April 10:29

    I came to the last party, although was a little disappointed not to not find more of the regular names who post here in attendance.

    It was also reassuring to find that in person you were much more of a technical expert rather than a marketing or sales person.

    • Rob says:

      9 Apr9 April 12:10

      I’m a crap sales person, generally telling people their offer isn’t right for our readers so they should keep their money 🙂

      Luckily Anika is more aggressive ….

• Kbuffett says:

  6 Apr6 April 06:47

  Do they really need to write to us? I think I’m regularly receiving new T&C’s via the app that I need to acknowledge before I can continue to use the app. I don’t read them, I just click to confirm I accept to continue.

  • M Corrêa says:

    6 Apr6 April 07:21

    So true! It’s the only company that keeps prompting me to accept their terms and conditions every 2 months or so. At first I thought was some kind of bug but it may be in purpose…

• meta says:

  6 Apr6 April 06:51

  I wonder whether for existing cardholders it will be implemented with the card anniversary and the charging of the fee. After all they call it card membership fee.

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