If you get a free grandfathered BA Premium Plus Amex, it’s over – but you saved £3,000+

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• EvilDoctorK says:

  4 Jun4 June 09:31

  Just checked and my annual fee bills on the August statement which would seem to be optimal for this change !

• NFH says:

  4 Jun4 June 09:45

  Other customers’ BAPP annual fees are increasing by only £55 (from £195 to £250). Therefore I don’t understand why grandfathered Platinum card holders’ BAPP annual fees are increasing by £250 (from £0 to £250). Such a large fee increase is disproportionate and lacks objective justification, particularly for very loyal customers who are most likely to persuade friends and family to become customers.

  • Dominic says:

    4 Jun4 June 10:10

    It isn’t disproportionate. It’s charging the going rate after an exceptionally good sign-up offer two decades ago.

    • NFH says:

      4 Jun4 June 15:16

      A £250 jump in the annual fee (from £0 to £250) is indeed disproportionate. It could have been done more gradually – perhaps first £55, then £95 and then £100. If they had done it this way, then they might lose fewer customers of the Platinum and/or BAPP cards.

      • Justin says:

        4 Jun4 June 17:14

        Objectively, its entirety, it’s not disproportionate – everyone has the same product, everyone pays the same fee. Anyone not happy can simply walk away or downgrade.

        As someone else has mentioned, those who have the grandfathered rates are getting their ‘perks’ off the backs of members who pay the full fee. These members should be grateful AmEx let this go on for such a long period of time.

• Tim R says:

  4 Jun4 June 10:05

  Ah. All good things must come to an end, even though I mentioned the other day I’d never paid for my BA Card.
  I’ll probably retain both. I’m an avid Avios collector (Card Tart may be more appropriate), and I like the extras the Platinum card gives me.
  A shame all the same.

• DBS12 says:

  4 Jun4 June 10:38

  I’ve held a Platinum Amex and a BA Premium Plus card for 8 years and have been paying both fees in full for the duration. I’ve never heard of a clause offering the BAPP at a discounted rate (£30)? I have just called Amex and they said they know nothing about this and there is no discount on fees for existing Amex card holders. Does anyone have any further info on this or where I can find this clause?

  • Rhys says:

    4 Jun4 June 10:46

    The offer was available in 2001 – Rob has been grandfathered in. You haven’t been able to get it for years (potentially decades!)

    • Andrew says:

      4 Jun4 June 10:54

      I think I got it about 15 years ago at £0 annual fee and has continued since for me. Then maybe about 10 years ago it moved to £30 annual fee for new signups. And then it went completely. And now they are removing it for everyone with legacy agreements.

  • Anne says:

    4 Jun4 June 11:27

    I never knew it existed before they gave it to me back in 2005. I held the old free blue Amex (not the BA free card) when I applied for the BAPP and it was a very nice surprise to get the reduced fee. It’s carried on ever since despite one abortive attempt by Amex to remove in it, I think, 2017. I don’t ever recall seeing the £30 version of the fee as an advertised benefit in the way the free BAPP with Plat was for a while.

• Babyg says:

  4 Jun4 June 10:42

  Shame, but people should just dollar cost average the card fees… points is a long term game IMHO, sometimes the rules change, but the goals don’t.

  • Genghis says:

    4 Jun4 June 10:47

    I disagree. My approach to minimise card fees where possible has worked out well. I guess I lost out on all the Plat offers over the past year but average it out longer term and I’m well up.

• Andy Peek says:

  4 Jun4 June 12:09

  Be good to see a comparison against the Virgin Atlantic Card. Especially now Virgin offer tier points on redemption flights. Also point redemption seems better value in Virgin for most routes, London > HKG seems to be approx 40,000 points less.
  Plus you can exchange Clubcard points to VA.

• A says:

  4 Jun4 June 12:41

  The £0 fee was a huge incentive for me keeping the platinum card, with its already significantly watered down benefits over the years.
  Disappointed in Amex with this – they are usually exceptionally good at keeping grandfathered things – I have others still on cards that are long discontinued.

  Personally, the 2-4-1 wasn’t much use since my divorce, and given I now live in the US, unusable for the most part anyway. I always use virgin points ex- JFK and only used to redeem on BA in F coming back from the UK, due to the stupidly BA high award fees ex-JFK. Now F has been culled, and availability will be harder, even that isn’t so much of an option now.

  I may cancel the BA PP when my is due to go up in August of 2022 switch BA countries and take out the US Chase BA card, which gives me 60,000 avios after $3k spend, 5 avios/$1 BA spend, and $95 fee. Companion voucher at $30k spend but, again, not much use right now.

  Poor form by amex (cue incoming comments from people who have been paying for years and resent long standing loyalty customers).

  • Jayne says:

    4 Jun4 June 18:47

    Getting something free is not really the definition of a loyal customer. You’re jogging on now, by the sound of it, which speaks volumes.

    • A says:

      4 Jun4 June 22:15

      Well I’m certainly not cancelling my platinum on either side of the Atlantic, my centurion, or numerous other cards with them, so yeah, in terms of spend and fees I’m what I imagine Amex would perceive as a loyal customer.
      The other grandfathered stuff hasn’t gone either – just this, which screams of an easy cash grab attempt.

      This, on the other hand is almost a net 45% overnight fee increase for no additional product, far in excess of the £55 (28.5%) fee increase for the majority of customers….and remember that in order to have had this £0 fee grandfathered, the customer has had to have BOTH cards continuously for 15, 20 years – no churning here – so yeah this increase is taking the piss a little. They are totally free to change it, just as I am free to walk away from that particular product and they will consequently lose the % of the significant spend put through that card annually.

      By your argument, BA gold card holders should still have to pay for their seat choice, as they shouldn’t get it free with their loyalty.

• Ramsey says:

  4 Jun4 June 12:53

  All you grandfathered people should be ashamed at subsidising every other regular customer who was actually paying the real fee. I’m guessing the fca probably had enough of this and is cracking down like they have been in insurance between customer classes that should be equal but paying different rates for the exact same financial product.

  They should have ended this a long time ago and frankly sounds like a case for a lawsuit.

  • Justin says:

    4 Jun4 June 16:59

    Exactly.

    Sadly there too many comments on this page which exude entitlement. For those not wanting to pay, they can walk away or downgrade…. simple as that.

    • Rob says:

      4 Jun4 June 20:41

      Totally bizarre. You know that if you join a private members club in London, convention is that your membership fee is fixed for life at what you paid in your first year – so anyone who is member for 40 years ends up paying a fraction of what a new member pays?

      In the B2B market it is pretty normal for customers to insist on zero or RPI-only price increases for software products (not Microsoft, obviously, but the niche industry-specific products that every sector has) so over time new customers end up paying much more than you.

      I agree it is odd that Amex let this ride for so long, but only in the B2C market does every customer tend to pay the same.

      We even do it ourselves at HfP. There is, nominally, a price list for ads and sponsored content but in reality everyone pays a different rate. At one point we aggressively increased our pricing – with no impact on demand – but it took 3 years to bring existing customers up to the same levels.

  • QFFlyer says:

    4 Jun4 June 17:43

    A lawsuit, take a look at yourself. A company can offer whatever product it wants to anyone. It was a benefit offered at a certain point in time, which was retained for those who signed up at that time. New signups accepted the terms which were offered when they signed up themselves.

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