American Express raises the annual fee on many of its cards

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• HH says:

  11 Oct11 October 07:04

  I’ve resisted saying it but Gold had looked surprisingly cheap against the BAPP fee, let alone the Deliveroo credit offsetting most of the old Gold fee for those who use Deliveroo. I’m glad the new fee doesn’t start with a 2 at least.

  • Rob says:

    11 Oct11 October 07:36

    I’d say the opposite. Getting £200 of value from Gold is very difficult. Even if you use the £120 of Deliveroo credit (and that’s a big ‘if’) you’re still ascribing £20 of value to the airport lounge passes each.

    The value for us in the 12,500 bonus points but even then it is marginal.

    • Maples says:

      11 Oct11 October 09:32

      I’d say it’s possible because access to lounges aren’t really £20 or £24 without Priority Pass membership. Most lounges are like £30-40? without PP.

      • Rob says:

        11 Oct11 October 10:22

        You can buy pre-paid DragonPass lounge vouchers for £18.50 if you sign up for a free Regus offices account.

        • squall says:

          11 Oct11 October 21:54

          These are up to £24 now

    • SamG says:

      11 Oct11 October 09:51

      I think you’ve said this as well @Rob but I always got a lot of value from lots of the offers on my Gold card, often they only appeared there

      Not sure I’ll be bothering to keep it on that basis though, rather churn bonuses but for most people I think you’d get your fee back

    • Paul says:

      11 Oct11 October 20:07

      There’s value in the 2x points on airline spend; 3x with Amex Travel for me, with the Gold.

• daveinitalia says:

  11 Oct11 October 07:05

  Can anyone remember what the Platinum fee was 20 years ago when I first signed up? I think the gold fee has now overtaken what the Platinum fee was then (not taking into account inflation).

  • Andrew J says:

    11 Oct11 October 07:11

    I think it was £250 when I signed up about 20 years ago. The Bank of England calculate that as being £435 in today’s money, and given we now have £300 of dining credit and £100 of HN credit, we’re doing better than we were 20 years ago from the card.

    • robkeane says:

      11 Oct11 October 09:43

      If you don;t normally shop in HN, then the £100 is worth about £50, as the clothes are vastly overpriced for what they are. And you only get the dining credit if you plan your eating around places that amex has determined you should eat in. So no way is the dining credit equal to £300 in cash. So lets not get into adding up “credits” and equating them to cash, unless of course you want to make Amex’s argument for them.

      I note that the sign-up article today starts with the word “CRAZY”, for a sign-up bonus that takes 15 months and two subscriptions to get. That somewhat enhanced sign-up bonus is costing £1300 to get, and is excluding you from any other Amex sign-up bonus for 4 years, and any possible retention offer for 2 years. The usual deep analysis of the cost/benefit is missing.

      • Rob says:

        11 Oct11 October 10:17

        You can’t do a deep cost/benefit analysis but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that if you cancel the card on 28th February you can get £1,500 of dining / points / HN credit – ascribing ZERO value to the insurance, Priority Pass, Amex Offers, Platinum Events, FHR, hotel status etc – for roughly £200.

        • robkeane says:

          11 Oct11 October 12:51

          If someone can do the £10K spend before the pro-rata cut-off date then its buying MR points very cheaply and should definitely go for it.

    • daveinitalia says:

      11 Oct11 October 12:42

      Rob mentions it being £350 for ages, I think I signed up just before it went up so perhaps it was £250 and then up to £350.

  • Rob says:

    11 Oct11 October 07:35

    £350 I think. Was £350 for eons.

    • e14 says:

      11 Oct11 October 08:29

      It was £350 but that also included the BA Amex annual fee reduction

• meta says:

  11 Oct11 October 07:28

  I thought charge cards were not supposed to be impacted by the abolition of pro-rata refunds. I certainly never received communication from Amex about it for my Platinum charge card.

  • Rob says:

    11 Oct11 October 07:34

    They’re not.

    • Johyu5 says:

      11 Oct11 October 12:29

      I think I know the answer but I’ll ask anyway: are Platinum Charge cards also being hiked to £650?

      • Rob says:

        11 Oct11 October 13:24

        I assume so, yes.

    • Sundar says:

      11 Oct11 October 18:46

      Ooh interesting – Is the legacy Amex Gold charge card then going to retain the old fees of £160 ?

      • Rob says:

        11 Oct11 October 18:55

        I guess not but we’ll see when the letters go out.

• ffxmadman says:

  11 Oct11 October 07:33

  Fees increased but nothing significant in benefits. Still has foreign transaction fees despite marketed as a travel card. Disappointing from Amex

  • SteveJ says:

    11 Oct11 October 09:28

    Plenty of business travellers not treating company spend as they would their own, this happily putting overseas business spend on this card.

    • Rob says:

      11 Oct11 October 10:24

      I would fire anyone who treated company money as they did their own and failed to maximise their rewards.

      • BP says:

        11 Oct11 October 11:42

        Opposite of most businesses then!

      • daveinitalia says:

        11 Oct11 October 12:51

        HfP isn’t a typical company though. If someone wasted an opportunity to maximise their earnings they’d be in the wrong job!

        Speaking of which, do you have a job going for someone to review F class flights on all the oneworld carriers starting from February next year? I need to renew GGL and I promise to make full use of expenses 😁

        • Rob says:

          11 Oct11 October 13:24

          Rhys will have done most of them by then. He’s off on Cathay in a couple of weeks and I assume the new JAL seat will come with an invite.

  • Gavin says:

    11 Oct11 October 09:37

    I think it’s possible that many people don’t care about it. I have a friend that always uses his Amex at home and abroad, he’s not interested in hearing about fee-free cards. He’s a high earner and financially literate, just not willing to put in the (small) effort to save on exchange fees.

  • JDB says:

    11 Oct11 October 10:39

    The answer as to why Amex offers no FX fees on US cards is that a) so many Americans don’t travel abroad and b) they make huge interchange fees in the US so can subsidise foreign spend. Neither applies to Amex UK.

    • John says:

      11 Oct11 October 12:58

      Then they could introduce FX fees and make more money

      But I’d expect a large proportion of US Amex holders to travel abroad, more than the general population

      • Mikeact says:

        11 Oct11 October 13:59

        I don’t know the proportion of US Amex holders travelling overseas but my guess it must be 50%+ as apposed to 50%-. Everybody I know ,neighbours (in the TwinCities) plus other contacts all travel overseas, maybe not Europe or the Far East, necessarily, but certainly Mexico and the Caribbean.

• G says:

  11 Oct11 October 07:38

  No reason to come back to Amex. £650 is ridiculous.

  • Rob says:

    11 Oct11 October 07:48

    You can get £1,500 of benefits if you sign up today and still cancel before 29 February for the fee refund.

    • G says:

      11 Oct11 October 07:59

      Unfortunately I’m not eligable anymore, I got the 65,000 sign up bonus last year! I definitely made it worth it though!

• BJ says:

  11 Oct11 October 07:53

  I think amex strategy is all wrong. Personally I’d much rather they reduced the fees and the benefits. With regard to Platinum I don’t see the point of taking fees on one hand simply to hand it back as dining and shopping credit at places I may not want to eat or shop. I’d much rather they removed these, reduce the fee and improve further the their travel insurance so that it would inspire greater confidence. With regards to hotels I’d prefer they trim these so that they offer less but better, e.g. keep Fine Hotels, add IHG and give a choice of one of IHG Diamond, Hilton Diamond or Marriott Titanium as opposed to multiple chains at lower tiers. With Gold something similar is going on with Deliveroo, does anybody really want to pay £190 to get £60 back on that? Surely if amex insist on bundling they can come up with something better than Deliveroo, e.g. supermarket spend? I’ve been very conflicted about upgrading my green charge to platinum charge next month due to bundled benefits and continuing reservations about their travel insurance despite no longer being excluded by pre-existing conditions. Increased fees don’t help; I’m increasingly thinking that legacy green charge might be the best card in the amex stable so I might just stick with that.

  • BJ says:

    11 Oct11 October 08:05

    *£120 Deliveroo

  • BBbetter says:

    11 Oct11 October 08:14

    Amex is obviously banking on the fact that some wouldn’t use the dining credit.

    • BJ says:

      11 Oct11 October 08:22

      Or indeed other benefits. However, if they’re getting £650 from me I’d feel compelled to use them and that’s what doesn’t sit comfortably with me.

      • SteveJ says:

        11 Oct11 October 09:54

        Exactly, I don’t rate many of the restaurants on Amex’s list, home or abroad. So that credit isn’t really worth £150 each, to me.

        • apbj says:

          11 Oct11 October 10:22

          Yep, they make money on me because I never set foot in Harvey Nichols and I haven’t been able to use the dining benefit. I only keep it for the travel insurance and car hire insurance and the occasional lounge access. The moment the insurance cover starts getting watered down, I’m off.

        • JDB says:

          11 Oct11 October 10:37

          Yes, I can’t believe how bad the Plat list is for Madrid is which will be my wife’s last chance to use it given no options at all in the many other cities/countries she has visited this year.

  • Harry T says:

    11 Oct11 October 18:32

    Broadly agree, but don’t think Marriott Titanium would be a feasible addition. Maybe platinum but even that would contribute to worsening the already challenging experience for true hotel elites in some markets. They can give out less valuable status like IHG and Hilton Diamond IMO, hotels don’t take those statuses massively seriously anyway.

• HW99 says:

  11 Oct11 October 08:40

  I think gold still holds good value for a lot of people, Deliveroo credit really isn’t hard to spend if you live in a metropolitan area. Since Deliveroo themselves are running always running offers which stack with the £5 credit, making ordering takaway even economical sometimes…

  Plus the £20~ * 4 lounge visits for the not so frequent flyers in which a plat lounge pass would be wasted on.

• Harrier25 says:

  11 Oct11 October 08:46

  Daylight robbery. At least Dick Turpin had the decency to wear a mask!

  • daveinitalia says:

    11 Oct11 October 12:53

    He didn’t want to get covid!

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