American Express raises the annual fee on many of its cards

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• Mikel says:

  11 Oct11 October 09:44

  Not long had the platinum card and so far I’ve done well out of it with offers, which I’m using, including the Hilton 9000 points off a Hilton £200 Hilton spend, 65000 points on taking out the card, £150 dining credit which I’m using on Friday in London, and Barcelona in 4 weeks time, gold status in Hilton, so (potential) upgraded room and free breakfast, priority pass which I’ve already used 4 times in Europe. Harvey Nics in Edinburgh for lunch twice this year. The increase in fee is tough but I’ll probably pay it next year.

  • Harrier25 says:

    11 Oct11 October 16:29

    You can’t include the ‘9,000 MR points on a Hilton £200 spend’ as a Platinum card benefit, because I got that too on my Green charge card that I pay £60 a year for.

    • Spaghetti Town says:

      11 Oct11 October 18:29

      You can’t include the ‘9,000 MR points on a Hilton £200 spend’ as a Platinum card benefit, because I got that too on my clear plastic amex rewards card that I pay £0 a year for.

      • Harrier25 says:

        11 Oct11 October 19:49

        Nice copy and paste. 🙂

        • Spaghetti Town says:

          11 Oct11 October 22:22

          Sorry – couldn’t resist! 😛

    • Doommonger says:

      13 Oct13 October 17:20

      Good work Harriet25

• James C says:

  11 Oct11 October 09:45

  10/10 to the person in the Amex comms team who realised introducing these fee increases immediately after ending pro-rata refunds a week or so earlier would have been a PR disaster. Struggling to see VfM on the Platinum card at this level I’m afraid but have a while to consider options.

  • Mikeact says:

    11 Oct11 October 14:15

    +1

  • Peter K says:

    11 Oct11 October 15:05

    Or look at it the other way…who should carry the can for not realising until the last minute the PR mess that would be caused!

• Copperfield27 says:

  11 Oct11 October 09:46

  Oh for the glory days of Amex Plat = Cathay Pacific Marco Polo Gold ; ) Now that was a benefit which would justify even the new fee.

  • Numpty says:

    11 Oct11 October 10:48

    Yes, bring that back! I status matched that for years and kept up lounge access with different airline alliances.

    • Andrew J says:

      11 Oct11 October 10:58

      No! The lounges are busy enough!

    • yorkieflyer says:

      13 Oct13 October 08:20

      Yes that was neat

  • AspirationalFlyer says:

    12 Oct12 October 08:15

    That was great. Was it around 2012/2013? I was also on an offer for my first year for half price. Accor platinum status was included too.

• SamG says:

  11 Oct11 October 09:49

  I haven’t gone through line by line to compare but for me Nationwide Flexplus at £13pm for AA / travel insurance and mobile insurance – all of which we would be buying elsewhere anyway is a very good offer. I’ve also got the free HSBC Premier one.

  This means I can’t assign any value from the Plat travel insurance and for me personally the rest of the benefits (lounge / statuses / overseas dining credit ) don’t suit my 2 a + 2 inf travel patterns these days (we redeem for BA CE or go to France on the ferry, chain hotels are usually woefully useless at accommodating a family) and so it isn’t a product that works for me.

  In a different circumstance – “DINK” or retired, lots of work travel on Easyjet etc then it would and it doesn’t need to be a mass market product – I’m sure Amex can make it work if they can capture enough of their target groups

  • JenT says:

    11 Oct11 October 09:53

    @SamG – it sometimes is worth going through line-by-line! I have HSBC Premier but my husband is not covered because he gets very minor medical treatment at a hospital once a year – their policy is no coverage if hospital treatment received and no option to declare/waive pre-existing conditions. Barclays Travel Pack allows us to declare pre-existing conditions with no problems, so the devil is in the detail…

    • Sam G says:

      12 Oct12 October 10:34

      Yes – Nationwide allows you to list and waive coverage for those conditions or pay a premium for coverage. Devil is absolutely in the detail and you should always carefully consider your circumstances and possible scenarios vs the coverage on offer.

      One poster got stuck somewhere recently and would have missed their onward business class flight home and it was surprising how little coverage some policies would offer in replacing this for example

• JenT says:

  11 Oct11 October 09:51

  @Tom – I have some similar thoughts about the insurance. Recently, to avoid the FX fees, I now pay with another card so therefore have another insurance policy to cover that expenditure. However, after making a large claim (settlement around £8000), I can assure you that if the retailer does not accept Amex, there is no issue with Amex paying out on those costs if they can see Amex is not a payment option.

  • Tom says:

    11 Oct11 October 10:05

    Yes – I had a claim experience several years ago where the vendor didn’t take Amex as well and they did pay. But the response was something along the lines of “well as a one-off this time we’ll waive the requirement” which doesn’t inspire confidence.

• Rob says:

  11 Oct11 October 10:21

  If you pay your hotel at check-out then, if nothing bad happens in the hotel to require an insurance claim, you just use a 0% card.

  if you get robbed in the hotel, pay with the Amex and whack in your insurance claim.

  • Tom says:

    11 Oct11 October 13:00

    Yes – this is what I used to do. It does leave some potential gaps in coverage unfortunately though – particularly discovering a theft/loss after you have checked out (which has unfortunately happened to me before) and it doesn’t work for hotels which insist on payment of the room rate (not just blocking a card) at checkin (which seems to be becoming more common).

• Toppcat says:

  11 Oct11 October 10:29

  Adding my voice to those that are saying that one top tier hotel status would add a lot more value to the Platinum offering, rather than a bunch of mid-tier statuses, which I value at very little.

  Hilton Gold is nice for the free breakfast whenever I happen to stay at a Hilton, but it doesn’t change my behaviour. The others I really don’t value, but that might just reflect my stay patterns.

  When Platinum came with top-tier Accor status that really did make a difference – I received some great suite upgrades, and it did make me shift my spend towards Accor, so it could make sense for a hotel chain too.

  • CamFlyer says:

    11 Oct11 October 23:47

    This year I nearly saved the cost of my annual fee with one 20% off Melia voucher on a family holiday. Add in the PP lounges en route, travel and car hire insurance and that one trip hit break even. I question the cost every year (IEC, but similar benefits except the dining and HN credits), but (like Inexoect many) it always at least breaks even for me.

• Paul Winter says:

  11 Oct11 October 12:01

  I have only ever claimed on my travel insurance once, but that included a hotel that did not take Amex. They still paid up, and as I recall, it was mentioned on the insurance pages that you could still claim.

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