BIG NEWS: BA Amex annual fee AND voucher qualifying spend to rise sharply

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• Colin_Thames says:

  10 Apr10 April 13:38

  Wow, so many comments. At one point additional pages were appearing faster than I could read!

  I agree, the fee increase and the upped spending requirement are probably justified, but the mid-year change of terms is not.

  For those stuck mid card year, wouldn’t this justify a complaint to Amex, then to the Omudsman? Although it may be legal, it is probably Unfair Treatment in the eyes of the FCA.

  Creation were within their legal rights to cancel cards but the Ombudsman made them award the free night certificate and refund the fee pro-rata for people who complained.

  I just hope that Amex have the sense to do the right thing for existing customers. They should wait to the end of their current card year before increasing the spend threshold, and not piss off so many of their former fans.

  • JDB says:

    10 Apr10 April 14:30

    These questions of fairness are a question of balance. As the BAPP agreement is a rolling one not an annual one, Amex could just have given two months notice but is giving almost seven months notice. The card is squarely aimed at higher income earners who won’t really care about the higher threshold. Also, those whose voucher anniversaries started from around last autumn to early this year are barely affected.

    To the extent it affects those who put the card in a drawer or who are trying to finesse upgrading to the paid card I don’t think either Amex or the regulator will be too concerned.

    For someone who is sufficiently concerned about the fairness of this to take a case to the FOS because they can’t make the £10k spend in seven months, the BAPP is probably the wrong card for them. There is also the option of cancelling for a pro-rata refund.

    I’m actually at the worst end of the spectrum in that my new voucher year starts tomorrow but then it’s a year until I start paying the extra £50.

    I think that in choosing 1 November to implement the threshold change, Amex has got the balance about right.

    • will says:

      10 Apr10 April 15:32

      I’m not sure I would agree with the sentiment of that at all.
      It should not really be up to FOS to make a determination on what “the right” customer is for a product per se which is what your explicitly saying when you assert that anyone who holds the card should be unconcerned with a 15k spend as opposed to a 10k spend per year.

      Regardless of that as Amex are at liberty to set the rules for their product ongoing it really boils down to an opportunity cost argument. Anyone aiming for £10k who’s partly through their year now and is not going to make the £10k in time and then won’t hit the £15k has been potentially misled into using the BAPP.

      A pro rata refund does not compensate them for the period of spend that have put through the BAPP but may otherwise have put elsewhere.

      The fair way to have done this for existing customers would have been to make the change at the end of each individuals anniversary and I think there’s a very strong argument behind that.

      It’s actually a gap in regulation and it was highlighted before this when creation cancelled accounts and didn’t then honor free night certs on those accounts.

      Id argue that you shouldn’t be able to offer clearly defined incentives for using a card and then to be allowed to change those rules during the incentive period you have yourself defined as the card issuer and I’d welcome any rebuttal which argued the case for card issuers to be explicitly allowed to change the rules around defined incentives after having made them.

    • davidn says:

      10 Apr10 April 15:37

      I was just thinking the same on the target market. If you’re a couple (never mind a family of four) and want to use a BAPP voucher for a decent long haul in J every year, you still need say 180-200k Avios each year – without an existing pot – even with the 241. Unless you really play the churning game (is it possible, even then?!) you need to be spending £120k on a BAPP for 180,000 Avios. You might earn reasonable Avios from long haul J and F cash fares too, and some will earn substantial miles from corporate travel, but either way, the fee increase and/or higher spend target isn’t really an issue for that non-HfP type of customer. 🙂

• Maz says:

  10 Apr10 April 13:43

  What’s this talk of a retention bonus? I’ve been with Amex 10 years this year and I’ve received no retention bonus I upgraded to premium about 4 years ago too.

  • Maples says:

    10 Apr10 April 13:56

    You ask to cancel the card and then perhaps ask if there’s a retention offer to keep you from cancelling. I wonder if some agents don’t even bother to check if there’s a retention offer available for your account and straight up look into cancelling/downgrading the card…

  • Rui N. says:

    10 Apr10 April 14:20

    Go on the chat, say that you are thinking of cancelling and ask if there is any retention available on your account. You need to ask, otherwise they might just cancel and be done with it.

  • JDB says:

    10 Apr10 April 14:41

    The current retention bonus is 10k Avios, by far the lowest of the three big cards but with today’s announcement it will likely increase soon as it did for Plat and Gold after their prices increases last autumn.

• Dannii says:

  10 Apr10 April 13:45

  Folks saying Barclaycard is now better, the 2for1 is good for 2 people but the Barclaycard voucher is just for 1 person isn’t it?
  I can’t see how that is better.

  • alan1 says:

    10 Apr10 April 13:49

    Isn’t it one voucher return for 1 person, or either leg for a couple. Or if 2 vouchers then a couple both ways.

    • RussellH says:

      10 Apr10 April 14:09

      Or 1 voucher for 2 pax for a single journey. That is what we have just booked an hour ago.

  • CarpalTravel says:

    10 Apr10 April 13:50

    For me it is becuase the card is useable nearly everywhere, unlike Amex.

    • Gustavo says:

      10 Apr10 April 14:30

      I am not finding too many places that don’t take Amex. I have got the barclaycard rewards as a backup and for foreign spend and don’t end up spending too much on it.

  • Alex G says:

    10 Apr10 April 14:41

    A new account holder might earn two Barclays vouchers in the first year (or less) by spending £30k and only paying about £60 or £80 in fees. (Qualify on the paid card, then downgrade to the free one.) (The Barclaycard vouchers are OK if you want to travel to the USA in business class, but you can’t use them in F and you won’t find much availability if flying East). And Barclaycard is accepted everywhere.)

  • Sam says:

    10 Apr10 April 15:57

    The barclaycard voucher doesn’t compare to the BA 241 – that’s what lets this card down.
    If you are a family of 3 or more (like us) you have to make two separate bookings which is crazy.
    With the barclaycard voucher it lets you upgrade one leg for 2 people or return journey for 1 person by 1 cabin class.
    From economy to PE or PE to CS/CW.
    But no First.

  • RS says:

    13 Apr13 April 21:04

    It is not for availability of flights. Companion has seats not open to Barclays voucher

• Alex G says:

  10 Apr10 April 14:35

  One of the unfair things about this change is that people will be affected differently depending on when their account anniversary is.

  Bearing in mind that many people want to trigger the voucher as late as possible.

  If your year ends on 31 January 2025, then you either have to spend £10k in 9 months and get your voucher 3 months early, or spend just short of £10k in 9 months but then spend £5k in three months. Pro rata, that’s equivalent to an annual spend of £20k, which will be very difficult or impossible for many cardholders.

  Amex could rectify this unfairness by doing what Barclaycard do, and allow the voucher to be earned by 31 October but (optionally) not issued until the end of the account year. Or issue a voucher with an expiry date of two years on from the end of the account year.

• JDB says:

  10 Apr10 April 14:36

  It will be interesting to see if increasing the voucher spend threshold to £15k forces Amex to increase the minimum income requirement. £10k was already a big ask on £35k gross but £15k on an Amex card seems rather unrealistic on that income.

  • BBbetter says:

    10 Apr10 April 15:42

    I hope they do. Boomers and Gen X will rally on the streets.

• Jill Kinkell says:

  10 Apr10 April 14:49

  Let’s hope Amex don’t increase the minimum income requirement. As a retiree now, I dont quite make their threshold, and I’m hanging onto it! OH income is fine,so strategy may be to cancel his at renewal / or when voucher is triggered ( although we’d end up with 2 valid until 2026) and sit out the 24 months before possibly re-applying

• BJ says:

  10 Apr10 April 15:01

  @Steven, nowhere near 99%. If we assume the average BA amex voucher redemption saving is 100k (i.e. zone7) then spending an extra 50k for 2x one way on QR or an extra 60k on AY offers broadly comparable or better value overall due to lower co-payments. Furthermore seat selection in J/F on QR is free benefiting those without status, and comments a few days ago that seats can be selected on AY for free via RJ. The BA/BAPP voucher value otopodiyion is increasingly niche-driven and no longer the greatest loyalty product it generally was. It slready resemnles a dead horse and will be almost as dead as a Dodo for many once pro-rata amex refunds finally stop. By that point BA in partnershhip with amex will be requiring a rather large upftont commitment from customers in return only fot massive uncertainty down the road regardless of guaranteeed reward seat availabilty. The great pity is the card will continue to do well but only due to the ignorance of the masses which is what BA and amex are betting on. No doubt most HfP readers taking out the card will continually navigate the pitfalls abd get some value from using the voucher but I suspect many of the wider customer base will end up wishing they hadn’t bothered.

• occasionalranter says:

  10 Apr10 April 15:22

  As a lawyer, albeit not a consumer contract lawyer, I’m surprised at how easily some people are dismissing the idea this is lawful on Amex’s part. Yes, the credit card agreement is an open ended agreement, but they induced people to enter into the agreement and to pay an annual fee, and to begin to enrich Amex by pushing spending through the card, by a clear and explicit promise to give a 2-4-1 voucher for £10k spend in 12 months.

  Taking it to the extreme, what if Amex had offered “all your money back if you spend £10k within 12 months” and then without notice and immediately after taking the annual fee of £250, had said “we’re changing 12 months to 12 minutes”.

  Straightforward breach of contract or doctrine of estoppel ? Don’t know, but this kind of thing p*sses me off so I might make a few calls to more expert minds this afternoon anyway.

  • NorthernLass says:

    10 Apr10 April 16:06

    I think one assumes that Amex (unlike certain other card providers) has a competent legal team to run its eyes over this stuff before it becomes official, but who knows?!

    • HampshireHog says:

      10 Apr10 April 16:37

      I hear they poached Post Office staff…

  • JDB says:

    10 Apr10 April 16:27

    @occasionalranter – if you were correct, what are you suggesting the measure of damages would be? The reality is that very few existing holders will be adversely affected and Amex has struck something of a balance by not introducing the threshold change until 1 November, almost seven months away. There are far more people complaining about the principle than the actuality.

    Cardholders who claim their individual circumstances mean they have been impacted unfairly have free recourse to the FOS who are generally in a position to remedy the situation if merited more than black letter law can as people discovered during the Creation debacle. Whether they can put together a credible claim based on some evidence is a different matter.

    • Ken says:

      10 Apr10 April 18:06

      If someone had taken out the card on 1st February and felt they wouldn’t now hit the spend target they would have a very strong refund of the full card fee not simply a pro rata refund.
      Saying that ‘the cards probably not for you’ doesn’t actually help Amex’s case here.

      But that’s really the limit of damages.

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