Amex Preferred Rewards Gold cuts its annual spend bonuses

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• Paul says:

  13 Jun13 June 05:42

  I gave up on amex gold many years ago. Maybe used deliveroo twice a year and the priority passes were generally unused, as my local airport was MAN. My flying was either in business class which had lounge access or with lcc at peak airport times with no lounge space available. The final straw for me was being first in the queue at MAN aspire at 4am to be told that there was no space for anyone but pre paid guests.

• TeesTraveller says:

  13 Jun13 June 05:50

  I struggle with Amex Gold for exactly this reason. The introductory bonuses can be attractive but for long term spend the (blue) Amex rewards card is almost as good – I live in a village which is ”off grid” when it comes to Deliveroo and would never use Amex for overseas spend, so assuming I spend £10k a year (and the points are 1p each), are lounge passes (with the risk that you can’t get in on busy days) and double points on flights worth £95? Not for me. .

  Also, my feeling is that since I downgraded (Plat to Gold to Blue), I get more “normal” bonus points offers in the Amex app (eg Morrisons) versus the boutique Chelsea based olive oil merchants in the past.

• Lumma says:

  13 Jun13 June 07:19

  It’s a very strange card. The Deliveroo credit has too many caveats to really value it at face value, I think it only really works if you have significant airline or overseas spend and you want to collect something other than Avios or Virgin points

  • HH says:

    13 Jun13 June 07:34

    What caveats? Spend £5+ on any Deliveroo order to get a £5 statement credit, up to twice each calendar month. It’s pretty straightforward and credits without fail for me.

    • Lumma says:

      13 Jun13 June 08:13

      You’ve basically described the caveats that I’m talking about. You have to make two orders per month to get your £120 of value. Make it £30 of credit per quarter which can be used on one order and it’s worth £120.

      Ubereats and Just Eat give money off orders or free delivery way more often than Deliveroo too in my experience

      • LittleNick says:

        13 Jun13 June 08:18

        The gold does tend to be the better earner of the three for MR points which I want more of personally. The Deliveroo credit is a tad annoying, I wish it was just a £10/month and could be used entirely on one order. I’d prefer it was uber/uber eats tbh instead as I’d get more value from that then Deliveroo

      • Ken says:

        13 Jun13 June 08:41

        I imagine AMEX are paying Deliveroo next to nothing for these credits.
        Offer £30 a quarter and many people will order exactly once a quarter for exactly £30.
        It clearly wouldn’t work.

        As it is, lukewarm takeaway slop and overpriced groceries.
        All delivered by exploitative work practices and migrants illegally working.

        What a time to be alive.

        • JDB says:

          13 Jun13 June 10:25

          @Ken – it doesn’t even have to be delivered. Plenty of decent places offer take out food and you get £5 off. What’s not to like? My son is a healthy and quality seeking eater and manages to use my credit effectively.

  • JDB says:

    13 Jun13 June 08:04

    Yes, it’s a brilliant card and highest earner of the ‘big three’ if, as you say, you have airline spend and or overseas spend where you want no hassle chargeback/s75. The card does appear to get by far the most offers and where there are variants , the best version. They also have a few very easy points offers – eg spend £5 to get 2000MR every year. I’m constantly getting offered the full Platinum bonuses to upgrade the card, but this is a far superior card.

    • Ken says:

      13 Jun13 June 12:53

      I though even collecting you pay a service fee of 50p to £1.50.
      Potentially a small order fee of £2

      Couldn’t find anything decent on their website within 1 mile of my house (in a decent sized city).

• Stuart says:

  13 Jun13 June 07:37

  So no “you are better off” in the maths bit. Nice one AMEX! This card gets worse, glad I moved the free ARCC a few years ago.

• Tim says:

  13 Jun13 June 08:13

  Its more of the same – fees do not fall and usually increase but the benefits fall. Shop small has been cut right back from where it was a few years and used to mean you could recover quite a lot of the fees. This spend will affect a lot of people and I suspect mean less Amex cards – which are not accepted as widely as they have you think. We use a travel agent to help with some flights and even they have stopped taking Amex because their fees were too high and Amex would not budge. This was the main way we hit our targets. I have got rid of my free BA Amex and my wife has cancelled her paid BA Amex after many years – fees too high and kept going up. Looks like another Amex card going soon

  • Rob says:

    13 Jun13 June 09:13

    You are totally wrong about Shop Small. What killed it I think was Amex doing deals with Square and Doja. Now all small shops can accept Amex for the same fee as a Visa.

    • Angus says:

      13 Jun13 June 10:11

      We’ve been with Squareup for a number of years and our retail fee is down to 0.92% on all cards. The travel agents who don’t take amex have probably entered a rubbish contract with their payment gateway provider.

      But yes I agree Amex lost control over shopsmall, though its interesting to see how many small shops still have vehemently sticker on their window.

      • Rob says:

        13 Jun13 June 11:26

        It seems a pretty cut-throat market. Square recently admitted they have lost market share because they sat back and waited for merchants to come to them, whilst Dojo apparently has an army of foot soldiers out there personally visiting every small shop in Britain. All good news for us as Amex users and of course retailers.

    • JDB says:

      13 Jun13 June 10:21

      It was also massively expensive to administer and generated a ridiculous number of complaints about the maps, missing credits etc. Plus too many gamers. It still operates eg in Spain, France and Argentina!

      The merchant fees for Amex VI/MC have been the same on all those newer devices for many years, so I don’t think that’s the issue but it does hamper or prevent offer tracking, leading to those complaints.

      As people use cards or and more retailers have got more terminals which also adds to the non tracking issue as they can have different merchant codes – helps salesman commissions.

  • Can says:

    13 Jun13 June 10:06

    I though the biggest problem for Shop Small was the third party payment processors. Amex cannot handle them neither for the dining credit — happened to me, cost weeks to chase after.

  • david says:

    13 Jun13 June 18:35

    **Genghis has entered the chat.**

• Dude says:

  13 Jun13 June 08:19

  I thought about getting rid of the card, but for me, the travel cash back offers swung it for me.

  Just received £300/27% cash back on the recent Hilton/IHG/Martiott offers which clearly has more than paid the fees.

  These are not guaranteed offers obviously, but happy to take the chance.

  • Harrier25 says:

    13 Jun13 June 08:29

    …offers you get on the fee free card too, so that’s not really justifying the fee at all.

    • TeesTraveller says:

      13 Jun13 June 08:40

      Absolutely. So little point in paying for Gold unless you spend well over £10k direct with airlines each year (and that’s just to get a few extra points).

    • Harrier25 says:

      13 Jun13 June 12:08

      Why not apply for the free card and sit it on your existing account alongside your Gold card. It won’t cost you anything, but it will keep your MR points safe in your account, if at some point in the future, you decided to cancel the Gold card.

  • Ken says:

    13 Jun13 June 08:33

    Had equivalent offers on the free card in the past. As you say nothing is guaranteed though.

• Harrier25 says:

  13 Jun13 June 08:26

  A card fee hike will be next.

• derek says:

  13 Jun13 June 08:51

  Aren’t these new levels… the same that as about 2 years ago (before they went 2500MR/£5K x 5)?

  • Nomad312 says:

    13 Jun13 June 16:34

    I believe it was a single level of 10,000 MR for a £15k spend. The move to multiple levels at some point in 2022 therefore left.somone spending 15k worse off , someone spending 20k level but benefited a spend at any other 5k increment. This change has no upside for the customer and effectively is a raising of the pre 2022 threshold for the10k MR reward from a £15k spend to £20k but split in two parts.

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