Reply To: BA Amex bonus – CS gave wrong previous closure date

[JDB]

Matt wrote:

If you’re going to the FOS I would in addition make clear that if they hadn’t misled you then you could have delayed your application by a few days/weeks and then would have been eligible – their error has cost you that opportunity.

Yes, the OP should say this but it needs to be carefully framed as it’s an argument regularly run at the FOS in lots of different types of cases and it more often than not doesn’t go well, any more than suing the council for arriving too late by falling on a dodgy paving stone on the way to buy the winning lottery ticket.

The FOS says that people are expected to take responsibility for their own actions and understand the terms of the products they buy. The consequential loss argument is also tricky as where does it stop? Could someone claim that had they been awarded the 60k Avios, they would have bought a ticket that they now need to spend over £2k to replace etc. etc.

The additional elements are along the lines that only Amex knows the date you previously closed your account for the purposes of SUBs. It isn’t the day you telephoned to close it. Thus, only Amex can provide the information so a customer must be able to rely on that information and it shouldn’t be difficult to provide so its failure to do so accurately is negligent, provided the OP asked the question quite explicitly.

However, while the FOS could order Amex to pay for the inconvenience it can’t really order Amex to pay a SUB to which the OP very clearly wasn’t entitled and should have known he wasn’t, so the timing is important.