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I’ve had the BAPP card for many years and always been charged £30 as annual fee. I recently noticed a charge of £250 as annual fee. Last month I enquired about the fee and was told that the fee had been raised and they had sent communication about it. I did not recall receiving any communication so I enquired for a copy of it. I have now been sent a copy of a change of terms notification of several pages where deep at page 4 or 5 it says the fee will be raised to £250t. The first page on the usual summary of the changes for the change of terms do not mention any fee change.
I genuinely do not recall seeing the letter although it’s possible I just discarded because in the summary of the changes nothing remarkable is mentioned. It may have gone lost in the mail too. But should a fee change of 8X not be mentioned clearly on the first page of any changes?
Happy to cancel the card, get the pro-rata refund for the remaining 9 months, and move on (the 2×1 vouchers do not have a great value to me as I always redeem them in ET and cause more work for me than it’s worth), but I find this a bit unethical, and possibly against financial regulations (certainly convention) and happy to make a point with AMEX.
Thanks for any advice.
This increase was announced back in August 2021, covered extensively by HfP at the time.
In exchange for the higher fee you get more availability with the 2-4-1 voucher.
You must have had a grandfathered rate based on holding another Amex at the time of first getting the BAPP.
Actually it was covered in July 2021 here:
https://www.headforpoints.com/2021/07/26/british-airways-american-express-changes-september/
Appreciate that. Yes, I’ve had the BAPP for about 15 years. Unfortunately unlike many years ago I no longer have time to follow FT/HfP and related sites and I have to relay on the financial provider to inform me clearly of material changes affecting a product.
Again, it’s not a big deal for me and can opt to cancel, but I would have expected clearer comms from AMEX.
And for many of us it went up from £0 to £250 – it was painful at the time but we’ve got over it now (and the recent new 50% voucher has helped).
OK, thanks for the responses. Glad you’re still finding value for the product with a £250 fee. I’ll a quick calculation at my end and decide. Surprised AMEX would risk losing customers accruing tens of thousands of commissions py many of which in business travel abroad with hefty forex charges but they will have done their sums and hopefully it makes sense for them.
I still think a 10x fee increase needs to be communicated differently to customers. Oh well.
They wrote to everyone about it last summer – perhaps your communication got lost.
I think most of us were paying £195 though so the increase, while not great news, wasn’t a huge deal once the extra value of the 241 became clear.
When you consider how improved the new voucher is, I don’t mind paying the increase tbf. I do have an old style voucher and trying to work out where is best to use that for.
Yes for significant changes they are not allowed to bury the change in small print. They are supposed to draw your attention to it i.e. make the change prominent.
And not just write to you btw. Quite likely there’s some text somewhere letting them just send it and be covered and your not having received it tough they still count as having sent it (which I think is sleazy but there do seem to be cases where finsncial providers in particular seem to have something that lets them get away with this).
However a change in a regular recurring fee is slways going to be significant and if they did send anything they were required to make the change prominent enough so it could not be missed. Coverage im a specislist blog for frequent fliers does not count.
OK, thanks for the responses. Glad you’re still finding value for the product with a £250 fee. I’ll a quick calculation at my end and decide. Surprised AMEX would risk losing customers accruing tens of thousands of commissions py many of which in business travel abroad with hefty forex charges but they will have done their sums and hopefully it makes sense for them.
I still think a 10x fee increase needs to be communicated differently to customers. Oh well.
Amex are entitled to get rid of legacy customers who pay £30 annum as opposed to a more profitable £250 per annum
Be grateful they didn’t do so earlierWell, I’ve worked out they made £250 in commissions from my US spend in the past 20 days alone, but sure, they are certainly entitled to get rid of me… I’ve never disputed whether they could get rid of me – just whether the fee increase had been communicated as it should.
It sounds like maybe Royal Mail messed up rather than Amex? Most people appears to have received the comms. When the BAPP fee went up from £195 the comms was pretty clear. Honestly I don’t think it is worth any company’s time and money to not communicate these things properly and end up with complaints and FOS cases, and in the end if a customer wants to leave they will do that anyway.
It look you 3 months to realised they charged you £250 instead of £30? – you mentioned you only got pro rata 9 months of fee.
Any reason not to get an FX fee free card, seems like a lot of money to pay Amex for no reason.
Any reason not to get an FX fee free card, seems like a lot of money to pay Amex for no reason.
If it’s business expenses a lot of people would choose a points earning card with hefty FX fees than save their employer 3% & get no personal benefit?
It sounds like maybe Royal Mail messed up rather than Amex? Most people appears to have received the comms. When the BAPP fee went up from £195 the comms was pretty clear. Honestly I don’t think it is worth any company’s time and money to not communicate these things properly and end up with complaints and FOS cases, and in the end if a customer wants to leave they will do that anyway.
It look you 3 months to realised they charged you £250 instead of £30? – you mentioned you only got pro rata 9 months of fee.
Any reason not to get an FX fee free card, seems like a lot of money to pay Amex for no reason.
In my case an additional email of warning that the fee would be going up by nearly 10x would have sufficed. Don’t even need the fancy graphics and would have taken no time to arrange a mailshot to all their affected customers. Indeed for a hike of 10x the price I am curious whether the FOS would think that something more than a class Royal Mail letter is warranted. In fact I just received an email from them about the advantages of the new voucher, but apparently no email was warranted for material term changes.
Yes, unfortunately it took me overm 2 months to realise as I was very busy and was behind with the CC checks.
You are right – I’ve always seen the AMEX as expensive but somewhat as a fair deal mainly for customer service in case of incorrect charges and was willing to pay for the difference to save time/effort in any dispute – but I should reconsider and move to an FX free card whether it’s employer’s money or not.
Thanks for all responses – for the time being I will move to the free card and will consider alternatives.
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