Moving from Amex Gold to BA Amex – advice wanted

[yonasl]

Hello,

First time writing here and I hope I did the right thing putting this on the BA section and not the Amex one.

Long story short, I am an Amex gold cardholder with around 140k points on it. I recently started flying more often with BA (due to their BA holidays offers and lower tier point requirements and the fact I am getting older and less patient with taking an early bus to Stansted to do Ryanair as cheap as it may be!)

So with this in mind I thought I may change to the BA Amex card (£250 annual fee vs £150 for the gold card but getting the companion voucher).

However, as I do this I will need to close the gold card and move those 140k points somewhere. The logical place is BA Avios.

I just wanted to ask here first before I miss using the points on some other way and go all in into Avios. For me it makes sense as I will be silver for at least the next 24 months and living in London and visiting Spain regularly means the BA/Iberia combo is a good one for me.

Thank you for your help and comments!

[Nate]

I presume your points on Amex are Membership Reward points? If so, I believe you will need to convert them to Avios and credit them to your BA Exec Club account (otherwise you will lose them). As to value for doing this vs. keeping them as Membership Rewards Points, I do not know what is worth more. I have both and use the MR points for flexibility with other airlines and cash bookings.

[Owain]

Could you get the free “American Express Rewards Credit Card”, and use that to keep your MR points, and then after some time apply for the BA card? I suppose whether that works for you depends on how quickly you want to start working towards earning the companion voucher on the BA card.

[George K]

The rationale for keeping a separate pot of Amex points alive depends entirely on your preferences and circumstances. Much like you, I am almost exclusively an Avios/BA man myself, and it’s comforting to know that Amex points translate into Avios seamlessly when you need them.

However I have found that keeping a healthy balance of Amex points (in parallel with your Avios) allows you to benefit from opportunities with other airlines (and hotels, of course). I have, for example, transferred loads of Amex points into both Singapore Airlines and Etihad in order to take advantage of their superior business class offerings, knowing full well that I would have never accrued points with their respective loyalty programs via any other way.

So for me it’s basically keeping a joker (or about one hundred thousand) that allows you to jump on non-BA opportunities at short notice without actually having a target in mind.

If that’s not a consideration, then you’re free to transfer your Amex points into Avios and put all your weight against building the Avios pot up. Nothing wrong with that at all!

[Rob]

What Owain says – see this article: https://www.headforpoints.com/2020/05/16/keep-membership-rewards-points-cancelling-american-express-gold-platinum-card/

It’s a risk free way of retaining flexibility with your MR points (and doubling up on any good Amex cashback offers).

[yonasl]

Thank you all for your help I went ahead and got the free Amex rewards card and will cancel the gold one.

Strange how the Amex website didn’t make it that clear that option existed (I may not have looked closely enough but spoke to their support people and none recommended this!)

[zio]

yonasl wrote:

Thank you all for your help I went ahead and got the free Amex rewards card and will cancel the gold one.

Suggest you hold off cancelling until you can see the MR credited against your new card. Although the accounts are supposed to link automatically it has been known for this not to happen.

Strange how the Amex website didn’t make it that clear that option existed (I may not have looked closely enough but spoke to their support people and none recommended this!)

Keep reading HfP!

[yonasl]

Rob Burgess wrote:

What Owain says – see this article: https://www.headforpoints.com/2020/05/16/keep-membership-rewards-points-cancelling-american-express-gold-platinum-card/

It’s a risk free way of retaining flexibility with your MR points (and doubling up on any good Amex cashback offers).

Thank you so much for this Rob. It is just what I needed and I did check Amex website and missed this free card that included the reward feature. (May check again how come I did!)