Platinum pro rata refund

[mhuk01]

Hello,
If I take out a Platinum card, can I make use of the benefits, bonus points etc and then cancel to get a pro rata refund? I understand from October 1st this is no an option, but presumably doing this before then I will be ok?
Many thanks

[JDB]

This has already been asked. New card applications already subject to the new terms but earlier reports suggest that pro-rata refunds might still be offered up to 2 October, but that would be entirely discretionary and you can’t exactly ask Amex to be sure. If you want to attempt to rip off Amex in the next 50 days you will be serenaded here, but you do so at your peril if you don’t want to pay the annual fee.

[Blair Waldorf Salad]

If you can’t make the Plat card work for you as a concept without relying on the pro rata refund, I’d suggest looking elsewhere. It is highly lucrative all year round for a certain customer type but is is certainly not for everyone.

[Rob]

Amex made it clear to us that everyone can request a refund up to 1st October.

They actually changed the T&C without telling anyone on 31st May so a lot of people are under the terms who didn’t know it until they got the recent letter.

However, in terms of ‘maximising benefits’, I’d propose it makes more sense to wait until your 24 months is up, apply when there is a 50k+ bonus running and hold it for a full year. This will be better value for you.

[mhuk01]

Thanks all, that’s super helpful. On a related note – it would actually be my Wife as main cardholder for the card, with me providing a referral link (I have a Platinum Cashback card). For some reason the Amex site says “Your Account is temporarily unable to access the Referral Programme”. I’ve barely referred anyone so can’t really understand why they would restrict this.

[sloth]

mhuk01 wrote:

Thanks all, that’s super helpful. On a related note – it would actually be my Wife as main cardholder for the card, with me providing a referral link (I have a Platinum Cashback card). For some reason the Amex site says “Your Account is temporarily unable to access the Referral Programme”. I’ve barely referred anyone so can’t really understand why they would restrict this.

If you happen to have a record of your link, from an old email etc then the referral will still work, despite what it says

[Thegasman]

mhuk01 wrote:

Thanks all, that’s super helpful. On a related note – it would actually be my Wife as main cardholder for the card, with me providing a referral link (I have a Platinum Cashback card). For some reason the Amex site says “Your Account is temporarily unable to access the Referral Programme”. I’ve barely referred anyone so can’t really understand why they would restrict this.

AmEx are clearly doing some work on tightening up the referral & acceptance process focusing on profitability over market share as you’d expect any sensible lender to in the current climate. Lots of people on here have had the same issue as you & it seems like it’s not just related to referral history.

Clearly not every customer is a profitable customer & some customers’ referrals are better quality than others with a reasonable overlap between those 2 groups. From the detail in your post it seems they have been reasonably accurate in their profiling!

I’m not trying to be rude, I have historically cycled through the card portfolio with my wife & done some cross (not self) referring. We were both barred from referring for a while but have now realised that our ongoing relationship with Amex will be better by settling on the 1-2 cards that work for us in the medium to longterm. Referral links reappeared after about 6 months. Removing prorata refunds will push even more into this boat.

The game has evolved, as must we. Just be grateful there are still other avenues to generate substantial numbers of points like Barclays.