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Hi all, I recently acquired the paid avios barclaycard due to the enhanced signup offer and have now triggered both the sign up bonus and the upgrade voucher.
As this card is paid monthly I’m considering if there is any logic in continuing to pay £20 a month to keep the card for the 0.5 extra avios per pound spent as you would have to be putting relatively large sums of spend through for that to be worthwhile
So my query are there any benefits in continuing to pay for the card once the initial incentives have been triggered and if not does it make more sense to try and move to the free card?
Also I wonder what people think of the ethics of bagging the bonus and leaving in this situation given that you are charged monthly for the card rather than annually like the Amex cards and as such, there is presumably less of an assumed obligation? I know there is a spectrum of views on here about that sort of thing so would be interested to hear people’s opinions.
Thanks
Also I wonder what people think of the ethics of bagging the bonus and leaving in this situation given that you are charged monthly for the card rather than annually like the Amex cards and as such, there is presumably less of an assumed obligation? I know there is a spectrum of views on here about that sort of thing so would be interested to hear people’s opinions.
Thanks
If you know there’s a spectrum of views you already have the answer. Ethics! It’s a bank, I won’t cry for them. Do what you think is right and don’t look to validation from a bunch of Internet randoms.
The spectrum of views is extensively (and exhaustively) documented in other threads on here!
If you want to keep the card to earn avios and more vouchers, you may be able to downgrade to the free card; I think the option has to show in your app for this to be possible though. This will also reset your earning year so you can start earning another voucher straight away, it’s not clear if this is intentional or an IT failure on the part of Barclays.
I’m not crying for the banks either, especially as they are raking in even more cash now in the name of curbing inflation!
“what people think of the ethics”
Not sure ethics and/or morality come into play. HfP as the name suggests is mainly transactional, so as long as within confines of the law/T&Cs.
I always find the ethics discussions on here quite interesting but apologies if it has been deemed that angle is tedious/ already run into the ground. I would put enough spend on the free card in a year to trigger the voucher so that makes the £20 fee pretty much exclusively for the higher rate of avios, which as I said I wouldn’t be spending enough on to get value out of the £20 (and I don’t think too many would).
I was just wondering if anyone did see the value in keeping the card and why (as people must do) as to me it seems all the added value in the card comes from the signup bonus and once that is triggered there is little point keeping it, however, I thought I may be missing something as surely Barclaycard are have an interest in people retaining the card as well as signing up for it?
“what people think of the ethics”
Not sure ethics and/or morality come into play. HfP as the name suggests is mainly transactional, so as long as within confines of the law/T&Cs.
I’m not giving a view about this BC issue, but there’s also the concept of ‘doing the right thing’ that most people live by and hopefully teach their children; that goes beyond just complying with the law or T&Cs. For most of us, that is innate.
Also, for people in many professions, their conduct is subject to compliance with ‘Principles’ as well as Rules, Guidance and Outcomes. That gives legal force to the concept of ‘doing the right thing’. It is quite difficult to separate professional conduct from personal conduct and there are requirements there anyway. The fact that people are asking about the ethics is good and suggests there is an issue and I don’t quite get the idea that because the counterparty is a bank, ethics go out of the window; where is the cut off?
One comes across plenty of people who are rather expedient or make little compromises/cover ups and satisfy themselves of the propriety of their actions with odd justifications like the size of the company or their line of business. However, in areas like financial services or law, those people get ostracised; people quietly stop doing business with them (and they are asked to leave clubs if they ever got in) because trust/integrity is critical.
I’d love to know which you think is the least ethical position, @JDB: HFP readers closing credit cards after receiving a SUB and a voucher, or banks accepting billions of £ of public money to bail them out due to their own mismanagement at various junctures?!
I’d love to know which you think is the least ethical position, @JDB: HFP readers closing credit cards after receiving a SUB and a voucher, or banks accepting billions of £ of public money to bail them out due to their own mismanagement at various junctures?!
I’m sure you were taught that two wrongs don’t make a right.
In any event, what is the correlation between someone’s personal ethics in 2023 vs the cost of failures by bankers, governments and regulators to anticipate the financial crash fifteen years ago?
I would note also that Barclays didn’t take any government bailout. Those banks that took money “to bail them out” did so in the form of equity and preference shares; it wasn’t free money. The UK government has sold, at at substantial profit all of those equity stakes save RBS where it retains a 43% stake. Northern Rock was a particularly profitable one. The Lloyds/HBOS combined merger and bailout was forced on Lloyds by Gordon Brown. Amex received a small amount of TARP funding from the US government in the form of punitively priced preferred stock and warrants. I’m not saying any of it was right, but your apparent perception of what happened is rather the Daily Mail version of events as opposed to the Financial Times one.
I think you need to dig deeper to find justifications for pillaging banks and card providers!
I think the Barclaycard subs are really generous and even though I do understand that Barclays are a huge bank, doing ok and not really worth losing sleep over, to me there does seem something a bit off about being able to spend a minimum amount to get 50,000 points and an upgrade voucher and then downgrading.
However, unlike the BAPP which I would consider worth the similar annual cost for the enhanced 241 voucher alone (and the odd good statement credit here and there) and the Platinum AMEX which I also think for me is worth the annual fee for the range of benefits, other than the signup bonus I can’t really fathom a reason why you would want to retain the paid Barclaycard in longer term. Surely though I must be missing something? It seems Barclaycard are pulling out all the stops for new customers but not really offering too many incentives to retain them. I’m not sure how this can be sustainable in the longer term.
People like the 1.5 per £ and also thats it widely accepted as its a MC. I had the plus and in the process of downgrading to free. I wanted to ditch it but its too valuable for all those non Amex takers. I personally wont lose any sleep as most of these banks have God knows how many millions of elderly peoples money in savings accounts at 0.01%.
I get @JDB, but if God forbid he was on the street, they wouldnt give him a second glance.
I had the Avios Plus for 6 months as was spending a lot on the card but then started to weigh up if it was worth keeping. Have recently downgraded to the free card as happy with 1 avios per £ and no monthly fee plus still get a voucher each year.
I would say it really comes down to how much you are spending on the card.
4000 * 1.5 avios on Avios Plus card = 6000 avios
4000 * 1.0 avios on Avios card = 4000 avios…………so an extra 2000 avios (worth £20 using Robs 1 pence per avios) which you have paid £20 monthly fee and if you are using the points to spend in Sainsburys then the break even point is even higher
@1967stuart2 how long after triggering your voucher did the downgrade option appear in the app please? I had the option showing prior to hitting my second upgrade voucher earlier this month, but now it’s disappeared. Wondering if they won’t give me the option for another couple of months to try to endear me to stick with the paid version…
I had the Avios Plus for 6 months as was spending a lot on the card but then started to weigh up if it was worth keeping. Have recently downgraded to the free card as happy with 1 avios per £ and no monthly fee plus still get a voucher each year.
I would say it really comes down to how much you are spending on the card.
4000 * 1.5 avios on Avios Plus card = 6000 avios
4000 * 1.0 avios on Avios card = 4000 avios…………so an extra 2000 avios (worth £20 using Robs 1 pence per avios) which you have paid £20 monthly fee and if you are using the points to spend in Sainsburys then the break even point is even higher
It’s a bit more complicated than that as you get a £5 credit for having the Avios+ and Premier account with Avios Rewards, so for a net £7, I get 2,200 Avios/month (the 1,500 for the Premier A/C plus 700 for another product) which seems OK. The Avios+ suits me as I do spend more than £4k a month on it, but even if I didn’t I would keep it for occasional big spends – just paid my wife’s new car and had to pay expensive various things online for my Dad who only uses cheques! That alone has covered many £15/£20 monthly fees.
My downgrade option arrived within the second month. After 50k had posted.
for those that have downgraded or cancelled- what would you recommend as an alternative ( ive had a personal amex card 3 months ago that i cancelled so i cant have any of the other ones)
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