I chose this card as our business card for purchases, one of the key points for myself was the travel insurance, at the time of getting the card, i had just undergone a stem cell transplant as part of some ongoing cancer treatment, and travel insurance was a nightmare to find for work trips. However after discussing with an Amex representative i learned they would still cover me, and they would also cover me if i had to have some sudden medical care related to my illness while abroad, realistically thats not something thats likely to happen with cancer, it would more likely be a rushed flight home for treatment. But ‘im sticking with them because the insurance is so good lol! Amazing video as always!
The main bonus for me is hotel status, it’s great to just get to Hilton Gold immediately. You don’t have to book it with the card either. The travel insurance I am pretty sure covers you for medical etc even if you don’t book it on the card. I think the no fuss cancellation is not covered though. Concierge is good as well if you want to get a place at a restaurant that’s super hard to get into. There have been some really nice offers as well, I think there was £175 to spend at Waitrose during the pandemic. If you’re solely spending, you should definitely get the BA Black Amex as it earns 1.5 avios per pound, but I think this serves a place as more of a ‘status’ card (both in hotels but also for the best Amex offers)
Like with most of these cards I think a lot comes down to personal circumstances. I have the card because I travel often, both for work, visiting family who live abroad, and holidays; I’m a bit of a nervous flyer who always needs a couple of drinks before I get on a plane - so I think I make the approx. £50/month card fee back in money saved on airport priced alcohol/snacks alone by making use of the lounges. That’s before the annual insurance coverage and other perks which end up saving me quite a bit. If you’re just going on a couple of holidays a year, this card probably isn’t the best choice. Thanks for this video!
Just want to say thanks for the excellent videos. I got a platinum cashback card last year and just recently had the cashback pay off a whole month's statement! Very pleased. Now looking at what credit card I should move on to now that the cashback rates have dropped.
Yes, but I don't think it's very comprehensive. It's something you should not rely on. I just bought travel insurance today for £85 for the year, it was quite comprehensive. I feel a lot more peace of mind with the paid travel insurance, rather than the American Express insurance.
I've checked the terms and conditions, and I notice that there's a 2.99% charge for non-sterling transactions. This seems unacceptable for a card that's meant to be used by frequent travellers.
Andy, what’s your view on the concierge service. I’m flying to Miami from T3 Heathrow in December & was tempted to upgrade to get Centurion Llunge access. Love Amex to deal with as a company but I find the annual fees vs benefits hard to justify, especially when you see what US consumers get
Forgot the insurance for cars, when you book just take the mandatory cover as AMEX cover you for fully comprehensively this if you hire like i do for 2 to 3 weeks at a time it more than pays for the card
You can also get gift cards with the Harvey Nichols credit to save them up if you don't need them... Recently at Stockholm Arlanda, I used the American Express Lounge, and it's nice to also have that option as well
I have the business Gold. They have a threshold for a revolving balance on the card (mine is $2,000), though it's a charge card. I think this is something new? It wasnt like that when I first got the card last year...
Bro could click on the video faster. absolute gold nugget info. Andy can you please tell whether I can earn 1% from chase debit card if I pay balance on my Amex gold reward card
Having just received my Platinum card and adding the dining credit I’m slightly confused as the credit resets on JAN 1st each year. So if use my credit now, will I get another £300 come Jan? This just can’t be true, but how does the credit date work. I expect to get the credit after my anniversary of getting the new card.
The earnings rate of 1 point per pound spent makes this card a hard sell for me. It should be at least double. With their Gold card you get a 10k bonus points per annum for £15k spend (fee 'only' £140). Their Green card gets you same points per pound but extended warranty on purchases (fee only £60). Their Rewards credit card is same points per pound and is FREE (no fee). As you say, unless you're travelling a lot or putting a lot of travel expenses through work, this card could be of use, but it's a very niche market.
One benefit you didn’t mention is the only benefit that has me seriously considering swapping my gold rewards card for a platinum one despite the fact that I have an older gold card earning 1.5 rewards points per £ so my earning level would go down after the switch. That benefit is the “airfare benefit” where Amex says that if you book through them you can get up to 20% off airfares from selected airlines (and selected includes BA, Virgin, Emirates and 7 others) for flights in a premium cabin where premium is anything not economy so includes premium economy. I spend over £10K a year on flights, sometimes almost twice that, and always fly in premium cabins so even if that “up to 20%” only ends up being more like 10% in reality that one benefit on its own pays for the annual fee about 2 times over for me. The problem of course is - is this benefit real or is it like those newspaper “return flight to New York for £100” types of offers where it turns out that there are only a handful of tickets available at that price so essentially the “offer” is inaccessible? I intend to call Amex next week to see if I can persuade them to run a couple of fare searches for me as if I was already Platinum to see just how accessible and close to 20% these discounts are before going ahead. I don’t suppose you accessed that program benefit? If they won’t let me see the prices in advance then I suppose I’ll have to get the card and then cancel it if this airfare benefit isn’t as good and easy to access as I hope it is.
@Julian FP did you manage to find out how good these 20% discounts are? I am also in a similar situation and so these savings would be huge for me, but there's no way to actually browse the offers unless you're a platinum card holder
@@piotrrutkowski458 Hi Piotr. Yes I did. The only way that I could get a look at the platinum prices was to get a card so I did since I can always cancel it at any time and get a pro-rata refund of the unused annual fee. It's early days, I've had the card for about 10 days, but I immediately ran a few comparisons against publicly available prices. One example was a first class BA return between London(LHR) and New York(JFK). Regular price £4,950 on the BA web site when I did my search vs the platinum discounted price of ..... wait for it ...... £4,900! That's a discount of 1.01%! I did slightly better with a return Emirates first class between London and Cape Town, via Dubai obviously, and that was £7,164.36 on the Emirates web site vs £6,830.36 for the Amex Platinum price so that's a 4.66% discount and an actual saving of £334 which in fairness does pay over half of the annual fee (I did actually book that flight). But... I also compared those prices with prices on various search engines and in both cases I could have got better prices than the Amex ones by taking one of those deals, e.g. Kayak was showing a £6,776.00 price for the Cape Town tickets but it was via an agent I didn't know. Personally I get nervous chasing deals via small online travel agents so I always book my flights directly with the airline or Amex Travel. If you're someone who is happy going with the smaller agents to get the best prices then based on my experiences so far I doubt you'll save a single penny, for me however it does allow me to access the sort of prices seen on price comparison sites while being able to book through an agent I trust (Amex). I plan to keep the card for at least a few more months, maybe I've just been unlucky and haven't seen the better deals yet, but so far it does look as if it might be as I originally feared and in reality discounts anywhere close to the claimed 20% upper limit are pretty much impossible to find. Sorry not to have better news for you at this stage. If you want me to run a search on some specific flights then let me know.
@@julianfp1952 Thank you - doesn't sound great for the advertised "up to 20%" however a saving of around £200/£300 per flight on even a few flights a year would still offset the 575 annual fee so it does sound like it may be worth a shot. I also agree that I'd rather book it with a trusted retailer like amex travel or the airline themselves as opposed to smaller agents (also because I've had bad experiences with sites like Kayak in the past). Thanks again for the information, v useful :)
I have recently applied for my AMEX Plat Card (Personal), I thought this was the Credit Card version and the AMEX Plat Business Card was the charge card version?
After having a Amex Gold card and receiving the welcome bonus points, how long should one wait before they apply for a Amex platinum card so that they can also receive the welcome bonus points on the platinum card?
Hi Andy, are you aware that Natwest /RBS have changed the terms of their digital regular saver. You can now pay up to £150 a month as opposed to £50, and you can now save up to £5,000 in this account with a different rate for balances over £1000. Still not worth having over £1k in this account but the higher monthly maximum means you can fill this account in 6 months rather than 20.
My eligibility for this card is 9.5/10, but yet I for the gold card (which was the one I wanted) it was 4.5/10 eligibility! What do you think this could be? Sorry if this is a very vague question with multiple answers. Cheers, Sam
Really hard to answer these types of questions because it could be any number of things. One possibility is the popularity of each card. The gold card is more popular (because its cheaper and easier to get the most bonuses from) so therefore more people are applying for it, 4.5 people out of 10 will get this card because people with good, average and bad credit are all probably interested (and Andy has probably increased its popularity to many people not previously interested in American express). The platinum card is more expensive and more exclusive and less people are applying for it, and the type of people interested in this card are probably a better quality of customer (higher credit score, higher income etc...) therefore most people actually interested in applying for this card are more likely to be approved, hence the 9/10 chance. Again this is absolutely just a generalisation as there are probably thousands of other reasons, but something to think about.
@@samc12345 decent thank you! I currently have a Santander credit card and I feel I can get more bonus’ with American Express. Weird because golf card says 90% allowed on ClearScore… so weird I honestly have no clue! Thank you for the info I really appreciate it :)
Just a question if anyone sees this. A few days ago I requested an upgrade from the Amex Green Card to the Amex Platinum. And I’ve just received the card today and even though I’ve just got it I don’t think I want to keep it. Is there a way to convert back to green card or will I have to wait a year to do so? I haven’t paid the AF yet as it hasn’t came on my statement. I’m in the UK btw.
Can you pay your rent and bills using AMEX? I can't find information on that... Admittedly, I am thinking about going for gold rewards, not platinum, but whether or not I get the bonus would be highly dependent on the answer to that :). Thank you in advance. Your channel is great!
Heads up, the amex plat referral link on your blog links to a different card. When I click on it, it says "Andrew has invited you to get the British Airways American Express® Premium Plus Card"
I signed up last year when the welcome offer was 80k, I tried cancel after 6 months and they gave me another 50k to stay!
I chose this card as our business card for purchases, one of the key points for myself was the travel insurance, at the time of getting the card, i had just undergone a stem cell transplant as part of some ongoing cancer treatment, and travel insurance was a nightmare to find for work trips. However after discussing with an Amex representative i learned they would still cover me, and they would also cover me if i had to have some sudden medical care related to my illness while abroad, realistically thats not something thats likely to happen with cancer, it would more likely be a rushed flight home for treatment. But ‘im sticking with them because the insurance is so good lol! Amazing video as always!
The main bonus for me is hotel status, it’s great to just get to Hilton Gold immediately. You don’t have to book it with the card either.
The travel insurance I am pretty sure covers you for medical etc even if you don’t book it on the card. I think the no fuss cancellation is not covered though.
Concierge is good as well if you want to get a place at a restaurant that’s super hard to get into.
There have been some really nice offers as well, I think there was £175 to spend at Waitrose during the pandemic.
If you’re solely spending, you should definitely get the BA Black Amex as it earns 1.5 avios per pound, but I think this serves a place as more of a ‘status’ card (both in hotels but also for the best Amex offers)
Like with most of these cards I think a lot comes down to personal circumstances. I have the card because I travel often, both for work, visiting family who live abroad, and holidays; I’m a bit of a nervous flyer who always needs a couple of drinks before I get on a plane - so I think I make the approx. £50/month card fee back in money saved on airport priced alcohol/snacks alone by making use of the lounges. That’s before the annual insurance coverage and other perks which end up saving me quite a bit. If you’re just going on a couple of holidays a year, this card probably isn’t the best choice. Thanks for this video!
You, Sir, are a legend. Clear, down to earth, impartial, practical advice. Thank you, subscribed.
I'm just about to apply for the AMEX Platinum with No annual fee. I've checked eligibility thus I passed. *Smiles*
Just want to say thanks for the excellent videos. I got a platinum cashback card last year and just recently had the cashback pay off a whole month's statement! Very pleased. Now looking at what credit card I should move on to now that the cashback rates have dropped.
Love these Amex review/hack videos keep it up! Applied for the BA Premium Plus credit card recently based off your earlier video.
You *might* be able to hit that bonus by the end of May and then get this one!!
The best offer through the business is 10% back on Dell purchases up to 1K in total statement credit. Easy money and paid for the card.
The travel insurance for you and the family is also on the American Express Everyday Cashback.
Yes, but I don't think it's very comprehensive. It's something you should not rely on.
I just bought travel insurance today for £85 for the year, it was quite comprehensive. I feel a lot more peace of mind with the paid travel insurance, rather than the American Express insurance.
I've checked the terms and conditions, and I notice that there's a 2.99% charge for non-sterling transactions. This seems unacceptable for a card that's meant to be used by frequent travellers.
Andy, what’s your view on the concierge service.
I’m flying to Miami from T3 Heathrow in December & was tempted to upgrade to get Centurion Llunge access.
Love Amex to deal with as a company but I find the annual fees vs benefits hard to justify, especially when you see what US consumers get
Forgot the insurance for cars, when you book just take the mandatory cover as AMEX cover you for fully comprehensively this if you hire like i do for 2 to 3 weeks at a time it more than pays for the card
You can also get gift cards with the Harvey Nichols credit to save them up if you don't need them... Recently at Stockholm Arlanda, I used the American Express Lounge, and it's nice to also have that option as well
What do you mean it isn't a credit card? Amex site:
Representative APR: 704.6% APR variable.
Annual Fee: £650.
Thank u mate for the great work you do explaing different cards
Hope it makes it easy to compare to the other options
I have the business Gold. They have a threshold for a revolving balance on the card (mine is $2,000), though it's a charge card. I think this is something new? It wasnt like that when I first got the card last year...
Bro could click on the video faster. absolute gold nugget info. Andy can you please tell whether I can earn 1% from chase debit card if I pay balance on my Amex gold reward card
No you won’t
Sadly not!
Do you know if brits can get the USA Amex platinum? I keep seeing 125,000 introductory points... I want it!
Having just received my Platinum card and adding the dining credit I’m slightly confused as the credit resets on JAN 1st each year. So if use my credit now, will I get another £300 come Jan? This just can’t be true, but how does the credit date work. I expect to get the credit after my anniversary of getting the new card.
The earnings rate of 1 point per pound spent makes this card a hard sell for me. It should be at least double.
With their Gold card you get a 10k bonus points per annum for £15k spend (fee 'only' £140). Their Green card gets you same points per pound but extended warranty on purchases (fee only £60). Their Rewards credit card is same points per pound and is FREE (no fee).
As you say, unless you're travelling a lot or putting a lot of travel expenses through work, this card could be of use, but it's a very niche market.
Yeah, it’s a bonus only card in my option, and spend elsewhere for ongoing points
One benefit you didn’t mention is the only benefit that has me seriously considering swapping my gold rewards card for a platinum one despite the fact that I have an older gold card earning 1.5 rewards points per £ so my earning level would go down after the switch. That benefit is the “airfare benefit” where Amex says that if you book through them you can get up to 20% off airfares from selected airlines (and selected includes BA, Virgin, Emirates and 7 others) for flights in a premium cabin where premium is anything not economy so includes premium economy. I spend over £10K a year on flights, sometimes almost twice that, and always fly in premium cabins so even if that “up to 20%” only ends up being more like 10% in reality that one benefit on its own pays for the annual fee about 2 times over for me. The problem of course is - is this benefit real or is it like those newspaper “return flight to New York for £100” types of offers where it turns out that there are only a handful of tickets available at that price so essentially the “offer” is inaccessible?
I intend to call Amex next week to see if I can persuade them to run a couple of fare searches for me as if I was already Platinum to see just how accessible and close to 20% these discounts are before going ahead. I don’t suppose you accessed that program benefit? If they won’t let me see the prices in advance then I suppose I’ll have to get the card and then cancel it if this airfare benefit isn’t as good and easy to access as I hope it is.
@Julian FP did you manage to find out how good these 20% discounts are? I am also in a similar situation and so these savings would be huge for me, but there's no way to actually browse the offers unless you're a platinum card holder
@@piotrrutkowski458 Hi Piotr. Yes I did. The only way that I could get a look at the platinum prices was to get a card so I did since I can always cancel it at any time and get a pro-rata refund of the unused annual fee.
It's early days, I've had the card for about 10 days, but I immediately ran a few comparisons against publicly available prices. One example was a first class BA return between London(LHR) and New York(JFK). Regular price £4,950 on the BA web site when I did my search vs the platinum discounted price of ..... wait for it ...... £4,900! That's a discount of 1.01%! I did slightly better with a return Emirates first class between London and Cape Town, via Dubai obviously, and that was £7,164.36 on the Emirates web site vs £6,830.36 for the Amex Platinum price so that's a 4.66% discount and an actual saving of £334 which in fairness does pay over half of the annual fee (I did actually book that flight). But...
I also compared those prices with prices on various search engines and in both cases I could have got better prices than the Amex ones by taking one of those deals, e.g. Kayak was showing a £6,776.00 price for the Cape Town tickets but it was via an agent I didn't know. Personally I get nervous chasing deals via small online travel agents so I always book my flights directly with the airline or Amex Travel. If you're someone who is happy going with the smaller agents to get the best prices then based on my experiences so far I doubt you'll save a single penny, for me however it does allow me to access the sort of prices seen on price comparison sites while being able to book through an agent I trust (Amex).
I plan to keep the card for at least a few more months, maybe I've just been unlucky and haven't seen the better deals yet, but so far it does look as if it might be as I originally feared and in reality discounts anywhere close to the claimed 20% upper limit are pretty much impossible to find.
Sorry not to have better news for you at this stage.
If you want me to run a search on some specific flights then let me know.
@@julianfp1952 Thank you - doesn't sound great for the advertised "up to 20%" however a saving of around £200/£300 per flight on even a few flights a year would still offset the 575 annual fee so it does sound like it may be worth a shot. I also agree that I'd rather book it with a trusted retailer like amex travel or the airline themselves as opposed to smaller agents (also because I've had bad experiences with sites like Kayak in the past). Thanks again for the information, v useful :)
I have recently applied for my AMEX Plat Card (Personal), I thought this was the Credit Card version and the AMEX Plat Business Card was the charge card version?
After having a Amex Gold card and receiving the welcome bonus points, how long should one wait before they apply for a Amex platinum card so that they can also receive the welcome bonus points on the platinum card?
2 years
Hi Andy, are you aware that Natwest /RBS have changed the terms of their digital regular saver. You can now pay up to £150 a month as opposed to £50, and you can now save up to £5,000 in this account with a different rate for balances over £1000. Still not worth having over £1k in this account but the higher monthly maximum means you can fill this account in 6 months rather than 20.
Video FPS is choppy in this particular video fyi
What are the fees when using the card overseas such as in the US?
My eligibility for this card is 9.5/10, but yet I for the gold card (which was the one I wanted) it was 4.5/10 eligibility! What do you think this could be? Sorry if this is a very vague question with multiple answers. Cheers, Sam
Really hard to answer these types of questions because it could be any number of things. One possibility is the popularity of each card. The gold card is more popular (because its cheaper and easier to get the most bonuses from) so therefore more people are applying for it, 4.5 people out of 10 will get this card because people with good, average and bad credit are all probably interested (and Andy has probably increased its popularity to many people not previously interested in American express). The platinum card is more expensive and more exclusive and less people are applying for it, and the type of people interested in this card are probably a better quality of customer (higher credit score, higher income etc...) therefore most people actually interested in applying for this card are more likely to be approved, hence the 9/10 chance.
Again this is absolutely just a generalisation as there are probably thousands of other reasons, but something to think about.
@@samc12345 decent thank you! I currently have a Santander credit card and I feel I can get more bonus’ with American Express.
Weird because golf card says 90% allowed on ClearScore… so weird I honestly have no clue!
Thank you for the info I really appreciate it :)
Great stuff thanks
Just a question if anyone sees this. A few days ago I requested an upgrade from the Amex Green Card to the Amex Platinum. And I’ve just received the card today and even though I’ve just got it I don’t think I want to keep it. Is there a way to convert back to green card or will I have to wait a year to do so? I haven’t paid the AF yet as it hasn’t came on my statement. I’m in the UK btw.
at the end of the day it benefits them rather than us !!
Not if you use allthe benefits tactically. It can benefit you as well.
Can you pay your rent and bills using AMEX? I can't find information on that... Admittedly, I am thinking about going for gold rewards, not platinum, but whether or not I get the bonus would be highly dependent on the answer to that :). Thank you in advance. Your channel is great!
Centurion lounge access is worth it
why do my comments get deleted?
Worst company, total scam.
Heads up, the amex plat referral link on your blog links to a different card. When I click on it, it says "Andrew has invited you to get the British Airways American Express® Premium Plus Card"
Yeah, just click a link that says something like “see all cards”