If you cancel Amex Platinum, the Amex Rewards Credit Card will keep your points alive

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The second biggest topic in my inbox at the moment, after airlines not refunding payments, is the cancellation of fee-charging American Express cards.

Most of these relate to American Express Platinum. This comes with a chunky £575 annual fee, but many HfP readers can make the numbers work because of the strong benefits package. This includes:

travel insurance for you and your family, plus up to five supplementary cardholders and their families

car hire insurance

2 x Priority Pass airport lounge access cards, each of which allows a free guest on each visit (so a family of four is covered)

mid-tier status in Hilton Honors (Gold), Marriott Bonvoy (Gold Elite), Radisson Rewards (Gold) and MeliaRewards (Gold)

£10 per month of Addison Lee taxi credit

Eurostar lounge access

…… and lots of other bits and bobs. My full review of American Express Platinum is here. The application form is here and comes with 30,000 Membership Rewards points.

But there’s a snag …..

Paying almost £50 per month for these benefits works out well for many readers. However, paying £50 per month for The Platinum Card when you’re not travelling is clearly NOT great value.

Many readers have asked me about American Express pausing the annual fee, or offering partial refunds. To date, no-one has reported getting any financial concessions from them.

However, if you cancel, you receive a pro-rata fee refund. This could put a few hundred pounds back in your pocket in these tricky times.

(One caveat: if you cancel, you will have no travel insurance if you have no other cover. If you have non-refundable trips booked for well in the future, ensure you have coverage as you could fall ill at any time.)

There is no annual bonus on The Platinum Card

Many American Express cards offer an annual bonus when you hit a certain spend target:

The British Airways Premium Plus American Express card offers a 2-4-1 companion voucher for Avios redemptions when you spend £10,000 per year (BA Amex Premium Plus review here)

The Marriott Bonvoy American Express card offers Gold Elite status when you spend £15,000 per year and a (very restrictive) free night voucher when you spend £25,000 per year (Marriott Amex review)

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold offers 10,000 Membership Rewards points when you spend £15,000 per year (Amex Gold review)

On these three cards, it may make sense to continue paying the annual fee during these low-spending, no-travelling months in order to ensure you hit your annual spend target.

The Platinum Card does NOT have any annual spend bonus. If you cancel now and reapply in 3, 4 or 6 months time when your travelling starts to pick up again, you haven’t lost anything.

The only risk is losing your Membership Rewards points

The only short-term downsides of cancelling your American Express Platinum charge card is that you are required to empty out your Membership Rewards points account.

Because Amex points can be transferred to many different airline and hotel partners, they are more valuable than airline or hotel points. You shouldn’t convert them until you need them.

If you are forced to transfer them because you close your card down, you may regret it later. American Express isn’t going bankrupt any time soon. We can’t say that about many Membership Rewards transfer partners at the moment, especially the airlines. The safest place for your points is with American Express.

Since late 2017, there has been a solution that:

lets you keep your Membership Rewards points account open, and

allows you to stop paying an annual fee for either the Gold credit or Platinum charge card

We very rarely write about it on HfP so I thought I would run through it again today. This card is the answer:

You can apply for the little-known American Express Rewards Credit Card. Full details are here.

This card has NO ANNUAL FEE and lets you collect Membership Rewards points.

For simplicity, I will occasionally refer to this card as ARCC as ‘American Express Rewards Credit Card’ is a bit of a mouthful.

What is the American Express Rewards Credit Card?

ARCC is a standard Amex-branded credit card. It has no annual fee and no substantial benefits, except for the ability to collect Membership Rewards points at 1 point per £1 spent.

There used to be three versions of this card, but in Autumn 2019 they were consolidated to jut one.

The version which remains has a 5,000 Membership Rewards points bonus and a representative APR of 22.9% variable (click here). You need to spend £2,000 within three months to receive the bonus.

It is unlikely that many (any?!) Head for Points readers will qualify for the bonus because you cannot have held any personal American Express card in the previous 24 months. That’s not why you’re applying though.

Once your American Express Rewards Credit Card is active, you can cancel your Platinum charge card in the knowledge that your Membership Rewards points balance is safe.

You will be saving roughly £50 per month on your Platinum card. Once your travelling starts to pick up, you can re-apply for The Platinum Card and start getting all the insurance, lounge and status benefits again.

You can apply for the FREE American Express Rewards Credit Card here.

(Want to earn more miles and points from credit cards? Click here to visit our dedicated airline and hotel travel credit cards page or use the ‘Credit Card Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.)

Disclaimer: Head for Points is a journalistic website. Nothing here should be construed as financial advice, and it is your own responsibility to ensure that any product is right for your circumstances. Recommendations are based primarily on the ability to earn miles and points and do not consider interest rates, service levels or any impact on your credit history. By recommending credit cards on this site, I am – technically – acting as a credit broker. Robert Burgess, trading as Head for Points, is regulated and authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as a credit broker.

Category

American Express Platinum card, Amex Rewards Credit Card

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

NICK says:

31 Mar31 March 08:40

I am awaiting a number of refunds to my plat card (car hire, flight taxes etc). These may take a couple months to receive.

What happens if I close my plat card today?

(I will have a BA blue card active)
- TGLoyalty says:
  
  31 Mar31 March 08:43
  
  You can phone Amex once you are aware of the refunds having been processed and have the balance moved to your other card or refunded to your bank/cheque
  
  They are also proactive in send you a statement to say you have a credit balance aswell
  - n_g says:
    
    31 Mar31 March 09:57
    
    So you can cancel you Platinum, BA refund to this card in x months, you call AMEX once done and they will transfer this money to your ARCC if you call them?
    
    I may proceed with this plan if so.
- Rob says:
  
  31 Mar31 March 10:12
  
  They still go back to the card. You need to ring Amex and move the money to your BA card, or ask for a bank refund.
  - Polly says:
    
    31 Mar31 March 13:54
    
    Just that done for me on live chat, saves the phone angst.
Bev says:

31 Mar31 March 08:43

If you cancel you card and take out one elsewhere , you won’t be covered for the coronavirus cancelling your holiday on most policies.
- Nick says:
  
  31 Mar31 March 08:47
  
  Let’s be clear. You’re only covered if you have existing travel booked prior to mid March.
  
  Any new bookings made since under any policy from any company will not cover you for corona
  - Colin MacKinnon says:
    
    31 Mar31 March 09:15
    
    In theory, not necessarily. If you have an annual policy then its terms are the ones that count.
    
    In practice, you might have to have deep pockets to pay out first and then enlist legal friends to reclaim.
  - Yorkieflyer says:
    
    31 Mar31 March 09:18
    
    I’m not sure this is the case with Amex, they do not appear to have removed cover with existing policies for new bookings
  - Rob says:
    
    31 Mar31 March 10:10
    
    Amex hasn’t changed the terms of its coverage.
    - TGLoyalty says:
      
      31 Mar31 March 11:09
      
      I’m sure they believe their current terms already cover the fact that known situations are not covered.
      
      I’m certain regardless of any explicit wording to exclude COVID19 that anyone booking a flight or holiday right now won’t be covered for the flight/holiday being affected by COVID19 in the future. I’m sure you’ll still be covered for other events and medical will be covered though.
      - Yorkieflyer says:
        
        31 Mar31 March 14:22
        
        And of course the medical cover is the most important cover if covid19 is an exclusion. This appears to be the case with Nationwide.
Alex M says:

31 Mar31 March 09:03

Is it not better to switch to green Amex and then upgrade it back to Platinum to get 20 000 MR points spend bonus?
J says:

31 Mar31 March 09:06

I’m currently on a soon to expire £450 per annum rate for the Platinum card. Is this annual fee grandfathered or will it increase to £575 this year?
- Bentoni says:
  
  31 Mar31 March 09:08
  
  You will be on the new £575 fee unfortunately.
  - J says:
    
    31 Mar31 March 09:39
    
    Thanks Bentoni, what a shame.
BS says:

31 Mar31 March 09:14

They let me downgrade my platinum card to the gold charge card with a free first year. I am now working my way through the first year free. Once I reach the end of the first year, I will cancel the card and sign up for a gold credit card (with free first year).
paul says:

31 Mar31 March 09:39

I have had my platinum card since 2006 and so also have free BAPP card. In that time I have more than recouped the total annual fees paid on insurance claims alone.
Then there are the offers, freebies and the points.
It would be good to see an extension but in reality it is still very good value for money.
- Bentoni says:
  
  31 Mar31 March 10:03
  
  It’s a tough decision for me at the moment, since I have a bunch of supplementary cards set up on my account, so it would be a bit of faff if I switch to another card and set up the supplementary cards again.
  - TGLoyalty says:
    
    31 Mar31 March 11:10
    
    They are all automatically replaced.
    - Lady London says:
      
      31 Mar31 March 12:53
      
      Some people were saying delete all shops on your account, close the account, get new account, add supps. For the Platinum card at least apparently there is some unofficial benefit (so don’t ask as they won’t confirm) that gets a few thousand for each supp added. But not if transferred.
      
      I haven’t been watching well enough to know if this supp bonus comes on any other card except the Platinum?
      - Lady London says:
        
        31 Mar31 March 12:54
        
        Shops=supps=supplementary card holders on your account. I really am going to fire this text editor 🙂
      - TGLoyalty says:
        
        31 Mar31 March 13:50
        
        In my experience it doesn’t matter if you delete them they still replace the supps
        
        Before I upgraded to Plat a couple years ago I cancelled a supp a couple weeks before but the supp still turned up and when I downgraded I asked for the supps to be removed but they still turned up.
        
        Poor IT or poor CS I have no idea but it seems the supps are replaced anyway
      - Polly says:
        
        31 Mar31 March 14:09
        
        Love your text editor, makes me smile….
      - Genghis says:
        
        31 Mar31 March 14:11
        
        But even if the supps roll across, you can still then add another supp (even a free Gold) for 5k.
JCB says:

31 Mar31 March 10:00

I have a similar thought process with my Virgin Atlantic Reward+ credit card. I pay the £160 fee on the basis that my annual spend will be enough to make the miles I get cost me a rate I am happy with. Last year cost me 0.63p per mile (allowing for the fact I would have got half the miles on the free card). However that doesn’t work when I cannot spend money on travel, which is the largest part of my normal annual spend. Mulling over whether to renew or revert to free card when the time comes around (unless Virgin offer anything to tempt me to stay with the fee paying card).
- Ben says:
  
  1 Apr1 April 01:48
  
  I’ve just cancelled my Virgin card for this reason. Due to renew next week, phew!
Mike P says:

31 Mar31 March 10:29

I’ve just downgraded from the BA Premium Plus card to the free version for the first time since 2006 having held the BAPP continuously since then. I had already earned this year’s two for one voucher and anticipate very little spend with BA between now and October. I did this yesterday and received a pro-rata refund of £104 this morning, very swift and efficient as usual by AMEX