The HfP chat thread – Thursday 8th October

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• John says:

  8 Oct8 October 17:11

  Can you convert an Amex Gold card into an ARCC, or does it open a new account i.e. separate credit limit and separate statement dates?

  • TGLoyalty says:

    8 Oct8 October 18:23

    Completely different product. You can merge the MR accounts if it doesn’t happen automatically

    • John says:

      8 Oct8 October 18:53

      That’s what I thought, but people on other forums are insisting they “downgraded” from Gold to ARCC

      • mark2 says:

        8 Oct8 October 19:02

        Perhaps they meant logically downgraded (but physically replaced).

• Anna says:

  8 Oct8 October 17:12

  Finally picked up the phone to Amex and asked about retention offers on my gold MR card. It was a bit like pulling teeth but I mentioned a couple of times that I was trying to decide where to put my Xmas spend and they finally offered 5000 bonus points if I spend £1k by 31/12. I’ve got more of an incentive to use some of my 60 plus offers now anyway!

  • mutley says:

    8 Oct8 October 19:11

    @Anna it’s all about timing I believe, I got offered 35000 MR for remaining with Platinum, but it was 5 days before renewal. I also got them to spread the cost of the £575 fee over 10 months. I tried 3 months before renewal and got nowhere!

    • Harry T says:

      8 Oct8 October 19:28

      I had my Platinum card for about a month and then asked to cancel – was given 40k points to stay. There’s some kind of process behind it but it’s pretty opaque. I had been spending a good amount though.

    • Anna says:

      8 Oct8 October 19:29

      Yes – I need to wait till January so I get the 10k bonus points, then I’ll try again!

  • BJ says:

    8 Oct8 October 20:32

    If you are all going to pick the low-hanging fruit like a bunch of amateurs then this is the best you are going to get. I keep waiting and waiting for an HfP reader to hit the jackpot with amex but if they have then they are staying very tight-lipped about it.

    • Anna says:

      8 Oct8 October 21:05

      Well why don’t YOU tell us about it then?!

      • BJ says:

        8 Oct8 October 22:31

        I suppose I could make an advent calendar out of it and drop a clue a day, only it’s incredibly simple and wouldn’t merit that much suspense and irritation. Think simple.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      8 Oct8 October 21:12

      I already mentioned many times I got 10k for sticking with my gold.

      You won’t get much better. I assume they’ve dropped the amount as the gold had an increased redemption rate for £

      • BJ says:

        8 Oct8 October 22:33

        See above.

    • Harry T says:

      8 Oct8 October 22:46

      @BJ you are being too mysterious for me after my 12 hour day – please spill the beans!

      • IG says:

        8 Oct8 October 23:13

        I’ve heard at least in US they pretty much click a button and computer tells them what to give. Call up around annual fee time. There’s around 12-13 month clock on retention by card but might have been an exception in COVID

        • Anna says:

          9 Oct9 October 11:24

          I was speaking with an American agent – he said he would see what was available for me so sounds like this is what he did!

        • BJ says:

          9 Oct9 October 13:05

          @Anna and others, with all these extras you folks have been picking up you must now feel very happy that you didn’t jump on the 24 month fallow strategy bandwagon way back then and call amex to cancel all your cards at once. Had you done so, you would have missed out on those unexpected freebies.

      • BJ says:

        9 Oct9 October 06:20

        @Harry T, I cannot, it would cause havoc if I spelled it out. I will drop some hints from time to time.

        • Harry T says:

          9 Oct9 October 07:35

          Thanks. Is it something you’ve tried?

        • BJ says:

          9 Oct9 October 13:25

          @Harry T and others. regretably I cannot try much of anything with amex anymore as I now only have one card and one supp with them. I had five earlier this year but, stupidly some might say, I got rid of them. I think the differences in that which people report receiving from amex is simply a reflection of how much value amex perceives them to be. I am not sure I would be calling up to cancel cards myself unless I was really happy to let them all go or I had a back up plan to talk myself out of it while I was on the phone with them.

    • The Urbanite says:

      10 Oct10 October 10:15

      People tend to keep their best Amex routes very close to their chest.

      Finding lucrative Amex routes is child’s play. The limiting factor is Amex themselves and their credit reviews.

  • Harry T says:

    9 Oct9 October 22:39

    @BJ
    Perhaps you’re suggesting that the best strategy is to keep all your amex cards and continue deriving the retention benefits…

    • Peter K says:

      10 Oct10 October 00:23

      So what you are saying is that rather than sign up to credit cards all the time, we should *not quite* cancel them regularly?

• IG says:

  8 Oct8 October 17:49

  I think it’s been discussed before but whats best strategy on creation credit limit being super low? And can we recycle it through the month?

  • TGLoyalty says:

    8 Oct8 October 18:04

    You can recycle it. Weather they get annoyed at you for chcling it many times a month after a while no idea as I have a c£10k limit.

    • BJ says:

      8 Oct8 October 20:36

      Ten times higher than they gave me 😀

      • IG says:

        8 Oct8 October 23:11

        Yes I think we are in thr same boat 😁

    • TGLoyalty says:

      8 Oct8 October 21:13

      Whether! I’m having a nightmare today!

• Manny_D says:

  8 Oct8 October 20:37

  A question, is it possible to upgrade the Amex Business Gold to the Business Platinum, like you can on the personal cards?

  • memesweeper says:

    9 Oct9 October 08:04

    The sometimes circulated link doesn’t work AFAIK. Nothing to stop you calling up.

• AndyGWP says:

  8 Oct8 October 22:16

  Qatar teacher email has landed 👍🏻

  • Aston100 says:

    8 Oct8 October 23:59

    Did you win?

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