American Express - Customer Service?

British Airways American Express Card

British Airways has just posted its biggest loss, £401m. It makes some extra revenue through its partnership with Amex. Spending on the BA Amex card is rewarded with BA miles.

To encourage existing card holders to recommend their friends Amex offers 2,000 BA miles to both the proposer and joiner. On 31 Jan I proposed a friend. I'm still waiting for the promised BA miles, and so is she.

2 weeks ago I telephoned Amex to find out what had gone wrong. They promised to call me back within 7 days and explain. They didn't.

Today I telephoned again. They said they had called me back two days ago and left a message. I said they hadn't. Could they tell me what number they left me a message on? No, because of data protection rules they couldn't. So far as I am aware there is nothing in the Data Protection Act which prevents Amex telling me what telephone number they have listed on my account.

When I asked for a manager to telephone me and explain their service failure I was told I would have to write in. It's a while since I wrote a letter of complaint, but if they insist.

I've taken the opportunity to remind Amex the credit card and their promotional advertising are both regulated products.

I'm surprised Amex were unable to resolve my complaint more helpfully.

I'll remember that next time I'm sifting through a wallet full of plastic.

First Class Reward Flight with British Airways

British Airways First Class Cabin from seat 1A

On Saturday we flew First Class British Airways from London's new Terminal 5 to San Francisco. The return flight cost the same as an economy round trip, but this wasn't some fluke upgrade.

I wrote about how I was collecting BA Miles and a Companion Voucher on their Amex card.

Spend £20,000 in a single year on BA's Amex card and they give you another flight for you companion when you redeem your miles. You just pay the taxes and charges on both flights.

I have to point out at this stage that you do really need to have accumulated some BA miles by flying with BA to travel First Class. However you could in theory collect miles on the Amex card forever and then only use the voucher when you had collected sufficient miles (spending £20,000 a year this would take 7.5 years. You could alternatively under the rules buy a maximum of 19,000 BA miles each year at just over £300, which would reduce this to 4 years).

We didn't actually have sufficient miles for a First Class ticket to the US - 150,000 BA Miles. But we did have 112,000. This would pay for a seat in business - but there were none available. BA allows Executive Club members to buy 19,000 miles each year. This costs just over £300. By each buying our full allocation and pooling them in our household account we made the 150,000 mile target. The taxes and charges were £242 each so each seat cost a little under £550. The day I booked an economy fare was £545.

So was it worth it? OK so we had to spend £20,000 on an Amex card. But we divided this in 2 as well, by getting a second card on my account and using the card instead of cash every time we could (even a couple of quid spent in Tesco went onto the card).

But was the hassle worth it? The flight was wonderful. We got to eat breakfast in the brand new Concorde lounge dining booths, the cabin was only half full, the food was delicious, the flat bed and duvet sumptuous, and the flight well... (excuse me) flew by.

But come on, was it worth it? Well each First Class fare was on sale for £2449 the day I booked them. An economy fare was £545 - virtually the same as we paid. So less the charges the reward was worth £2000 each (£4,000 reward for spending every penny possible on Amex). A couple of weeks before we travelled the fare had risen to just under £10,000 each. Today, checking the BA website for the return leg of the fare a single First Class ticket is available for £5243 (the fare must be sold in dollars - it's $9771).

Of course there are more rewarding things in life than First Class air travel. But this has got to be one of the most satisfying loyalty rewards around - if you have the patience to learn all the rules.


The rules you need to qualify for this reward.
To benefit you'll need to:
1. Become a BA executive club member (do this for free by applying for the Amex card).
2. Preferably work with your partner - by creating a BA Household account to pool your miles (all family members at the same address can do this).
3. Spending every penny you can on Amex (ensure you set up a direct debit to repay the full balance every month, or this 'free' reward will cost you a fortune in interest).
4. When you have enough miles for your destination make sure you qualify for the companion voucher by spending £20,000 in 12 months on the card (there is also a premium card available with an annual fee which has a lower threshold).
5. Plan your reward flight a long way advance and pick routes with regular flights (I couldn't find any available reward flights in First to glamorous destinations like Mauritius).

Rewarding Credit Card Debt

Cashback, Interest Free, Reward Points - It's a curious phenomenon that we're actually rewarded for going into debt via credit card spending. You'd think with the banks facing a credit squeeze that they'd award prizes for staying debt free. But of course banks wouldn't make any money out of that. So instead we're incentivised to accumulate credit card debt in the hope that we won't pay off all the balance at the end of the month, thereby incurring interest and administration charges and making banks rich while keeping us poor.

You can make reward and cash-back credit cards work for you, but you have to be organised. A direct debit to clear the entire balance each month is the only safe way. For years I was collecting BA miles (a mile for every pound spent) on a British Airways Amex card. Better still once I had spent £20,000 I was awarded a 'Companion Voucher' to swap for a flight equal to the one I was redeeming. So you redeem say 50,000 BA miles for an economy trip to the US and get to take a partner too. All you pay is the taxes and charges on both tickets. At this point in the promotion you could take as long as you liked to spend the qualifying £20,000 - it took me 3 years of asking 'Do you take Amex?'

Then BA and Amex got wise and changed the rules - they'd literally been 'giving flights away'. Now you have to spend £20,000 in just 12 months (you can get cards where you qualify after half that spend - but those cards charge an annual fee - and who pays for credit when its so freely available?). Anyway my partner and I set out to do all our shopping on Amex for 12 months to see if we could manage the £20,000 target. If we failed we still got the miles - so the rule was no additional spending - just what we would have brought anyway.

Using Amex every time you make a purchase doesn't even raise an eyebrow. At the supermarket self-scan its just as easy to feed in an Amex card as a debit card and actually easier than feeding in cash. The bills only a couple of quid? It doesn't matter. "Amex? That'll do nicely."

In fact Amex isn't welcome everywhere. Norwich Union won't insure you with it, Tui won't take you on holiday. John Lewis only recently welcomed the card at their stores. Play.com don't, Amazon do. But remember the rule - no additional spending, so you must still take the lowest price you can find, regardless of the sellers' stance on Amex (otherwise the flights aren't quite so free are they?)

This morning at 4.30 am I received an email on my mobile (I love the O2 email to mobile which comes free with their broadband - but I haven't yet quite accounted for the people who email me while I'm sleeping - although to be fair O2 have thought of this with their various divert settings). Normally middle of the night messages are bad news - this was good news; I have just earned my companion voucher. Phew, we only had a week or so to spare. I don't know why 4.30 am was the magical moment. I wasn't even spending, I was sleeping. But somewhere a cyber transaction pushed me into reward land. (It reminds me of my first trip to Las Vegas where the Luxor Casino advertised 'Keno while you sleep' you could literally select numbers to play while you were in the land of nod).

So a year of driving up monthly debt has been rewarded. There was a time when you had to phone British Airways to book Companion Voucher reward flights. The BA sales staff were always sniffy. They were reluctant to carry out the lengthy searches necessary to uncover the scarce few freebie flights allocated. Fortunately BA has removed this final hurdle and now you can search for your own flights online. This is time consuming - but fun if the world literally is your oyster (well, as far as BA flies anyway).

Spending £20,000 on credit has been hard work. I think it actually makes me spend less. When the monthly bill arrives (aside from unavoidable business expenses) you're forced to re-live the purchases and trips which weren't really worth the expense. So spending everything on credit has been good discipline, but I'm not yet sure I'll be playing again next year.