anat0l
Enthusiast
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2006
- Posts
- 11,666
Annual fees on credit cards can be a pain.
I managed to keep all my credit cards fee free due to
As some people know I've upgraded to a co-branded Amex Plat now; annual fee is $295 (supposedly $100 less than the standard annual fee plus enrolment into Ascent is not included in a standard Platinum card).
My parents are a different matter. They used to get their credit cards from the CBA free when they bundled their CBA products. When the bundling system stopped and CBA wanted to charge annual fees, my mum threatened to cancel her cards unless the annual fee was waived. She was successful.
Same thing happened when they were offered to be upgraded to Gold via a call from the bank. She said no upgrade to the Gold card unless the fee was waived. Fee was waived and my parents were CBA Gold.
Then CBA announced that they were introducing Amex/Visa cards and of course the new T&Cs announced the reduction in the earning rate of the CBA Gold Visa (i.e. all levels of Awards would have the same rate if you wanted to transfer Award points to QF/DJ points). So my parents decided to move to Westpac (and Altitude), who had the same thing going but had better earn rates. Again, I don't know exactly how they managed to do it, but they now have a Westpac Gold Altitude Visa and Amex with...you guessed it...no annual fee.
My mum elbows out a fee waive every single year and every time she does it by threatening to cancel the cards she is successful.
She has also done the same thing with a NAB Velocity Amex. They offered it to her for the first year for free, but since then she has managed to get every single year after that for free through threatening to cancel the card. She's had the card now for at least 3 years.
Admittedly, my parents have used credit cards and have never missed paying a statement in full. They have never transferred a balance or used cash advance. They have never paid a single cent in interest. I guess you could say they have an extremely good credit record.
Nevertheless, it's now come to the point where my parents will never use another credit card again unless there is no annual fee on it.
But in any case, is anyone else here also using a credit card with no fee? How do you get it (in a similar way to how my mum does it
)? And feel free to comment or rant about credit card annual fees here.
I managed to keep all my credit cards fee free due to
- WCAMC being fee free in the first place (no reward benefits, however)
- CBA Standard Awards Amex/Visa, being a student and having the fee waived
- The co-branded Amex Gold card I had was fee free.
As some people know I've upgraded to a co-branded Amex Plat now; annual fee is $295 (supposedly $100 less than the standard annual fee plus enrolment into Ascent is not included in a standard Platinum card).
My parents are a different matter. They used to get their credit cards from the CBA free when they bundled their CBA products. When the bundling system stopped and CBA wanted to charge annual fees, my mum threatened to cancel her cards unless the annual fee was waived. She was successful.
Same thing happened when they were offered to be upgraded to Gold via a call from the bank. She said no upgrade to the Gold card unless the fee was waived. Fee was waived and my parents were CBA Gold.
Then CBA announced that they were introducing Amex/Visa cards and of course the new T&Cs announced the reduction in the earning rate of the CBA Gold Visa (i.e. all levels of Awards would have the same rate if you wanted to transfer Award points to QF/DJ points). So my parents decided to move to Westpac (and Altitude), who had the same thing going but had better earn rates. Again, I don't know exactly how they managed to do it, but they now have a Westpac Gold Altitude Visa and Amex with...you guessed it...no annual fee.
My mum elbows out a fee waive every single year and every time she does it by threatening to cancel the cards she is successful.
She has also done the same thing with a NAB Velocity Amex. They offered it to her for the first year for free, but since then she has managed to get every single year after that for free through threatening to cancel the card. She's had the card now for at least 3 years.
Admittedly, my parents have used credit cards and have never missed paying a statement in full. They have never transferred a balance or used cash advance. They have never paid a single cent in interest. I guess you could say they have an extremely good credit record.
Nevertheless, it's now come to the point where my parents will never use another credit card again unless there is no annual fee on it.
But in any case, is anyone else here also using a credit card with no fee? How do you get it (in a similar way to how my mum does it
)? And feel free to comment or rant about credit card annual fees here.
. I got the NAB Velocity card when they had the 15000 points offer for Visa and 15000 points offer for Gold Amex (that was when the Visa/Amex were separate cards), and first year fee free. 
