Reduced AMEX earn rates from April 2019

[psi999]

Suspect majority of customers will blink and miss this announcement/ not understand / not care. In our little circles yes there will be a higher than normal outflow of points I’m sure!

Im not sure I see it that way. Anyone holding an Amex in Australia is certainly not in it for the acceptance. Did a quick walk around the office yesterday afternoon asking those that I know that hold Amex cards if they knew about the devaluation, all but one knew. All indicated they had planned on clearing out balances to various programs and mixed bag of cancellations, changing products. Sounds like Amex is on its way to joining Diners.

 

[SOPOOR]

Westpac Black MC direct sweeps to QF at 0.75 ppd. Westpac Black Amex (which is issued by Amex, not Wpac) direct sweeps at 1.25 ppd to QF. Currently this Amex is not listed as one that's changing.

Maybe amex just forgot to include it

 

[SOPOOR]

If you are dedicated to KF, and have much more MR points then you can use in 3-4 years. You could xfer to velocity at 1:1 prior.
Then transfer at 1:55-1 velocity to KF after - 100,000 velocity = 64500 kf. Still a massive cut, but better then 100,000 MR = 50,000 kf.
Velocity point's dont expire as long as you earn a point within a certain time frame I believe. But Velocity might change their ratio again with in 3 years...who knows.

A 35% drop is too high fir me to handle but its a great idea.

If there was a 15% transfer promo, which would essentially mean a 20% (yes the maths isnt 100% correct) losss but saves your expirng kf ppints, id probsbly do that

 

[ninja-tim]

If you are dedicated to KF, and have much more MR points then you can use in 3-4 years. You could xfer to velocity at 1:1 prior.
Then transfer at 1:55-1 velocity to KF after - 100,000 velocity = 64500 kf. Still a massive cut, but better then 100,000 MR = 50,000 kf.
Velocity point's dont expire as long as you earn a point within a certain time frame I believe. But Velocity might change their ratio again with in 3 years...who knows.

...or cancel the partnership and in that case you would be forced to transfer to KF.

 

[albyd]

I think Westpac will be excluded as the Westpac Amex credits to Westpac's own Altitude program rather than Amex's membership rewards. Westpac has only just recently done their own devaluation on Altitude.

I asked one of my friends who I introduced to Amex Explorer this morning and he was unaware. He has Amex for the points and was quite cut up about the news. He's going to set up Edge assuming Amex are still willing to wear the extra cost for the next 5 months of the Gateway to Ascent uplift before we're all in the one program. I think there will be plenty of people out there like my friend who hold an Amex because of the points but won't realise their value has been halved. Except those of us on AFF of course - since we're more engaged with the rewards program.

 

[bbqwer]

Ozbargain and whirlpool also has this information now. Especially with ozb, plenty members should be aware by now.

Wife and me each holding separate explorer and edge. Total annual fees 800 + 400. By april - we will drop 1 set of them.

Current Plan will be : any transactions occur fee, will use STG cc. ( bye bye to rewardpay ).

The rest transaction still use Explorer. Supermarket with p.edge

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Suspect majority of customers will blink and miss this announcement/ not understand / not care. In our little circles yes there will be a higher than normal outflow of points I’m sure!

My comment was on those with larger balances who will in the main be quite aware of the change by April 2019. Hence I believe the points transferred will be massive. Some with truly large balances will possibly want to move points to several programs unless they are just happy with QFF (poor value program IMO) or Velocity (seems to be becoming less useful).
Sure there will be "mums and dads" who will miss it, but I was not considering them.


Having to clean out both Velocity this year and Amex MR Accounts by April 2019 for both myself and my wife's accounts is going cause me (as it will for many) some careful thinking about what flights I will redeem on KF/*Alliance over the next 3.5 years (Though having longer to actually fly by). With some points already in our two KF accounts I am not sure that I want to have a combined two KF account balance of more than say 2 million points on 15 April 2019.

Paying the points to extend for the extra year may be part of this as the cost is still a lot less than 50%.

That I am 58 and am reducing the % of year worked at present with probably dropping to zero, or near zero in 2 years, might mean that I do a lot of flying 2021/212 to use up more points than normal.

Originally I was planning to use up some of almost 2 Million QFF points I have with some RTW awards about then. So might just have to let those points keep growing unused and use KF points instead. Due to the ease of acquiring QF points by churn and burn CC, as well as other means, the QFF points keep arriving despite it being my thirds and lowest ranked FF program. But the QFF program is expensive points wise and fuel tax punitive and so the points mainly only get use when I cannot fly *A (availability, route, time etc).

Normally I am happy in J, with some occasional F flights for fun. so may have to think about more F flights too.

Ah...First Wold Problems!

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Sounds like Amex is on its way to joining Diners.

Not sure about that as for much of my spend they will still earn me almost double the KF points that VISA/MCs may.


Amex unfortunately I think have just decided that they were paying way more points than any of their card competitors and so could slash transfers rates while still offering more points than other cards.

 

[SOPOOR]

Not sure about that as for much of my spend they will still earn me almost double the KF points that VISA/MCs may.


Amex unfortunately I think have just decided that they were paying way more points than any of their card competitors and so could slash transfers rates while still offering more points than other cards.

if thats amexs business decision, its their choice and I respect it,

however what would not sit well with me is if they still continue to charge higher merchant fees or market themselves as the premium service or rewards program,
to me now they are the same as visa and mastercard

 

[cove]

Our merchant fee is 1.5% so they are a bit higher than their competition who are at 1.00%.

 

[SOPOOR]

Our merchant fee is 1.5% so they are a bit higher than their competition who are at 1.00%.

my little shop i Had I negotiated moderately, and Iwas down to 0.7% if I recall,
while amex were 1.5-2%

no thank you

 

[opusman]

I think Westpac will be excluded as the Westpac Amex credits to Westpac's own Altitude program rather than Amex's membership rewards. Westpac has only just recently done their own devaluation on Altitude.

Westpac have two options, Altitude or QFF. If you select the QFF option then both the Mastercard and the Amex direct credit to QFF.

 

[cove]

We seem to get too many Premium Credit Cards to get our MC and V cards processing fee lower in 2018.
I think a lot of our customers are into FF points.

 

[Haplo]

Does the point to cash conversion stay the same? i.e. 1 MR = 0.7 cents?

If it is then that could be an option going forward since we earn 2.25ppd on Amex charge which is like 1.5 cents per dollar charged.

 

[StevePER]

Does the point to cash conversion stay the same? i.e. 1 MR = 0.7 cents?

No, it drops to 1MR = 0.5 cents.

 

[davidj]

5 months notice is something .... can make plenty of hay in that time.

I'm yet to be notified of any change?

 

[codash1099]

I'm yet to be notified of any change?

Same here.

 

[Doctore1003]

Same here.

They will begin notifying customers from the 19th. Media embargo was lifted yesterday.

 

[Ken1]

I have a Platinum Charge card with the Reserve which I don't use but only keep for the $400 travel credit and have had the Explorer for nearly 2 years now and have used that for nearly everything since I have been getting 2 ppd from that, and only currently use the Platinum Charge for Restaurants and Travel. I have an ANZ Black Visa at 1ppd and previously also had Westpac Black but cancelled that because of the low Visa ppd and didn't see the point of having the new Westpac Amex with only 1.25 ppd when I was getting 2 ppd on the Explorer. I applied for the NAB QFF Signature Visa card with the 100K bonus points six months ago so also have that for Visa spend at 1ppd.

I have just renewed my Platinum Charge card this month and spent the $450 travel credit already so will keep it for another year since we use the Charge and Reserve travel credits, Priority Pass membership, Hertz discount rates, Accor Plus membership etc but I still don't think it is good value now at $1450 annual fee with the 50% reduction in transfer rates. I don't see the point of keeping the Explorer card as well since at 1 ppd conversion rate I can get that through the Visa cards and the Charge card will give an effective 1.125 transfer rate so a 12.5% improvement. I thought of applying for the Qantas Ultimate card since most of my points are in QFF but even with the 1.25 rate on that card I am slightly better off using the Charge and then converting when QFF have a bonus like at the moment and I still have the flexibility to convert to other programs. Since the fee on the charge card is so high they could at least have given us an effective 1.25 conversion rate to be the same at the QF and Virgin Amex cards rather than the 1.125 we will be getting.

While most of our points are in QFF we recently transferred Amex MR points to Cathay Pacific Asia Miles and booked two J ZRH-LHR-SYD BA seats for 90,000 points each compared with 139,000 with QFF after having earlier booked two J SYD-HKG-AMS on CX with QFF points for 139,000 each so I was thinking of using AM more often in the future.

The decision in early April will be whether to transfer all the MR points to QFF, CX AM or also possibly SQ KF, which we haven't joined yet. The problem with AM and KF is the 3 year expiry and not being sure what we will do in the next 3 years, although we are planning another Europe trip in 2021. If the changes were not happening I had planned to keep options open to transfer just points required at the time to either of them like I did recently with AM. We currently have 440K QFF points and by April should have over 200K MR points so will probably aim for two 280K J One World awards with QFF for that trip. It would be a lot fairer if Amex would double points already accrued as of April 15 so we didn't lose the current value of them as someone earlier in the thread was told by an Amex rep but has proven to be not true going by what is on the Amex website, and then we would earn points at the new lower rates after that.

 

[andye]

I wonder if Amex themselves will start to consolidate their card offering. e.g. as of April there is next to no difference between the earn on Business Accelerator, the Personal Explorer, and the Reserve. Also the Business Explorer looks a lot worse compared to the Personal Explorer as the bonus points for (big) spend have been devalued whereas the travel credit stays the same.