Originally Posted by
golmaale
I fell asleep at the wheel and just woke up to find my Amex bill in the mail, along with the dreaded annual fee. Can I transfer my points into airline miles and then call them the next day to cancel my card? Will they waive the fee and cancel the card, if the points have just been transferred out?
There are two different transactions:
1.) Naturally you can send a part or all of your MR reward points to an airline partner/hotel partner or pile up a lot of merchandising.
2.) Cancelling the card afterwards wouldn't get you the complete yearly fee back. I think itīs a pro rata calculation of the remaining months / 12 months.
My personal advice:
Some airlines have expiration dates if you are not en elite member or have a transaction within three years or so (like BA). So IMHO I would never *cancel all* Amex cards.
Many of the regular FTers know that I am a great fan of Amex. So my personal step towards this issue would be:
If you donīt want to have an expensive colour of that card (e.g. gold or platinum) just go one step back and apply for a new "green" Amex and then cancel your existing cards.
So you wouldn't set yourself under time-pressure to send the MR rewards points anywhere. And maybe you explore that airline B is better for rewards to destination C.
In that case holding any of the Amex cards with fully "sendable" MR points to airline/hotel programmes will do the trick. But thatīs my personal approach only.
Naturally you are free to send the points to anywhere, check if they have arrived in due state and then cancel the card.