American Express Membership Rewards - Sign and Travel?

Hi,
I've joined Amex for a little over a year now and hold a platinum card. I've just noticed that there is a sign and travel program you can sign up for. I tried to do that online, but it said my card was not eligble for the program. Does anyone know what the requirements are?
Thanks
Terence

Sign & Travel is available to Personal, Gold, Platinum Card® and CenturionSM Card members. Not all Cardmembers are eligible for Sign & Travel. Eligibility is based on tenure and a review of payment history.

(from www.americanexpress.com) (http://www.americanexpress.com))

I'd call and ask customer service rather than rely on a web-based inquiry. Also, I wouldn't think the program would apply to Platinum Optima cards since they already permit extended payment terms. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Be forewarned on SIgn & Travel. Getting it will definitely screw you up. We have it and it has caused us nothing but grief because of AMEX's billing system. Every month we send AMEX a check in full to pay for the regular charges on our GOld Card and the required monthly payment on S & T. Every month when we get the bill they have applied too much money to Sign and Travel out of the check we sent them. The overage amount varies from around $20.00 to as much as a $1000.00. Of course this causes the regular card to be shorted on the payment amount. Every single month without fail they do this. Everfy single month I have to call them and have the excess money they applied to S & T transferred back to the regular card. It is a royal pain. WHy does this happen you may ask? First of all there is no place on your billing statement for you to indicate how much you want applied to which part of the bill. According to the song and dance AE customer service has given me multiple times when your payment arrives they check your account. If you have any credits from any returned merchandise on your AMEX that are scheduled to post on your next billing cycle they deduct that amount from your bill and then apply the overage in the check you sent to S & T. TO clarify if I owe them $2000 on the regular charge and $100 on S & T for a bill which they cut on 9/1 and I send a check for $2100 which they receive on 9/25 they will check my account. If I have any credits issued to me that are scheduled to post on 10/2 which is my next billing date they will deduct the total of those credit and apply the excess funds from the $2100 to S & T. Now here is the major problem. They have no idea of what those credits are for. For example if I have a charge for a airline ticket for $1200 for business travel charged on 9/10 and then I have to cancel or change that ticket then I will have a credit issued for that amount on say 9/20 AE does not recognize that the credit offsets a charge in the same next billing cycle. To them it is a credit and they simply deduct it from the payment received on 9/26 which was for the bill I received in early September. This drives me bonkers. I am so sick of calling them every month to get money transferred around that I am seriously thinking of cancelling the card even though I use it for travel to the tune of $5000-$6000 a month.

I used to have it, but not any more.

First, the charges are split into S&T and normal. To pay the entire bill each month, I had to manually add the normal charge balance and the S&T balance to find out what my total bill was.

Second, the interest rate for S&T purchases was not competitive with other offers....

AmEx sent me 3 or 4 letters in the mail within 2 weeks telling me how great sign and travel was. I tried to sign up online, but it told me that I wasn't eligible.

I called, and a CSR told me the same thing - my card wasn't eligible. I explained that i had receieved a few letters in the past 2 weeks asking me to sign up, and after putting me through to the credit department, I was enrolled.

They told me you had to have had the card for at least 12 months (I had had it for 6 at the time). I don't know how other people have their accounts set up, but mine is set up so that I have to call in and ask them to put charges in sign and travel, rather than automatically putting large charges in that part of my account. I haven't had any problems at all.

d

Sign & Travel sucks. It is a ploy by AmEx to get you to start paying revolving interest charges- SIMPLE AS THAT.

Like another person here previously stated, when you get S&T, AmEx actually sets up 2 accounts for you- one is your regular AmEx account and the other is your S&T account.

There are frequent instances where AmEx will not apply your 1 payment to cover both your accounts. As a result, those idiots will slap you with finance charges.

Stay away from it.

I had nothing but problems with it. It is not worth the trouble.

Thanks for all your inputs.. I guess I would hold out on it and not try to sign up. I guess it's the same with Extended payment right? The two seem to do the same functions, so I guess it would be just as bad as Sign & Travel...

I have to say avoid it.

There is no rhyme or reason as to what gets applied to S&T and what doesn't. I can have two charges in a row from AA for air travel. Onegets the S&T treatment, the other doesn't. Then some obvious travel items do not go onto it and some oviously not travel related stuff does go on. It makes month end reconciliation very difficult.

I don't get the problems if you pay your bill in full every month. And Amex is offering 5000 MR points to sign up for it. Your bill lists Regular charges, Sign and Travel charges, and the Total. I just pay the total. Again, I don't use it, but for 5000 MR points I might as well have the option.

I concur...don't do it.

I signed up a few years ago. I charge a lot and it immediately Sign & Travel started to casue problems with charges 'needing a phone call.' Big hassle. I cancelled it.

I totally agree with the above posts on the problems with Sign & Travel. I'd like to add that the billing statement that you get is incomprehensible to my poor mind.

I would add, though, that if you work for a company like the one I USED to work for, where they are VERY slow in paying your expense reports (and I mean 8-12 weeks slow!), then this option might be worth your trouble if for nothing else than to avoid late fees and a bad credit rating...neither of which said company would reimburse one for.

Otherwise, it just isn't worth it.

As others have noted, if you use Sign & Travel, Amex will immediately assign all air/hotel/car rental charges to S&T. This can be a real PITA.

There is an alternative to this. Once you set up a S&T account, call Amex and tell them that only charges that you specifically request should go in to the S&T account. Tell them that no charges should automatically be sent to the S&T account. This has worked for me. This still offers me flexibility when I want to pay off large travel expenses over 2-3 months. I still end up paying some interest, but I do get MR points for the charges.

The other option is the Optima link. Every month, I have the option of transferring all or part of my PLAT bill to my Optima card. In effect, does the same thing and I choose how much to transfer, if any.

Another longtime Plat with mucho problems, including never getting the sigup bonus, regarding S&T before dropping it. AuH20 makes sense yet I still had difficulties and Bill makes good sense but when I'd asked about this they said it could not be done! This was a while back! Perhaps things have improved? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

I disagree with everything in this post regarding the problems with Sign & Travel. I cant beleive people would request this feature, which turns some of your charges into revolving, then complian because they cant figure out their billing statement.

Whie it is true, it may not be as appealing as other revolving cards (Visa MC), that isnt its purpose. Personally, my revolving account with Sign & Travel is 9.99%, so I DO consider it competitive.

What AE is offering with sign and travel, is the opportunity to take advantage of the protections offerred by your AE card, and have the OPTION of not paying for it in full.

Therefore, if you want to take a cruise and use yor AE card because you want to earn the points, or you like the insurance benefits it offers, you wont have to worry about forking over the full balance on your next billing cycle.

If you choose to pay it in full, THEN DO SO. But if you dont, your vacation plans arent limited by what you can afford to pay off by the next month.

Despite Jaty P's dissertaion above, I find the online billing details very simple to understand. I cant see how you could screw it up. The "minimum due" is still the "minimum due" with or without Sign & Travel. And if you pay it the minimum, you cant go wrong. If you pay the entire balance, then good for you.

Sign & Travel offers flexibility. It's still your choice whether you want to pay in full or revolve your balance.

I had a lot of problems with the system. It is not as simple as "pay the minimum or pay in full." I use the Pay-by-Phone system. Unless they have fixed the admitted glitch, you CAN'T find out your balance with S&T -- even the full balance given on the phone will not include the S&T amounts. Of course, you don't find this out until you get your next statement with interest charges. It just could not be worth the hassle -- if I can't pay off a travel expense, I charge it to another card or use a covenience check from another card.

WHAT HASSLE? If you charge it to another card, you are in the same boat.

I have to admit, I do not use the phone system. But I know its pretty clear in my printed statement and online statment.

I just checked my balance on the phone. Here is how you figure it out: Your "Total outstanding balnce" is just that, total. That means S&T balance and "Due In Full" balance.

The minum payment on your S&T balnce will always be 2% of your S& T balance. But I assume everyone in this discussion is trying to avoid paying interest on the S&T. If thats the case, always pay the "Total outstanding Balance." Now how hard is that?

I shared the confusion over S&T accounting methods and took the advice of the earlier post and switched to the option where you must specifically request a particular charge go to S&T. BTW the interest rate I was quoted was prime + 9.9%, so there'll be no specific requests from me anytime soon. Before I changed it, my S&T account included all charges from travel companies plus any other individual charges of $200 or more.

Since S+T has much higher interest than other cc'ds why would you even use it? But if you do want to, one solution we found when we had more CC than we do now was -

I had a green card to which S+T was attached.

Mr Squeakr had a gold card w/ no S+T on which I whas an addtl cardholder.

If you want to use s+T use the green card. If you just want "regular" Amex then you would use the gold.

Worked for us when we needed it.
ed for spelling

[This message has been edited by squeakr (edited 09-24-2001).]

[This message has been edited by squeakr (edited 09-24-2001).]

I agree with detjason. So far when a high charge posts in S&T I usually call Amex to transfer to my regular account and have all interest charges that accumulated to be deducted. And it's convenient !
BTW, jetdason. how did you get the 9.9 % rate ?? Currently I have, according to Amex, the lowest rate they can grant to their customers which is 16.65%. I just have two years with Amex, am I assuming that you will need to have more years as a cardholder ?
Adios http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Curious about that 9.9%. Is that prime + 9.9%, because AmEx does claim that everyone gets the same S&T interest rate.

I like the way my S&T account is set up. Nothing automatically posts to it, if I have a charge I want to transfer, I call and have it done.

I also have a button on the online statment saying "Transfer charges to S&T." It's been there for close to a year now, and when you click it, it says "We're sorry, we can't do this online, please call..." There's AmEx's great Web team continually sucking.

d

I NEVER heard of a 9.9% rate for S&T balances, and I'd be curious to know how that was obtained.

Back before I cancelled my Amex accounts, I had S&T and it was a heinous, vicious, costly ripoff.

First, as noted above you had to look at your current card balance, look at your Sign & Travel statement, and add the two numbers together yourself. Why don't they add them up for you on a consolidated statement? Because they don't want you sending anything more than the minimum payment.

Second, my S&T interest rates varied from 17% to 21%. Usurious, painful, gouge-me rates. Anyone with a good enough credit profile to carry an Amex card and travel occasionally can do MUCH better. Just follow the lowball balance transfer offers that come in the mail.

S&T is just one of the sneaky, overpriced, mismanaged Amex products that ultimately sours your view of the whole Amex brand.