bchl

finally something useful to keep these cards...

• Your award miles will not expire after 36 months but will remain valid indefinitely provided:
- you have held a SWISS Miles & More credit card for at least three months and
- you use the card (or a partner card) at least once each month for a mileage-earning transaction. The usual mileage expiration will first be suspended from September 30, 2007 onwards.

• The unlimited mileage validity applies to all your award miles, whether you earn (or earned) them through flights, credit card payments or promotions by other Miles & More partners.

• Any miles that have already expired cannot be revalidated by obtaining or using your SWISS Miles & More credit card.

• Resumption of expiration: Should you fail to fulfil either of the above conditions, your miles will become subject to the usual expiration provisions again from the following quarter onwards. This will also be communicated to you on your Miles & More account statement. Any award miles which were exempted from such expiration and/or would normally expire within this period will remain valid until such time.

• The suspension of your usual mileage expiration subject to the above conditions applies to the following SWISS Miles & More credit cards (issued by Credit Suisse):
- Miles & More MasterCard
- Miles & More VISA Gold
- Miles & More Milemaker
- Miles & More Milemaker Gold
- Miles & More American Express Milemaker Golf
- Miles & More American Express Platinum

flysurfer

The same is true for all Austrian M&M cards.

Hennessy

What about the Miles&More Cornercards?

szg

So it is back again. In Austria we had this 5 years ago, but then they cancelled it. Let´s see, how long this offer is valid.

f4freeJunior

HI

I received a letter from Swisscard informing me that my credit cards are now free of charge. This offer is valid for HON and SEN ^^. An appreciated enhancement for once!

airoli

Interesting. Do you know to which cards this applies? Also the Amex / Visa "Milemaker" combos I wonder...

f4freeJunior

Yes. It applies to the combo I have (Amex Gold & Visa Gold aka Milemaker). If you need a referral...

goliath

Also, if you are not HON and SEN, cancelling the credit cards should give you another year for free or 50% off - I don't know how many times I've done it already but it has always worked. Assuming that you actually spend some money with their cards, they like to keep your business.

QMConsultant

It is not yet posted on their website and I have not yet seen their letter (am still travelling). But it is good to hear that this is true for the Milemaker combo :-)

QMConsultant

Hennessy

I prefer the Cornercard Visa that is also for free as SEN/HON, but has a much lower fee for foreign currency transactions: 0.9% instead of 2.5%.

bchl

be careful about your calculation... Cornerbank is using the retail-bank exchange rate which is significant higher then the interbank exchange rate used by Credit Suisse. After my last calculation it's still cheaper to use Corner Bank's card comparing to the 2.5% charged by Credit Suisse, but the difference isn't that big like you mentioned here.

Personally I still prefer to use my BA Diners or AF MasterCard. BA for more generous 1:1 mileage (250 CHF for the card!) and AF for much lower foreign exchange fees (1.5%, lower then the 0,9% from Cornerbank).

goliath

Also, if you have a lot of refunds / credits to your credit card (as I do), Cornerbank uses a much worse exchange rate for those bookings, like a bank they have "buy" and "sell" exchange rates:

I.e. I spend 1000 USD today, they charge me 1000 USD @ 1.05 today = 1050 CHF.

Tomorrow I will be refunded the 1000 USD back to my card, but they only credit me 1000 USD @ 0.97 = 970 CHF.

So I've lost 80 CHF.

If I do the same on a M&M card (or any other credit card I own or have owned, for that matter...), they are using the same exchange rate and I don't lose money on those transactions (exchange rate fluctuations set aside).

Also, if you have a problem with any of your transactions, their chargeback / refund system is awful and they rather send you to their insurance company to *try to* take care of it. Happened to me a lot of times with them, but never had any such problems with other cards.


Those were the main two reasons I've cancelled my Corner cards - but that's just me having a lot of refunds / credits and "risky" transactions.

Hennessy

Thanks for these informations.

TKG

How does this work? Do you threaten to cancel and then they offer you a reduction? I've had a Platinum Amex card for a year and find the CHF700 annual subscription a bit steep.

goliath

Don't threaten, but send them your cancellation.

If they want to keep your business, they will get back to you - if not, then you probably didn't use the card much and 700 CHF would be indeed too much to spend just to keep it for another year.