virtualtroy

I know this has been raised a few times over the course of this thread: do you need to pay for a flight ticket / hire car / hotel room using the card (or any other AmEx card) in order to take advantage of the travel insurance benefits offered by the card?

I'd never been quite sure of the answer and had previously understood that an AmEx card in your name had to be used in order to get the benefits (e.g. you could use the BA AmEx and still be protected by the travel insurance benefits cover offered with the Platinum charge card).

I've now got the book of words from AmEx specifying cover in each category and nowhere, apart from for the purchase protection-related benefit (i.e. you buy something and it gets lost or damaged within 90 days), does it state that you actually have to use any AmEx card in order to be covered. It does specify that in the event that you make a claim, say, for delayed baggage that replacement clothing should be charged to the card, but in practice I know this isn't set in stone: on the only occasion I've ever claimed against this cover, the merchants I went to in CAI unsurprisingly wouldn't accept AmEx. So I charged it to my Visa card and kept the receipts.

I'm kind of kicking myself, with the benefit of hindsight, as there are quite a few occasions over the years where the flight delay benefit (kicks in after 4 hours) would've allowed me to spend £150 each on dinner. Similarly all the times I've been cajoled into taking car hire insurance from the rental company, when faced with threats of all the amounts you might be required to stump up should something go wrong and you haven't taken their cover.

The 'travel inconvenience' benefit does seem a little thin as it's limited to £150 per person in the event of a delay, which doesn't exactly cover an alternative ticket, should this be the only option. But the cover is comparatively generous in many other regards.

Does anyone disagree with my interpretation that the cover is automatic to the primary and any supplementary cardholders, even if the flight tix etc. aren't bought using the card?