Originally Posted by
Swiss Tony
I have a Platinum Cashback Credit card that I’ve never used but it did get the fee reduced to £30. Is this now not the case?
There's a lack of clarity over what triggered the discount. I suspect your card (like mine) wasn't supposed to.
Originally Posted by
ewand
So it looks like what's happened, to me at least, is that at some point they decided to stop the Credit Card being classed as a Companion Card - in the letter dated June 2016 which set out that the fees were rising to £195, it said:
"Please note that the standard membership fee only becomes payable if you no longer hold an applicable Companion Charge Card alongside your British AIrways Card, otherwise you can continue to pay a reduced fee of £30."
I've been reading about this issue with a mixture of confusion and irritation.
I've had a BAPP since 2005. I got a Blue Card first to make sure that when I got the BAPP it would be on the £30 fee.
In 2011, I got a notice from Amex to change my T&Cs.
The then provision was:-
A fee of £30 per year will be payable by you, providing that the required companion card is maintained. If the required companion card is not maintained, a £150 fee will become payable in respect of the Premium Plus Card during the second and each subsequent 12 months.
The new provision was:-
A card membership annual fee of £150 is payable annually at the beginning of each membership year.
I have therefore already been on a £150 fee (up from £30) for the last 5 years, even though I continued to hold the credit card (which at some stage morphed from a Blue Card to a Platinum Cashback Credit Card.
I am sure that there was discussion here in 2011 about this increase, and the fact that a companion credit card was no longer going to reduce the BAPP fee.
There was a further wrinkle at that time, which was that Amex intended to increase the fee halfway through a membership year, so that even though I had already paid £30 for the year, I would be made to pay the new fee in addition, pro-rata for the rest of that membership year. It took a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman to have that withdrawn, so that in the end the new fee was only paid from the beginning of the next membership year.
It sounds like many BAPP cardholders who similarly had Blue/Platinum Cashback credit cards were not moved onto the new term in 2011 and it's only happening now. I'd love to know why the distinction! And I wonder whether I might have a complaint under Treating Customers Fairly.
The position is more complex given that I eventually cancelled my Platinum credit card about six months ago because I was not using it and it was not giving me any fee reduction benefit. If I should have been getting a fee reduction until 2017, I wouldn't have cancelled it then.