Any reason to get an original Amex card?

Its actually $95 for the basic green card, then $125 for the gold card, $150 for the gold plus rewards and then $450 for the platinum

 

So you can tell people on the internet that you have one.

 

Not sure...my experience with them has been horrible. They take an additional 1-2 days for processing electronic payments (that means a total of 3-4 business days BEFORE the due date). They docked me and I politely asked them to credit the charges back...which they refused. I explained that they are the only electronic payment I make that takes longer than 2 business days to process.

 

Thanks for telling me that, i had no idea

 

Shouldn't you be paying off your balances in full every month anyway? Maybe I'm just old school like that..

 

I'm getting $700 back from my AMEX Blue Cash card later this month - one year's worth of cash back. Boom. Like that. That buys the tires on the 328 + an alignment, and I paid neither finance charges nor annual fees. Check from AMEX in the mail, cash money. Why the hell would anyone PAY an annual fee for a Green or Gold Card?

Change your AMEX Blue to AMEX Blue Cash - you'll need a high credit rating but in my research there is no better cash back card. I had AMEX Blue before and was always tooling around with their rewards program and if I was lucky it worked out to 1% cash back in the form of gift cards to retailers (Home Depot, Banana Republic, etc.).


--Mike

 

Potential benefits are...

1) Ability to "spend before you get" - i.e. if you are in business and have $40k of receivables coming end of the month, you can buy what you need earlier in the month using the Amex

2) Fraud protection. Using your check card means the money is gone from your account in case of fraud. If/when it gets credited back, you are still in the hole that $$ until the claim is settled. With an Amex, it allows you to verify expenses before actually spending the money

3) Easy to monitor and control monthly expenses. get a summarized bill each month with a total (the amt. due) showing what was paid and is owed

4) Other bennies like extended warranties on purchases, free upgraded car rental insurance, cash back (some cards), airline miles (some cards), possible upgrades at hotels, etc.

Downside is the annual fee. If the things above are more important than the fee, then theres the answer

 

Agreed. Amex is mostly used for business purposes. 1 (basically NET30 terms) and 3 are especially useful for biz accounts.

 

+1, same experience here.

 

So you guys are saying i should use my blue amex instead of my green?

 

I'm not sure these are advantages exclusive to the AMEX Green/Gold cards.

1. I don't see how "spend before you get" is exclusive to AMEX Green. That's the point of a credit card. The Blue Cash as a three or four week "grace" period after billing cycle before finance charges accrue, such that in some cases you could finance something free for a month and a half... And then you have the ability to float something if you needed (i.e. if a customer didn't pay - how often does that happen!).

2. I've disputed charges before, twice now, they issued a temporary credit to me while in resolution. Also, for any fraudulent activity, there is 0 liability. I never use my check card online for this reason (its fraud protection used to not be as good), until they stepped in line.

3. I find the billing of the AMEX Blue to be quite adequate. It's basic accounting - they track what you paid, what you spent, what you owed, etc. Online it even goes so far as to auto-categorize some expenses (gas, clothing, etc.)

4. AMEX Blue Cash has some of the best "misc benefits" going. In my case, there's a manufacturer's warranty extension ("Buyer's Assurance Plan"), cash back, and then a plan that reimburses you for accidental damage or theft of stuff you buy (90 days). See https://www124.americanexpress.com/cards/loyalty.do?page=bluecash.


I remain unclear on the advantages of the AMEX Green card and why anyone would pay an annual fee for this card.

 

this is from the "vusual effect" stand pt lol..

got the gold & blue cash, still using the original green one cause it looks good lol..

so there

 

Well, I was really trying to address the question of "If you have to pay it off every month, why would I use an Amex over my check card". Sure, you get the same bennies with some/many/most credit cards. If your question is why is AMEX better than VISA/MC, etc, then I would say it's not a clear answer that it is any better. Some folks appear to think so but Amex is by far smaller than VISA/MC so apparently most folks don't consider it to be better or worth the fee annually.

I will say that, as a vendor who takes CC's, Amex is much more "cardholder friendly" than the others. They also charge vendors a higher fee which means they have more $$ above and beyond their margins to 'give back' to the consumer. They do this in the form of better benefits than many CC's offer, cash back, air miles, extended warranties, etc. As to why one card is better than another (green/blue/gold/plat/black) - Amex would probably be happy to sell ya on the most expen$ive card

 

im paying for an entire trip to italy with my blue sky points, i love that card... no BS, just call them and tell them to "use the points" 7500 points = $100, and the travel people will do anything for you, i got them to give me directions from milan to the lambo factory via venice, all emailed to me and places to stop and what not. and when you book through there web site its double and sometimes triple points, granted this is a Blue sky card, dunno how the other systems work through amex

 

I just called and upgraded my blue for students to the blue cash. So now i have 1 cash back card and 1 points card (green)

 

Just a follow on to my experience...

I received my bill this week for a due date of 3/11/07. Since I do bills once a week...I thought I was going have another late payment. The CSR stated he put a note on the account saying I received my bill late and that it would auto credit any late charges.

There was another finance charge on the bill. When I called they said it shouldn't have been put on as the payment posted before the due date. They credited that back. Mind you, not only did it post before the due date, I paid the "current balance". The amount due was $2xxx.xx on that current bill and I sent in $3xxx.xx.

Then, I explained that I called in previously to get the current balance of the card so that I could pay it off and stop using it. I stopped using the card for approximately one week before calling so that I wouldn't have any other charges pop up and I could be finished with this nightmare.

Well..to my surprise, there were additional charges that were not included in the balance when I originally called.