AmEx Plat - Important changes to insurance benefits.

[Neil]

I know of us have the AmEx Plat charge card, and just noticed this thread over on FT about important changes to the Insurance benefits it offers from Jan 25th next year.

The most important change is the fact that for certain cover, like delayed baggage, cutting short your trip, cancellation etc, you must now pay for your travel on the Plat AmEx, or you aren't covered. This applies to Supp card holders also.

For me this is a massive negative change, and will probably result in me getting rid of the card. The insurance for me and my 5 Supps easily covers the £300 annual fee, but with it almost certainly unlikely we will pay for all our travel with the card, the other benefits just aren't appealing enough to cover the fee.

Neil

One thing to note though (we got the changes through in writing today) is that they will still let you claim for any of those travel related parts if you were unable to pay for any part of your travel because the company you booked with would not take AmEx - you just have to mention that when making your claim.

The most important change is the fact that for certain cover, like delayed baggage, cutting short your trip, cancellation etc, you must now pay for your travel on the Plat AmEx, or you aren't covered.

You must pay with certain Amex issued cards, E.g. Platinum, BA, etc, but not an MBNA one.

For hotels, I'll be doing the pre-auth on my Amex card, but will change it on departure to a fee-free card.

Not had this notification yet but I was on the phone earlier this afternoon to the plat insurance dept and they didn't mention a thing about these changes v( . Like Neil says it's a massive benefit, the loss of which makes the fee questionable.
DL

[Neil]

The most important change is the fact that for certain cover, like delayed baggage, cutting short your trip, cancellation etc, you must now pay for your travel on the Plat AmEx, or you aren't covered.

You must pay with certain Amex issued cards, E.g. Platinum, BA, etc, but not an MBNA one.

For hotels, I'll be doing the pre-auth on my Amex card, but will change it on departure to a fee-free card.

Yes that's right, you can't just use any old AmEx, must be the one with the insurance benefit.

The biggest issue for me is with flights. If I pay on my Plat I get 1xMR points, if I pay on my VS AmEx I get 4xFC miles, which on a couple of UC fares is a lot of miles lost. Yet if I don't pay on the play I'm not covered for delays/cancellation/lost luggage etc.

Not had this notification yet but I was on the phone earlier this afternoon to the plat insurance dept and they didn't mention a thing about these changes v( . Like Neil says it's a massive benefit, the loss of which makes the fee questionable.
DL

Mine arrived in the post today. As more of my flights are now over on the dark side using their Amex card, I'm still covered, but be nice if they made Amex cards fee free for foreign use like the US Platinum card.

The biggest issue for me is with flights. If I pay on my Plat I get 1xMR points, if I pay on my VS AmEx I get 4xFC miles, which on a couple of UC fares is a lot of miles lost. Yet if I don't pay on the play I'm not covered for delays/cancellation/lost luggage etc.

Neil -- in that case then don't you have an easy decision? Just price up the cost of equivalent insurance for you and your supplementary cardholders, and compare it to the purchase cost of the lost miles? The answer will tell you which card to use.

I guess it will come down to your insurance needs. I can get incredibly cheap adequate cover for myself from other sources. So, because I have no supplementary cardholders, the Plat insurance benefit looks ever less attractive.

B*gger, I just got my business one of these, and now they've pretty much made the insurance useless to my personal travel.