Credit cards if you don't need credit- cashback, air miles and charges?

What exactly is the point in an Amex?

I've read all the product descriptions, and other than the fact that they are a charge card and not a credit card (meaning they want the balance in full each month), and charge a (sometimes large) annual fee, what would be the benefit?

Or is it a "hey look at me thing", muchlike my mate with a Coutts Maestro card "oh lah de dah, my parents have an account with coutts).

Or should I just stick with my Classic Barclaycard and Natwest Platinum?
 
Get the nectar credit card though
# Double Nectar points for the first 3 months.1
# 2 points for almost every £1 you spend on your Card with Nectar participating partners so you can collect up to 4 points per £1 at most Nectar partners when you use your Nectar Credit Card and Nectar loyalty card at the same time.2
# 1 point for almost every £1 you spend on the Card everywhere else.
# Collect MorePoints - that's 500 EXTRA Nectar points for every £500 you spend on your Card, each calendar month. That's on top of your usual base and bonus points.3

That in combination with the nectar card, means you can build things up very fast.

Which IMO is better than getting £5-10 a month cash back + some points which don't add up fast enough to be useful. Assuming you only spend between 500-1k a month on credit card.

If I work this out
it's 2% for nectar stores
and 1% for everywhere else as long as you hit £500.


3% on fuel though is awesome if you can use it.
 
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paradigm said:
What exactly is the point in an Amex?

I've read all the product descriptions, and other than the fact that they are a charge card and not a credit card (meaning they want the balance in full each month), and charge a (sometimes large) annual fee, what would be the benefit?

Or is it a "hey look at me thing", muchlike my mate with a Coutts Maestro card "oh lah de dah, my parents have an account with coutts).

Or should I just stick with my Classic Barclaycard and Natwest Platinum?
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Amex do credit cards too, their Platinum Moneyback credit card has no annual fee and gives you 5% cashback on purchases for the first 3 months, then up to 1.5% after that.

You should definitely use a cashback credit card for your day to day spend - it's money for nothing.

If you fill up at Shell, not having a Shell Mastercard from Citi is mad too, 3% off the pump price and 1% cashback on spend elsewhere (a great backup for where Amex isn't accepted).
 
The Shell card sounds like a plan. Don't really want to try my chances at two applications within a month (not that my credit history isn't excellent), so it'll have to be that over anything with a cashback scheme (plus, the amount of fuel I use, I'd be daft not to).
 
Be interested to see what limit they give you on the citicard. They seem to either give virtually nothing, or an obscenely high one. Seems random :D
 
paradigm said:
What exactly is the point in an Amex?

I've read all the product descriptions, and other than the fact that they are a charge card and not a credit card (meaning they want the balance in full each month), and charge a (sometimes large) annual fee, what would be the benefit?

Or is it a "hey look at me thing", muchlike my mate with a Coutts Maestro card "oh lah de dah, my parents have an account with coutts).

Or should I just stick with my Classic Barclaycard and Natwest Platinum?
Click to expand...

Amex provide credit cards. You also got much better customer service, good on-line system and the card providers usually throw more goodies into the mix. i.e. Decent cashback, airmiles, free travel insurance e.t.c

But yes, it is aimed at people with a better credit rating.
 
EasyJet one from Citi gets you a free £40 flight on first spend, plus 3% off EasyJet flights, eq. of 2% off flights when spending abroard, and 1% off for anything else.

This is what I am applying for as I work abroard a lot and do a lot of flying.
 
Does it have to be a credit card. I have a Mastercard which is a prepayment card. That is to say credit limit £0 and I can only spend what I load it up with. To all intents and purposes though it works like a credit card to high street and online retailers.

I use it primarily for online purchases.

Since I only keep a tiny balance on it and since I only load it up when I particularly need to spend larger sums on something, I am pretty much protected against fraud.

IMHO all this nectar/cashback stuff is irrelevent, you can barter discounts worth far more than all that nonsense on many things you might buy.
 
paradigm said:
What exactly is the point in an Amex?

I've read all the product descriptions, and other than the fact that they are a charge card and not a credit card (meaning they want the balance in full each month), and charge a (sometimes large) annual fee, what would be the benefit?

Or is it a "hey look at me thing", muchlike my mate with a Coutts Maestro card "oh lah de dah, my parents have an account with coutts).

Or should I just stick with my Classic Barclaycard and Natwest Platinum?
Click to expand...

Amongst other things: English call center staff who actually are helpful. New card couriered anywhere in world in case of lost / stolen / cloned. Decent travel insurance. Points (mmm, lego). Neat way of separating my day-to-day purchases away from my bills / dds that occur on my bank account without being tempted to carry some over.
 
EffBee said:
Does it have to be a credit card. I have a Mastercard which is a prepayment card. That is to say credit limit £0 and I can only spend what I load it up with. To all intents and purposes though it works like a credit card to high street and online retailers.

I use it primarily for online purchases.

Since I only keep a tiny balance on it and since I only load it up when I particularly need to spend larger sums on something, I am pretty much protected against fraud.
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Except those prepaid cards have no protection at all - no Section 75 of the CCA protection against the retailer going bust or whatever and they aren't even protected by the FSCS so if they go bust you will probably lose whatever money you have lodged in there. They're pointless, often expensive products for people with no financial management skills.

IMHO all this nectar/cashback stuff is irrelevent, you can barter discounts worth far more than all that nonsense on many things you might buy.
Click to expand...

Oh yes, every time I fill my car up I always haggle 3% off the pump price, or when I do my shopping I get to the till and ask them for a discount on the bill. What a stupid thing to say.
 
Amex platinum cashback for me. I got it just before some big spends on car insurance, purchase of white good etc. I use it wherever possible with a mastercard and visa debit card as backup.
 
OllyM said:
Except those prepaid cards have no protection at all - no Section 75 of the CCA protection against the retailer going bust or whatever and they aren't even protected by the FSCS so if they go bust you will probably lose whatever money you have lodged in there. They're pointless, often expensive products for people with no financial management skills.



Oh yes, every time I fill my car up I always haggle 3% off the pump price, or when I do my shopping I get to the till and ask them for a discount on the bill. What a stupid thing to say.
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well...

Any financial product one uses has to be evaluated with reference to one's own particular circumstances. What works for you may not work me.

As I said I don't lodge money there, at least not more than £30 and frankly I don't care about losing that.

I'm not going to be making any big purchases in the forseeable future so no need of the alleged benefits of buying stuff by credit card for protection against faulty goods etc.

They are not pointless but I'll not disillusion anyone by pointing out what the obvious benfits are, to me at least.

I don't like credit cards and never will. Therefore I have no financial management skills. Hmm - perhaps I should get half a dozen and become a sophisticated financial expert :)

If you think ever-so, ever-so hard perhaps you can come up with a few more examples of things you might plonk on your credit which you wouldn't haggle over. Thats why I said "many".

IMHO life is too short to worry about being sucked into silly loyalty schemes run by big suppliers.

When I offer genuine advice and alternative possibilities I don't appreciate being rubbished by some pathetic little keyboard warrior.
 
EffBee said:
I'm not going to be making any big purchases in the forseeable future so no need of the alleged benefits of buying stuff by credit card for protection against faulty goods etc.
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Errr aren't you contradicting yourself here a bit, you said in your previous posts that you load it up for 'large purchases' so you could actually have been in need of the 'alleged benefits' (how the hell is protection an alleged benefit) after all. And who's to say anyone asking for advice won't be making large purchases. Strange advice.
 
I went for the Amex Platinum Cashback card in the end, but apparently they need more time to evaluate my application. I wonder if I'm not a good customer in the sense I won't generate any revenue via interest for them?
 
Fairly standard that they take some time before you get a response.

The reason you are not a good customer is probably because you don't have much in the way of a credit history (given that you don't have a credit card). Obviously if you have a mortgage, loan or any other kind of credit agreement this will help (assuming you haven't missed any payments, natch).

They won't really have any idea whether you are likely to generate any interest reveune if you haven't had much in the way of credit before.
 
Wicksta said:
Errr aren't you contradicting yourself here a bit, you said in your previous posts that you load it up for 'large purchases' so you could actually have been in need of the 'alleged benefits' (how the hell is protection an alleged benefit) after all. And who's to say anyone asking for advice won't be making large purchases. Strange advice.
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I should have said relatively large purchases like a car service. I won't be buying any holidays or expensive hi fi components etc. Sorry for the confusion :)
 
EffBee said:
IMHO all this nectar/cashback stuff is irrelevent, you can barter discounts worth far more than all that nonsense on many things you might buy.
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Yes - but you'd barter the cost down and then get the cashback on top of that saving. So with cashback cards you'll always get more than just bartering.
 
Speaking of Airmiles I have 15,300 of them with Qantas (booked via BA). What exactly can I use them on? I've never really understood the whole airlines thing.
 
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