On January 1st, 2017 American Express are making changes to the way late fees are handled on charge cards (via Frequent Miler). Previously you had until the next statement closing date to pay your bill to avoid any late fees with American Express on their charge cards. On January 1st, 2017 you will need to pay your bill before the payment due date shown on your statement – otherwise you will pay a late fee.
Keep in mind that this only affects American Express charge cards (these differ from credit cards in that you can’t carry a balance on a charge card – although that isn’t even technically true as you can enroll in pay over time now on charge cards). This is likely a revenue generation tool by American Express, I’m not entirely sure why they don’t do away with charge cards entirely given the fact that are so eager to earn interest revenue from customers (the whole reason they have pay over time on charge cards). A better idea would be to issue credit cards with flexible spending limits instead.
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I was just on the phone with the American Express Account Services (the credit department) going over my credit history and spending ability. After we talked about that I asked if the terms of my business charge card were changing - agent says - yes. We conference in member services to see the new due date and come to find out business charge cards are not getting new due dates. Business charge cards are going to stay the same with the charges due in full prior to the next statement date to avoid the late fee. Personal charge cards are getting due dates 1/1/2017.
looks like I'll milk the $100 airline fee on the gold and close it. That's 2 fees reimbursements and first year no annual fee, I would say a good use of the card. I already have the Platinum which has 5x airline and the Everyday Preferred which is effectively 4.5x supermarkets, 3x gas, 1.5x everything. The PRG is just not worth it past milking the 2x $100 airline fees.
There is only 15 days to pay the card in full right?
Yes, but above they say that's changing to 25 days.
FrequentMiler is misrepresenting the change and your commentary is kind of overstating the impact on revenue generation. The change is that due dates for charge cards now align with credit cards. Instead of a please pay by date that was 15 days after your statement date and a hidden payment date that was aligned with the closing of the next statement, there is now just a single payment date that is 25 days after your statement date. This does result in a minor change in how long you can wait to pay, but given that the Amex Auto Pay feature was limited to 25 days after your statement date I don't think this will impact very many people.
Are you sure that the please pay by date is actually changing to 25 days after the statement date?
As the actual writer of the piece at Frequent Miler, I'm pretty sure I'm not misrepresenting anything. As I noted in my post, Amex may in fact be pushing due dates later with this change, but to my knowledge they have not made any sort of announcement to that effect, so Sam, if you've seen one, I'd love to read it. That said, I do see a few comments from folks over at FM saying they've seen their due dates change, but as I showed in the screenshot of my own account, my December due date is still only 15 days after closing. I suspect in the end Amex is in fact going to line up all their due dates, but it's not clear it'll happen for everyone by January, which means you still might get stuck with an unexpected late fee. No matter what happens, Amex's rollout of this change is severely lacking.
I just checked my newly created Amex Plat statement and my due date is 25 days after the statement closed.