Travel With Grant noticed on a recent statement balance that starting December 31st, 2015 it will no longer be possible to transfer your American Express Membership Rewards (MR) points to Best Western. What’s likely happened is that contract was due to expire at the end of this year and when FNBO took over from Barclaycard in issuing the Best Western credit card they had a stipulation saying flexible point transfers were not allowed.
For most with credit cards that earn Membership Rewards, this won’t be a big loss but Best Western properties in Europe are significantly nicer than those in the United States so some might be hit hard by this change – although they will have more than four months to execute any transfers they like. This is another negative change for the Membership Rewards program, the transfer rate for Avios is also being dropped to 1,000 MR to 800 Avios starting on October 1st. MR transfer bonuses have also been drying up recently as well.
American Express seems to be in a bit of a rutt recently and focusing on maximizing profits (by disallowing things like gift card purchases for airline incidentals) rather than increasing market share and customer satisfaction. This is bad news for people like us, but thankfully other card issuers like Citi have been on a rampage recently trying to acquire customers and it’s only a matter of time before American Express stakeholders want to see increased customer numbers as well.
Horace really should be named HORSESHiT… get off your damn high horse and realize your few shares that amount to .0000001% of AXP makes no difference to anybody.
next, you’re comically stupid as noted by another poster above. realize YOU MOVED your own business over to other banks… how exactly does that bode well for a publicly traded company when its core customers leave in droves to other banks. perhaps you’re too naive to realize that features and benefits of a program while cost centers, are not where AMEX makes its money.
you sound like you have absolutely no idea why AFs go up or down. SPG cards have added several new benefits. the AF is paid several times over if one participates in SBS or AMEX offers and other promos. not to mention, AMEX many times does waive your AF during your cardholder tenure.
losing marketshare is worse for a company than to pay out on bennies they have ALREADY allocated and budgeted resources for (in the marketing dept.) retaining customers is a much, much more important goal for any company. along with having their CC in the front of any given customers wallet. avg CC customer costs a FI something like $300 to acquire. so losing them over silly things is very very shortsighted and no one in management would be as daft.
as for you, open your eyes, look at the big picture and stop being a hypocrite. realize that increasing profits is a long term goal, cutting bennies may increase profits for 1 or 2 qtrs. and after that? when your financials take a nosedive cause consumers have pivoted to other FIs, yeah you’ll be up a shitcreek with no paddle. keep applauding the tightening noose then. see how that works out for ya, working against your own interests.
HA HA!
Getting under your skin, I see.
Poor baby!!
Oh, and by the way, Adam, neither you nor most of the people who are churners are their “core customers” or haven’t you noticed that most people go for the bonus and then sock drawer the card.
Too bad for you that the gravy train may be ending, poor, poor baby.
Adam, what is SBS?
It’s Small Business Saturday. Comes around late fall every year. This years promo date has already been announced. Can be very lucrative for some.
“[i]t’s only a matter of time before American Express stakeholders want to see increased customer numbers as well.”
I disagree — what AMEX shareholders want to see are increased profits and the curtailing of expenses like payouts for gift card purchases — which never should have been permitted in the first place as it was contrary to the rules of the program — are the latest in a long line of cost cutting measures in connection with MR and other AMEX administered affinity programs.
Witness the hike in the annual fee of the SPG cards by nearly 50% — I think you are missing the forest for the trees in connection with these increased sign-up bonuses that will be once in a lifetime — at least with respect to most personal cards.
Sounds like there is at least one person satisfied with all the recent changes at American Express! 😉
U -BET!
As a shareholder and cardholder I am quite happy with their tightening the rules. However, I still think that the MR program is a shell of what it once was.
That is why I have migrated my business over to Chase and Citi as their rewards programs fit better with this US based traveler.
I find that genuinely comical. I think most companies would say the goal of customer satisfaction would be to retain and increase business, yet that very thing in your case has caused you to move your business elsewhere!
Well as a shareholder I applaud their tightening of the rules so they don’t pay out unnecessary fees — and those reimbursements for gift cards are not necessary as they are contrary to the rules.
As a customer, however, I have seen them gut/let go many companies that I would redeem my points with and the two biggest US based that are left — HHonors and Delta — are the least point value return on one’s rewards in about the entire rewards universe!
People debate whether or not hotel points are better or worse than airline redemption, etc., but there are very few who are going to say that redemption of MR points for Delta or HHonors awards are good value!