I've been an American Express customer since 2018, and recently I've realized how bad AMEX is in New Zealand when it comes to their product offering, customer service, and overall value proposition.
For a brand and card marketed towards wealthier card-holders, AMEX is downright the worst credit card I've held in New Zealand - even beats out the TSB Platinum card, which was decently bad.
Support call-centres in Australian timezone
Have a query around your credit limits, disputes, spend or something else? Don't bother calling before 1130 am NZDT, because the call centre is based in Sydney and don't start work until 8:30am their side. You may as well head into lunch before you can get anything sorted. What kind of service is this!?
Unilateral change to terms with no right to cancel
With most credit cards, the terms can be changed by the provider, but they'll generally allow you to cancel the card at any point with a pro-rated fee. With AMEX, not only do they change their earn rates and terms, but you have no ability to cancel the card for any sort of full or partial refund. So, if you recently signed up for the $1APD for every $59 spend reward scheme for Airpoints Platinum, it's now changed to $70 spend, and you're stuck with it and the $195 in annual fees you've prepaid for the year.
Acceptance and higher surcharges
If you do all your shopping at big box retailers and live your life between Kmart, Bunnings, PakNSave, Woolworths, and the fuel stations, you'll be ok, but try and pay with AMEX almost anywhere else, and you'll just be holding up the queue and sounding like a douche bag with a card that isn't accepted. As a result you'll end up with your AMEX, and your debit card that's actually used most of the time.
When AMEX is accepted, many retailers add a higher fee to cover their own AMEX interchange fees, lovely!
Long bank transfer times
Suppose you want to pay down your card, or have spent to your limit and need to top-up again - with all other NZ credit cards at banks, you're able to directly transfer funds from your transaction account into your credit card account and have it processed immediately (e.g. ANZ) or same day (ASB). With AMEX because they're not part of a bank, you have to wait up to 3 working days. As a great example, I transferred funds Monday morning at 7:34am, the funds did not appear until Tuesday night at 10pm. This is in the age of real-time, 7 day a week interchange functionality at all NZ banks. If you're travelling and accidentally hit your limit - best bet you'll be credit-less for a few days.
Lack of Google Pay / Tech
Google Pay in 2024? Forget it.
Useless customer support
AMEX Support is incredibly frustrating - No New Zealand presence at all, everything is done via Australia, Philippines or India. They're very quick to pick up the phone or resume a live chat, but fairly useless at being able to advise or action anything. Here's some examples of interactions:
- Cancelling the card - Live Chat states it can be done within 30 days or 60 days pro-rata, but I must call. Calling AMEX, they advise that's not true. Cya.
- Overpaying the card - Read the saga below.
- Change of earn rate - Basically get told different dates and terms.
Blatantly encouraging sharing passwords
For all the world's cyber-security problems, hacks, and issues, nothing tops American Express support suggesting sharing a username and password with the supplementary card-holder to get around spend visibility issues - in violation of their own terms and conditions.
Incredibly underweight travel insurance policy
The AMEX Airpoints Platinum card offers domestic and international travel insurance (one that's advertised frequently), but digging into the details reveals it's incredibly underpowered and won't actually be much help when you need it the most. Let's compare it to the ANZ Airpoints Platinum card, comparable and even cheaper in annual fees, using some common scenarios.
- Lost passport: AMEX only provides $500 cover with a $100 excess, so $400 net to help you get a new passport. It also only covers replacement costs and emergency travel documents. ANZ meanwhile offers $5000 with a $200 excess (4.8K net), and includes cover for additional accommodation and transportation expenses (suppose you need to stay in a city a few extra days or run to the capital to the embassy).
- Getting sick for a few days: Both offer medical coverage (though AMEX is a stingy $1500 unapproved), but there is only $250 per claim in reimbursement for cancelled activities, etc, whereas ANZ offers unlimited coverage for resumption of journey. Crazy! Icing on the cake is the $250 excess AMEX charges.
- Delayed connecting flight: ANZ offers up to $15K including accommodation, meals and other reasonable expenses. AMEX? $500 for a delay maximum, and a $100 excess. Worse still, you need to pay for everything on the AMEX - good luck with their overall acceptance.
Reading the policy wording, it goes on - basically the AMEX card pretends to offer travel insurance, but in most cases, you're getting nothing in the event of an actual claim situation.
Very strict travel insurance activation terms
This one is what broke the straw of the camel's back for me - American Express has incredibly strict eligibilty criteria for their travel insurance activiation, the key one being:
You pay the full amount of Your return ticket for a Scheduled Flight or Scheduled Cruise leaving New Zealand on Your:
- American Express Card Account; and/or
- Air NZ Airpoints
If the airline does not accept American Express or has higher fees, you will not be able to activate travel insurance - no further appeal.
What caught me out was the strictness of "full amount" or "full fare" - I paid for $5000 worth of Qantas flights with the American Express and burnt $20 of Points + Pay - because this was not considered the full amount, my travel insurance was void.
No insurance for supplementary card-holders
With most bank platinum cards, your additional card-holders are eligible for the same insurance policies you are - so your spouse can book and travel and leverage the travel insurance policies. American Express does not offer that, they must be booked on your card and be travelling with you at all times for the insurance to be offered (not that the insurance policy offers much).
Card suspension for pre-loading / overpaying balance
As is often the case when booking travel for multiple people, the amount being spent goes over the assigned credit limit. With most credit cards, you can load extra funds on to it temporarily and spend it on the travel you were planning - no issues.
With American Express, not only is it not allowed, they don't tell you anywhere you can't do so, and trying to clarify it with their support team gets you a passive aggressive (or maybe just straight aggressive) threat to suspend your card and accusations of money laundering and tax "invasion", and a caveat they allow it (just bad english, also an issue).
When I call their customer support (based in AU), I get a bloke threatening me with a card suspension until the funds are returned, and bristling that I had dared move 5K pre-emptively to my AMEX to pay for travel.
To add insult to injury, there is absolutely nothing in their FAQs, and nothing anywhere else that says you can't do it, and there's no sort of payment block.
Priority Pass - Main cardholder only
Minor one but annoying none-the-less, the priority pass program is only offered to the main cardholder, the supplementary is treated as a guest and must pay for entry. Reading the T&Cs, this isn't mentioned, as it refers to "cardholders" generically.