With a points devaluation comes uncertainty
If you don’t ask, then you don’t get, and if you have an Amex card, asking could lead to thousands, or tens of thousands, of points. The credit card company is likely a little nervous about retaining cardholders given the change taking place in October. That creates an opportunity for consumers.
The 20,000 Avios offer
Amex has recently announced a reduction in the earn rate for its BA Premium Plus card. From the 7th October 2026, it will change from earning 1.5 Avios per £ of spend to 1.25. As you’d expect, it’s an unpopular move. It means that card is no longer the joint-highest earning Avios card.
There’s nothing you can do to mitigate this change other than moving to Barclays. They currently offer 1.5/£ on their Barclaycard Avios Plus card. I wrote up a long list of all UK cards that earn you airline miles (and not just Avios).
However, you can leverage Amex’s concern about losing customers. Right now they are offering 20,000 bonus Avios if you spend £5k on your card in the next six months. That would give you a total of 26,250 points including the Avios you earn from the £5k of spend. That equates to 5.25 Avios per £ once you reach the £5k of spend.
You have to ask for this bonus, and it’s not guaranteed, but there have been many reports of cardholders getting the same offer. We tried it on both of our Amex BA Premium Plus cards, and we both got exactly the same offer.
It was as simple as asking “Are there any retention bonuses available to me?” Both of our cards’ annual fees were taken in May, so we have ten months of the membership year left. We are not the highest priority customers for Amex right now, so it feels like this is an offer open to the many rather than the few.
If you have an Amex card, then you should be leveraging retention bonuses. I wrote a longer article on the type of retention bonuses you could expect on each card, and I have always asked about bonuses just before my renewal date. I keep a spreadsheet of each card and the renewal date so I can stay on top of them. Sometimes I get offered nothing despite repeated attempts. I have had some useful retention bonuses across our personal and business cards.
How do you request an Amex retention bonus?
The easiest way is to use the Amex app or website and initiate a live chat. On the app, just click the chat icon in the top right. On the website, log in and give the page a few seconds to load completely; then the chat icon should appear in the bottom left. For some reason, it doesn’t load immediately. In the test I just ran, it took ten seconds for it to appear.
When the chat gives you a set list of options to select, just type “speak to a human”. When an agent joins, simply ask “do I have any retention bonuses available to me”. If the answer is no, it’s worth checking again a week or two later.
When should you ask for a retention bonus?
I have always asked the question just before my card membership fee was due to be taken, so that’s every twelve months. My thoughts were that they want to lock me in for another year, and so are more likely to want to give me something to keep me in the Amex ecosystem.
This bonus has proven that wrong. I believe that’s down to the upcoming change, but I will be testing it out later this year with some business cards that have automatically renewed. Ultimately, it only takes a few minutes to jump on live chat and ask the question.
How can you see your progress on spend-based bonuses?
In short, you can’t. Within the app and on the Amex website you can see your progress towards the British Airways companion voucher. Any retention offers, or points/spend based offers that you sign up for, are not visible. Just this month I got 11,250 Avios as a bonus from Amex, which – from memory – was an opt-in bonus from a few months ago. It was something of a surprise because you just have no visibility on what spend-based offers are active
The only way to keep on top of offers is to write them down somewhere, like a spreadsheet, and include the start date when the offer was activated. It’s then a case of manually summing up the total spend on your card since that date, which means reviewing your statements.
Can you get retention bonuses for other card issuers?
In my experience, no. When I asked for a retention bonus from Barclays, I had to explain what it was. Capital On Tap has equally said no to retention bonuses. It was worth the ask, but clearly Amex is the best option if you’re looking to leverage your loyalty to get more points.
Add a comment