Gold Charge Card (American Express)

Member Name: rodmc

Product:	American Express
Date:	08/01/04 (2882 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Benefits/Perks, Encourages slightly better spending habits than a normal credit card

Disadvantages: Applications process, Not as widely accepted as Visa, High card fee

What is a Gold Charge Card?

The gold charge card has no present spending limit (but is within some boundaries based on your initial indications to them and your spending habits) and the balance must be paid back in full.

Other options include the cheaper Green and very expensive Platinum.

Why?

I chose one mainly due to wanting access to credit which has to be paid back every month, this is very useful for items like travel expenses where its easy to get the money back but never actually put the cheque back into your credit card.

Also it does train you to stay within some level of budgeting each month as (in theory) you should never really spend more than you can afford.


Services/Rewards

One of the main attractions to all Amex charge cards it the excellent benefits for the traveller, for example if you are stuck for more than 4 hours you get £200 towards meals and other expenses, this rises to £400 after 6 hours. There is also a good lost luggage benefit (£750), plus the usual travel accident insurance cover. Other credit cards do offer similar benefits but often you need to wait twice as long before they kick in and its for half as much!

Another useful benefit is refund protection, which will give you upto £300 if for some reason you cannot get the retailer to take back the item within 90 days. There are certain limits, so you should consult the website.

The other benefit they have is free upgrades on certain flights, for example you can get business class for the price of economy on some routes, and free companion tickets on others. There are a few restrictions but its worth it if you are doing long hall flights.

The rewards sheme is only average and from what I can see pays out about 0.5%, although if you do look hard enough through it you can get free stays in hotels which work out at around £100-£150 per night, in return for spending about £3000 which is quite g
enerous.

They constantly have other special offers on hotels and restaurants which at times are good value for money.

Applications

Well they are slow, thats all that can be said really.They take their time and seem to like having all the information that exists on earth.

The card now costs £95 so its not really good value for money unless you intend to use it all the time, for travelling and the range of benefits. Also I do sometimes feel like someone from Ad Fab when I produce it which is not quite the image I am after.

Summary: