American Express Membership Rewards ‘Account Linkage Fee’
Just a quick word of warning to those of you out there that have taken advantage of the signup bonuses for AmEx Business credit cards. Awhile back, I applied for a Business Gold Rewards Card.
Upon approval, I received my card, and shortly thereafter I received a letter from American Express stating that they were going to link the Membership Rewards account associated with my Business Gold Rewards Card to my existing Membership Rewards account associated with our existing American Express Optima Card. That’s all well and good, but they also said that there would be a $10 annual linkage fee. Not a huge deal, but it’s $10 that I don’t want to spend.
When our Optima statement showed up with a $10 linkage charge on it, I immediately called and asked them to unlink the accounts and reverse the charge. The CSR expressed surprise (yeah, right!) that they would’ve automatically linked the accounts and applied the fee without asking me, but she was happy to unlink the accounts and issue a $10 credit. Annoying? Yes. But still, that’s a pretty minor headache for a pocketful of jingle.
Disclaimer: Discover is a paid advertiser of this site.
Reasonable efforts are made to maintain accurate information. See the Discover online credit card application for full terms and conditions on offers and rewards.
Modified on March 26th, 2012 - 6 Comments
Filed under: Credit Cards
About the author: Nickel is the founder and editor-in-chief of this site. He's a thirty-something family man who has been writing about personal finance since 2005, and guess what? He's on Twitter!
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6 Responses to “American Express Membership Rewards ‘Account Linkage Fee’”
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January 29th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Be thankful it’s only $10!
I have an AmEx corporate card, but our linkage fee is $75. Thankfully, it’s something I can add to an expense report, but still!
January 29th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
I am guessing that they will slip that under the radar of at least 50-60% of the people using the new card without them ever noticing.
January 29th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Flipping those database bits must be really expensive for AmEx.
January 29th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
For pete’s sake. Thanks for the heads up! I just signed up for a business card with AMEX.
January 30th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
If you seperate them, how are you going to combine points from both accounts? Not linking them probably makes sense if you do not have any points left in your optima card and/or you do not intend to use it anymore? surely $10 cannot be the issue as the Gold Business Card has an annual fee of I believe to be $125 (though it is free for the first year)?
October 11th, 2007 at 12:18 am
I doubt if this charge is legal without card owners’ consents. I too had the same problem with the additional cards. It didn’t say in the fine print when I requested the additional cards (2500 bonus for each) for my workers that linkage fee was required in order to get the bonus points.