American Express Membership Rewards ‘Account Linkage Fee’

Written by nickel - 6 Comments

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, which was offering $150 in rewards for just signing up and making a purchase with the card (a $100 credit statement plus reward 5,000 points).

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.

Published on January 29th, 2007 - 6 Comments
Filed under: Credit Cards
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Comments (scroll down to add your own):

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!
Comment by Tom — Jan 29th 2007 @ 10:39 am
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.
Comment by Blaine Moore — Jan 29th 2007 @ 12:13 pm
Flipping those database bits must be really expensive for AmEx.
Comment by Lazy Man and Money — Jan 29th 2007 @ 2:17 pm
For pete’s sake. Thanks for the heads up! I just signed up for a business card with AMEX.
Comment by Amillionby40 — Jan 29th 2007 @ 5:05 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)?
Comment by Mr Credit Card — Jan 30th 2007 @ 5:28 pm
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.
Comment by Dog — Oct 11th 2007 @ 12:18 am