cancel my amex
American Express

How Do I Cancel My Amex Card? And What Happens With The Points, Perks & Membership Fee

Want to cancel your amex card but not sure how to? Or perhaps you are wondering what will happen to all the points, perks and membership fee you pay in advance? Well here is everything you need to know about cancelling your amex!

Reasons to cancel my amex?

There are many reasons you might want to cancel your American Express card. These include…

  • Managing your cards. Sometimes you’ve collected so many cards to gain various benefits and rewards that you just need a good clear out!
  • Avoiding the annual fee or renewal fee. The American Express Gold card is free for the first year, so if you cancel before you’ve had the card 12 months you’ll pay nothing. Or perhaps you thought you’d try one of the other Amex card with an annual fee. But then found you wasn’t getting the value you thought you would.
  • Churning, if you are churning a card with an annual fee you might want to cancel the card as soon as you have reached your target spend for bonus points as the annual fee is refunded on a pro rata basis.
  • Closely related to the point above…so you can get the sign-up bonus again. American Express have recently changed their sign-up bonus terms and conditions, see the point below.
  • If you have held or hold a personal card from American Express in the past 24 months you aren’t eligible for a sign-up bonus from an American Express card. There are two major exceptions to this:

1) British Airways American Express Premium Plus Card

You cannot of held or currently hold an Avios earning card in the last 24 months to be eligible for a sign up bonus. You can hold another personal American Express card and still be eligible for the sign-up bonus.

2) The Platinum Card

You cannot of held or currently hold a Membership Reward points earning card in the last 24 months to be eligible for a sign up bonus. You can hold another personal American Express card and still be eligible for the sign-up bonus.

What happens when I cancel my amex?

If you have paid an annual membership fee you will receive a pro rata refund.

Any balance on the card will need to be cleared.

You will need to transfer or use you Membership reward points before you cancel your card or you will lose them!

If you have any insurance or airport lounge access through your card that will end as soon as your card is cancelled.

Typically you will keep any hotel status earned through a card. E.g. Marriott Bonvoy Gold, Hilton Gold etc until the end of the status year.

How can I cancel my amex?

Official information from American Express says you need to ring customer services to cancel on the number on the back of your card or you can find the number here – https://www.americanexpress.com/uk/contact-us/

However you can also cancel your card using the live chat! It consists of a couple of security questions and confirmation that you wish to cancel immediately and then it’s done and shows in the account that the card is cancelled!

If you are looking for a retention offer, such as bonus points, membership fee discounts/waivers you will need to ring! Flyertalk have a great thread of what retention offers you maybe able to get here – https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/american-express-membership-rewards/1812751-american-express-retention-offers.html? – though do remember not all these are UK customers/offers however you will find UK examples in there!

How regularly do you cancel/change cards? Are you a serial churner or love a card so much you’ve just kept it for years? Let us know in the comments below!

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For full details of how your data is used and stored, please see GDPR policy page here.