Moving to Amex
ThoughtsI made the mistake a few weeks ago of innocuously asking Twitter where I could top up my Opal card with American Express. I know I know, what should I have expected?
(For those precious few who don’t understand why that would have been an issue, let me summarise for you: HUUR DUUR MERCHANT FEES ACTUALLY POINTS COST OF BUSINESS ACTUALLY DIE IN A FIRE ACTUALLY YOUR OWN FAULT FOR NOT USING MASTERCARD ACTUALLY WHAT DID YOU EXPECT ACTUALLY!)
Fortunately, there was one voice of reason who suggested Woolworths. Done.
I switched to American Express as my daily card recently for the same reasons everyone else does: the points and customer protection. I’ve since been surprised at how good it is:
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The DJ’s version starts you with triple points at supermarkets, which is where I use it 90% of the time anyway
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PayPal now supports it, so I can pay for most online stuff with it
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I got a discount on a nice hat from David Jones (that I’d wanted to get anyway).
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Apple Pay works, and I was surpried how convenient it actually was
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Their PayPass equivilent is so much faster than Visa and MasterCard
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Their iOS app is also so far ahead of Citibank and HSBC it’s not even funny.
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It irritates some people who think having the card is an affront!
So far I’ve only had two places reject the card, to which I respond by getting out the MasterCard. No biggie. But then again, everything is a biggie on Twitter thesedays; one could announce a cure for cancer and people would moan that you didn’t use the word “nuance”, or failed to include an ndash.