Moving to Amex
I 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:
The DJ’s version starts you with triple points at supermarkets, which is where I use it 90% of the time anyway
PayPal now supports it, so I can pay for most online stuff with it
I got a discount on a nice hat from David Jones (that I’d wanted to get anyway).
Apple Pay works, and I was surpried how convenient it actually was
Their PayPass equivilent is so much faster than Visa and MasterCard
Their iOS app is also so far ahead of Citibank and HSBC it’s not even funny.
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.