New credit card fees for hotel and frequent flyer cards
Well, yet another credit card fee is in the works for travel card consumers, this time effecting hotel rewards cards and frequent flyer credit cards.
The goal of this fee is to get people to pay their credit card debt off in it’s entirety at the end of each month. If you don’t you will forfeit your miles or points earned for that period.
Here is a snippet from the news article we found highlighting this new fee:
“American Express Co. is sending notices to customers who hold its cobranded cards with Delta Air Lines, JetBlue, Hilton Hotels and Starwood Hotels, that beginning in January rewards won’t be transferred to loyalty accounts with those partners if you are late paying your bill.
You’ll be hit with a $29 reinstatement fee if you want the rewards back. That fee is on top of the late-payment fee — $19 or $38 depending on your balance. A penalty interest rate, currently 27 percent, would be assessed on future balances.
American Express is changing the policy for its cobranded cards to align those cards with its other Amex cards that have carried the same policy for months or years.”
- Know when your credit card bill is due and pay it ON TIME. Set up email alerts to notify you well in advance before this date arrives so that you can set aside the necessary cash.
- Manage your accounts online. This eliminates the time it may take to send bills via snail mail. If you can, set up direct deposits which will cover your bill in it’s entirety automatically (just be sure to have more than enough available in your checking account).
- Always read the fine print, especially now when terms and conditions are frequently being revised.
November 21st, 2009 at 4:31 pm
This is actually a good thing because any responsible credit card user should pay off their balance in full every month anyway. I just schedule my card to be paid off in full every month automatically from my checking account.