Looking at applying for an Amex Essential credit card and was wondering if we pay utilities, insurance, phone bills via Paypal will we earn 1 point per dollar spent or 0.5 points?
AmEx Essential Credit Card - Point Earning For Utilities, Insurance, Telecom etc
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with regards to the referral link, do i need to select the correct link ie. applying for Amex Qantas Discovery needs to select Qantas Discovery referral link or as long a link is selected you can apply for any card ie. Select Qantas Discovery and apply for Essential?
A referral link is specific to a type of card. So pick a referral from the card you wish to apply for. E.g. if you wish to apply for Amex Essential, select from the Essential referral list; for Qantas Discovery - from the Qantas Discovery list, and so on.
If you are at the top of the Amex wiki, the card types are listed, and clicking on a given card type will bring you to the referral list section for that card.
Awesome thanks
My experience on the Platinum Edge card is that paying with Paypal receives full points instead of 0.5/$1. This was for Medibank and Telstra which both only pay 0.5 points if paid directly. It is unlikely that the Essential card would be different.
When paying through PayPal or Auspost Billpay, how can we tell if there is any fee or surcharge? Some don't show up until you check the next bills.
Almost sure that through Paypal or Postbillpay there is no surcharge.
I would have thought the bill one is paying usually disclose the payment modes, and if there are any surcharge. If they do not specifically state a fee/surcharge, I will generally assume there is none. So far, this seems to work. If a company does not disclose, but charge it, I suppose you can ring up and complain, and get it refunded.
This does remind me of the credit card Foreign Merchant Fee, charged on AUD purchases when the merchant is foreign, and there is no easy way to tell if the merchant is foreign or not. With that, you really do not know until you get the statement - which is annoying. Fortunately, this is not as insane :-)
Thanks guys
I have never gotten anything less than 1 point per $ from all bills paid through my Amex Essential. This includes telecom, utilities, insurance etc. And yes, some were through Paypal, or Austpost BillPay where they do not accept Amex directly, or levies a surcharge.
I also suspect that Amex might not enforce this lower earn rate condition. Just like the one about "bonus points for new cardholder" condition. But cannot be absolutely certain about this, since it could be because bills were going through Paypal/Austpost billpay.
Which is why, in my post on Amex Essential, I did not emphasise the condition about lower earn rate with certain bills.
Hope this helps.
BTW In case you are not aware, you get a bigger bonus ($75) applying via a referral link (they are listed in the Amex wiki), compared to applying directly ($50).