Amex cardholders past and present, what is your experience with Amex in Taiwan?
I currently use a cobrand Citibank/Eva card because there is a rather generous mileage program. I easily earn enough miles with regular purchases to get two business class R/T flights to the US each year.
Unfortunately I don’t much like Eva and very rarely take paid flights with them. I much prefer Cathay/Dragonair but I noticed Amex is the only credit card provider currently offering a cobrand with them in Taiwan.
The Cathay Pacific Elite card has a $5,000/year annual fee, is it worth it? Do enough merchants / gas stations etc. actually take Amex to let me rack up as many points as the Citibank Visa?
I actually liked them a lot when I lived in Taipei. I could buy something in US dollars on my card then pop into their office and pay it off with Taiwanese dollars. My best trick was overpaying my account, getting a nice credit and then having them send me a check for it, which cost me nothing except time.
I’ve never used any of the promo airline cards, my cousin does and he makes out like a bandit.
The airline cards can be damn amazing. Originally I got the Citibank Eva card just for the free airport parking and free transfers. The yearly fee is $1,200 which more than covers the 4x free airport transfers alone. I never really noticed the points until the first time they just turned up in my mileage account and it got addictive after that. Wherever I go I always ask if they accept cards and now most places do. If you keep an eye out for hotel promotions you can use the miles / member status to get free upgrades or really cheap rooms. My wife and I will be going to Japan and Europe later this year, all biz class for less than $500 all-in thanks to a year’s worth of credit card miles.
Most airlines also have a mileage signing bonus, and some give you double miles if you charge the tickets on their card. I think the CX cobrand would be a good choice. I’ve never had any trouble using AMEX in the 'wan. Japan, however, is a different story. Not as cash-only as 20 years ago, but still ~40% cash only (other than hotels and airlines) in the cities and more cash only in rural areas.
I had a regular local Amex card for many years. It had no annual fee and the points I earned on it got me a dirt cheap roundtrip ticket to HK. I used it in HK, Thailand and Japan. But now they’ve discontinued the regular card and wanted me to continue as a gold card member. I promptly called them up and said adios. I’m too cheap to pay annual fees when there’re so many free credit cards out there.
I guess it depends how often you travel and how much you put on the card - I use mine for business purchases and travel a lot so the perks of a full service card far outweigh the yearly fee. I was mainly bothered about how many retailers accept the card here in the wan. Sent my application off today, we’ll see how it goes.
So I got a call last week saying that I didn’t send sufficient proof of earnings and since I was a company director they would need to see at least the last two VAT statements from our Taiwan office. Fair enough, but problem is that we are a wai shang company and don’t sell to Taiwanese, therefore only have to file VAT abroad. Time deposits, bank statements etc. or accounts/VAT from abroad are not good enough, it had to be a corporate tax statement from Taiwan. My heart sank, I already had half of next year planned out with free airport parking and other perks. The nice lady apologised but said rules is rules and cancelled the application.
After hanging up I thought hmmm… called back and asked if they would accept my personal income tax certificate from last year. ‘Well sure, that will do just fine!’
Faxed off the extra docs and got another call this morning requesting some info about the company. They said that everything seems in order and as long as it passes final approval I will have my card within two weeks.
Really? Free airport parking? I’ve had an Amex card in my own name for about ten years and I didn’t know that.[/quote]
Which card do you have? I applied for the Cathay Pacific Elite partner card. It has a $5,000/yr fee but 15,000 airmiles on signing plus free TPE-HKG ticket on yearly renewal and 20% bonus miles if you spend more than $400,000/yr on the card.
I hate AMEX. Real bunch of idiot brownshirts. Almost as bad as HSBC. Their own payment system screws up and they call my staff’s parents for a slightly late payment (<30 days). They thought sending a box of mooncakes to me was going to straighten it out. Not likely.
