ANZ removed companion cards - Anyone received any retention incentive since the announcement?

to any ANZ credit card customers,

as explained on this site yesterday , concerning the removal of ANZ AMEXs, has anyone tried to cancel their card and been given an incentive to stay on? like an annual fee waiver?

They have not changed their annual fees, obviously they have improved visa rates but the card package is not as attractive without a 1.5 pt/$ AMEX

For me personally, I am not going to bother calling them up just yet. I only signed up to the card in December last year. And I am pretty sure these new changes do not come into effect until 5th August. So the way I see it, is I have 5 months of the same earn rate. Once the earn rates actually change, then I will be ringing up and asking what they can do for me. Obviously if your renewal date is fast approaching, then you’d be on the phone pretty quickly.

More importantly though, I think there will be a lot more banks following ANZ’s lead. I’d hate to think of the number of ANZ customers that are going to sign up the another bank’s current credit card deal, only to find out that they to will be doing away with the companion Amex. The RBA imposed those (pathetic) changes to the interchange fees, which means ( from my limited knowledge) that it has, and will on the 1st July, become harder for our banks to compete with the likes of American Express who are exempt from these changes. I can see all banks only offering a Visa/MC and doing away completely with the companion Amex in the near future. Shame really. But I blame the RBA and not the banks.

Have you tried ringing them up yet and seeing what they can do for you?

I agree with Andrew’s comments.

In my experience with other banks (and really any large corporate), they won’t want to offer incentives to everyone, because then they will end up paying out all of the people who would have stayed regardless.  If you call up to cancel, they’ll pass you to the team that deal with cancellations, whose job it is to “save” you as a customer, and they will be authorised to offer you the incentives you seek.  It could be a waiving of the annual fee, a one off point bonus, whatever.  But the key is you won’t be offered it until you’ve shown you’re prepared to walk.

Personally I don’t think this card was worth the annual fee before the AMEX changes.  Once you do eventually get off this card and leave for something else, I would suggest an AMEX issued card, not a bank one, for the same reasons as Andrew, and also the bonus spend categories.

Having received official notification from ANZ about these changes, I called today to confirm that annual fees would not change. So they are charging the same annual fees for halving the point earning capability. The only offer I got was remove the additional card fee, which I did not accept.
So not much on offer, will be moving to the Amex Premium card which will give me a 30% increase over the ANZ Platimum FF Visa post Aug.