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The plot thickens. If you read our post earlier about the fact that American Express is decreasing the popular Enhanced Business Platinum pay-with-points rebate as of June 1st, you are aware that this valuable benefit will be will be cut from a 50% rebate to a 35% rebate when paying with points. Many people have reached out to @AskAmex via Twitter looking for clarification. Doctor of Credit reported that the Amex Twitter team has confirmed that Enhanced Business Platinum accounts opened between October 2016 and May 31st, 2017 will receive the 50% pay-with-points rebate for 1 year from account opening without any cap on the number of points rebated.
What about upgrades?
Those who have upgraded from another card (such as the Business Gold Rewards card) during that window do not yet have clarity as to whether or not they will receive the benefit for a year from upgrade. The Amex Twitter team is researching, but there is not yet an update. We will update this post when we get clarification.
Bottom Line
I noticed today that the Enhanced Business Platinum application page still noted the 50% pay-with-points rebate and wondered how Amex would handle that with new cardholders. It’s good to see that those who have recently opened the card will have a year to enjoy the benefit — that certainly seems like the right thing to do for those who opened an account expecting this benefit. On the other hand, it’s disappointing that Amex is offering the benefit for a full year for someone who opens a new account next week but not for cardmembers who have been loyal members for years. It seems that Amex either misjudged the popularity of the concept or did not anticipate the great premium cabin fares that would continue to encourage members to use it. Still, it’s great news for new account holders that they will be able to enjoy the benefit uncapped for a year. We will keep you updated as to whether or not upgrades will get the extended benefit.
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[…] There’s nothing new about credit card companies offering valuable perks and later taking them away. They all do it. But Amex must have set a piss-off-customers record with the removal of the 50% flight rebate. They introduced the benefit on October 6th 2016 and are set to take it away from most existing cardholders by June 1 2017 (and that benefit has now expired). The feature survived less than 8 months. Fortunately, those who opened, or will open, accounts between October 2016 and May 31st 2017 will keep the benefit for their full membership year. […]
[…] Redemption Values, Membership Rewards points are worth 1.82 cents a piece, though we know that some people can get 2 cents per point pretty easily. Those numbers means that this offer is worth $209-$230 (or […]
[…] lining to that cloud is that those with account opening dates between October 2016 and May 31, 2017 will receive the uncapped 50% rebate for one year from date of account opening. The same holds true for those who upgrade in that timespan. This […]
My guess is that this benefit wasn’t fully thought out. It actually had pre-existed at 30% prior to October, and was probably infrequently used. So they figured bumping it to 50% wouldn’t be that big a deal as a response to the Reserve. They were also pretty lax about reclaiming rebate points on cancelled tickets, so it appears to have been lightly monitored. I can imagine the demand for the card and the use of this benefit by people who don’t even necessarily spend on the card far outweighed the anticipation of whatever subdivision within a department within an operating group when they thought to improve an already existing benefit.
I feel relieved, I just opened our biz platinum due to our 100k points targeted offer. Glad to hear I’ll have a year to use those points and get 50% refunded.
I know which order I’ll be using up our points.
Wow. I hadn’t thought that having too much success would be problematic, particularly given the defection of so many cardholders with the Costco situation, and the SPG question, but I guess Amex feels comfortable alienating yet another subset of their customers. I charge a good bit on my business Amex cards, and have recently induced others to sign up for the same, but now question my decisions. I’d really thought better of American Express.
It’s still on the web site because it applies to people who open until 5/31.
Read the tweets?
Probably would have been difficult for them to do otherwise, given that they took the annual fees with this as a promised benefit and they presumably don’t want to be giving that money back.
If they really are going to take 8 weeks to rebate the points, though, this one year turns into 10 months. We opened our card in October, and I’ll probably try to use up our points before it grandfathers, which means probably having to use points in August in order to get the 50 percent back to use before October. (And, obviously, not matter what one does, there are always going to be some points coming back in a remainder at the end.)