Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
There are a couple of great new targeted Amex Offers out in the wild that can add up to a lot of points — with one offer alone worth 20,000 Membership Rewards points and another targeted Amazon offer for 2,000 Membership Rewards points on $50+ in purchases. Four offers follow:
Amazon.com
The Offer
- Spend $50 or more, get 2,000 Membership Rewards points
Key Terms
- Enrollment from 6/1/17 to 12/31/17
- Offer not valid for Amazon Local, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Amazon Home & Business Services, Amazon Currency Converter, Home Services, Prime Photos, Amazon Inspire, Amazon Video Direct, Amazon business, Amazon Global, or Amazon Drive.
Quick Thoughts
This is a fantastic offer if you’re targeted. Neither my wife nor I was targeted on any of our cards (bummer!). Slickdeals users have confirmed that this offer works on gift card reloads (and I would also suspect that it works on gift card purchases), so in the extremely unlikely event that you don’t plan to spend $50 on Amazon before the end of 2017 (or if you just need to buy someone a gift), you could buy a gift card. I believe this is a single-use offer even though the expiration date of 12/31 is farther out than most single-use Amex Offers. If you have this offer, add it and use it.
H/T: Slickdeals via Miles to Memories
Intermedia.com
The Offer
- Spend $200+, get 20,000 Membership Rewards Points
- Go to intermedia.net/amex-offer to make your purchase
Key Terms
- Expires 9/25/17
- Valid online only on the US website
Quick Thoughts
I got this offer on two of my cards last week and have been mulling it around. While I don’t think I have any immediate need for the services being offered by Intermedia (mainly cloud email), this offer is essentially like buying Membership Rewards points for around 1 cent each even if you don’t have any use for the product. You can’t quite get to exactly $200 with the services they sell, but you can get close.
Your cheapest qualifying option (I believe) would be 24 users on the Cloud Email plan for one month. You’d then have to cancel after a month. Thirteen users on the middle-level plan comes out to just under $208 a month. Alternatively, you could use the minimum number of users (3) on the Cloud Email plan and pay in advance for one year. That would cost you $269.64 — not the most efficient use of the Amex Offer, but at least you have a year to figure out whether or not the service is useful. I have not looked into the terms of their service or whether there is any penalty for early cancellation — YMMV on all of that and I encourage you to look before leaping. I’m not sure whether or not I’ll take advantage of this one, but it’s interesting for the number of points being offered.
Update: According to reader Bryan, Intermedia pro-rates the first month. It would then be essential to set this to charge at the very beginning of the month — as he suggests, I’d recommend setting this up on the last day of the month (June 30th to begin July 1st) to make sure you get charged the full $200 at once and don’t pay for 2 separate months. Thanks, Bryan!
Sierra Trading Post
The Offer
- Spend $150, get 3,000 Membership Rewards Points
Key Terms
- Expires 7/18/17
- Offer specifically denotes that this must be a single purchase
Quick Thoughts
This is a decent offer as 3,000 points are worth at least $54.60 according to our Reasonable Redemption Values. The terms state that the $150 must be in a single purchase. While many Amex Offers had this stipulation for years, in practice it mostly hasn’t been enforced and at some point most Amex Offers switched over to terms that say “in one or more transactions”. I noted the terms here because they specify a single transaction, but it’s possible that multiple transactions adding up to $150 could work. Even if it must be a single transaction, this looks like a good offer. I’ve gotten a lot of solid deals out of the STP clearance sales in the past and will keep my eye out for future promotions with which to stack this one.
Telecharge
The Offer
- Spend $75, get 1,500 Membership Rewards Points
Key Terms
- Expires 9/4/17
Quick Thoughts
This is a better offer than the usual $15 back on $75 if you value Membership Rewards points at better than a penny each. If you have a trip planned to New York with limited days and want tickets to a specific show, this is a nice way to grab a small discount over paying full price. My wife and I generally prefer to enter the lotteries or buy rush tickets the day of performance — you can usually get decent seats at a nice discount, though you could end up with obstructed-view or front-row seats (which could be good or bad). With digital lotteries, you can now enter a bunch without leaving your hotel room. That’s both good and bad — it was probably easier to get tickets on a blustery Wednesday when you had to physically stand and wait at the theater, but at least you can now enter in your pajamas for a matinee.
One possible way to stack this might be through BroadwayBox.com. Let me preface this by saying that I haven’t used BroadwayBox in at least 10 years, but used to frequently use it for discounted theater tickets. Clicking through their link brings you to telechargeoffers.com. This does indeed seem to be Telecharge’s domain for discounted ticket offers (based on a quick Google). I looked up the same tickets to the same performance both directly through Telecharge and through the BroadwayBox.com link to telechargeoffers.com and they came up about $20 cheaper for the rear of front mezzanine tickets to the show I pulled up (Phantom of the Opera, next Wednesday night…just a random pick). Will telechargeoffers.com trigger the Amex Offer? Hard to say. Since it appears to be owned by Telecharge, my guess is that the charge may post as Telecharge and you may then get the offer. If true, that would be a decent enough deal. The back of the front mezzanine was going for about $80 a ticket for the Phantom performance I pulled up. Depending on how you value the 1500 points, that’s not bad. Lottery tickets to Phantom are only $28, but aren’t guaranteed. For the record, I compared tickets in the $75 price range — seats closer to the front of the front mezzanine were available at a bigger discount through Broadwaybox (I believe $89 + fees vs $135 + fees). YMMV on this method for sure, but in the worst case scenario you’ll probably save more cash buying this way than directly through Telecharge even if you don’t get the offer.
Final Thoughts
Most of these offers are targeted (though I see the Telecharge offer on all of our cards). The Amazon offer appears to be highly targeted. All of these are pretty good offers to keep in mind. Overall, it’s great to see Amex continue to release opportunities to earn large chunks of points through purchases. If you find a good stack with any of the above offers, please let us know in the comments!
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
[…] Per a reader on FrequentMiler this seems to be normal and after a few days the pending charge falls off and the bill goes through, Amex points get credited. […]
For the Intermedia offer, here’s the cancellation policy:
2.2. Termination by You.
(a) Monthly Plan. For a Monthly Plan, You may terminate any Schedule for any reason by following the termination procedure located within the Account section of the administrative control panel prior to the beginning of any Schedule Renewal Term. If You terminate a Monthly Plan prior to the end of the then-current Schedule Term, Intermedia will not be
required to refund to You any fees already paid.
Since the first month is prorated, I’m going to try signing up for 16 users for the $15.99 plan and cancel around the end of the first month in case they feel generous and want to refund me the prorated amount if I cancel too early. 🙂
[…] to follow my own advice, but I dragged my heels for a while. Then came the amazing Amazon offer: Spend $50 or more at Amazon, and get 2,000 Membership Rewards points. Wow. I had to get in on that one. But I couldn’t. None of my cards had this targeted […]
As I stated on another blog, I purchased 10 “Security and Compliance” accounts on May 31st. One June 3rd, pre-auths fell off and the charge for $209.90 hit my Amex Plat statement, along with a “Great news, you just used your Amex offer” email. 20k MR points hit my Amex account on June 6th.
Nice!
I signed up for the Intermedia offer a week ago and they still haven’t charged my card. I’m not sure if they require fully setting up the account before they’ll charge the account. The set up process mentions they’ll call you to help you set up the account.
You can also choose to set up the account yourself. There should be two check boxes, and if memory serves, you can select the bottom one to set it up yourself.
Anyone know if an e-gift card will trigger the Sierra Trading Post offer?
I am not sure about the e-giftcard, but can confirm a physical gift card will trigger offer. I also purchased it thru AA mall. Will update if I receive 2 pts per.
Did you try the e-gift card?
I did not try the e-gift card. Just the physical gc. I can confirm I got miles thru the AA portal
I got $200 off $200 for Intermedia
The Amazon offer was on 6 of the cards for both me and my wife: 3 Platinum (regular, Mercedes-Benz & Morgan Stanley), Ameriprise Gold and both of our EveryDay (regular and Preferred). Thanks for letting me know about it.
I bought AirBnB gift cards with Amazon offer and got the thank you emails from AmEx.
Thank you both for the details on the Intermedia offer. I have it on (2) cards and couldn’t quite get as close to $200 as you did. Shame that we can’t use it on an actual Office 360 subscription for a year or two, but heck – 1cpp is a steal for MR!
On the Intermedia offer, I went through all the way to the checkout screen, and they prorate the month, so using the 13 users/$208 per month selection it was only going to charge me $152.xx for the month of June, and then I presume a full $208 at the beginning of July.
It seems like the best bet, since the offer ends 9/25, is to make the selection on the 1st of the month, or perhaps the 30th of the preceding month (June 30th/July 1st; July 31st/August 1st).
That’s my plan, anyway…