Stephen previously reported how to unenroll from Amex Pay Over Time off and why you might want to. Despite the fact that I heard about people being targeted with 20K offers last month, I hadn’t managed to take the few seconds necessary to click this link, log in, and unenroll. Then, over the weekend, I once again saw people picking up 20K Membership Rewards points for turning on Pay Over Time (through a targeted offer in their accounts). Annoyed with myself for forgetting to turn off Pay Over Time when Stephen previously showed how to do it easily, I finally turned it off this past Saturday, May 1st in the hopes that I would someday get targeted in the next round of Pay Over Time bonuses.
I figured it would probably be months before being targeted again if at all. Turns out it only took 5 days for this to pop up under Amex Offers:
I definitely wasn’t going to pass up the chance to pick up 20,000 points for essentially zero effort, so I clicked through and saw that the terms state that I must activate Pay Over Time by 6/5/21 to be eligible for the offer.
I went ahead and enrolled in Pay Over Time once again.
The terms state that it may take 8-12 weeks for the points to post to my account, though in the past I think these bonuses have actually posted within a couple of days.
Since the offer said that it had to be activated by 6/5/21, I thought that some readers may find it worth turning off pay over time to see if you get targeted for the 20K bonus to enroll again. I definitely didn’t expect a 5-day turnaround on getting targeted for 20K points and it is worth noting that the 20K offer is clearly targeted and may not show up for you after turning it off. However, at least in my case, it was well-worth a few clicks since I wouldn’t carry a balance anyway and therefore had nothing to lose by setting Pay Over Time to “inactive”. For what it’s worth, the new Pay Over Time limits exactly matched those on my cards when I turned the feature off a few days ago.
It’s worth noting that Amex has gotten sensitive toward people who they feel are gaming the system, so I suppose there is some risk that they won’t award these points or that it increases my risk of getting locked out of some future welcome bonus. In my case, I figured the risk was relatively low since I’ve not done these bonuses repeatedly and they did choose to target me quickly after unenrolling.
For more detail about how and why to unenroll, see Stephen’s previous post.
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I turned mine off after reading this. Got a snail mail letter from Amex around 2 weeks later with the 20k offer. Turned it back on and had the 20k in my account within 3 days. Great tip! Thanks!
Awesome!
Not me either but hey Amex gave me 30k membership rewards points for each platinum referral so I’m not bellyaching too much.
Which Amex is this offer on?
Any charge cards, but likely Platinum or Gold.
I’ve had it turned off for months, and all I get is an offer for a 3.99% APR for 12 billing cycles, which is of no interest to me.
Nick, you are hilarious!
Awesome! Thanks for the tip!
I’ve had this turned off for over a year and have never been targeted. This offer is usually listed with the other Amex Offers?
Turned mine off when Stephen posted about it. No offer. Yet.
I’ve had it disabled since December. No target for me…..