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American Express is once again targeting some cardholders with big spend offers giving bonus Membership Rewards when spending a certain amount. In pretty much all cases it won’t be worth diverting spend to these cards, but they can represent nice bonus earnings if you were going to spend on the cards anyway.
The Deal
- American Express is targeting some cardholders with big spend offers via Amex Offers. Example offers include:
- Spend $12,000 & earn 3,000 bonus Membership Rewards
- Spend $5,000 & earn 2,500 bonus Membership Rewards
Key Terms
- Must add by various expiry dates (some require adding by May 21, 2023, others by January 1, 2024.
- Once you save the offer to your eligible Card, you will have 90 days to redeem.
- Can use offer up to 3 times.
- Valid only on purchases made in US dollars.
- Cash advances, other fees and charges such as interest, annual fees and foreign currency conversion fees are not eligible transactions and do not qualify for this offer.
Quick Thoughts
There are a number of different spending offers out there, so check all your Membership Rewards-earning accounts to see if you’re targeted. My wife and I only had one offer between us and that was on one of my Business Platinum cards. It gives 3,000 bonus Membership Rewards when spending $12,000 which means it’ll effectively earn 0.25 bonus Membership Rewards per dollar when spending exactly $12k, with the ability to earn that three times. That kind of offer isn’t enough to move the needle when deciding whether to put spend on that card or not.
In fact, I haven’t seen any offers that would warrant making a particular effort to take advantage of them, although that’s not to say that they’re pointless offers. For example, a member of Frequent Miler Insiders got an offer to earn 2,500 bonus Membership Rewards when spending $5,000 on their Amex Gold card, again with the ability to earn those bonus points up to three times. That’s a bonus of 0.5 bonus points per dollar which in itself isn’t going to make the card worth using. However, it’s potentially a much more worthwhile deal seeing as the Gold card offers 4x at US supermarkets and restaurants. A number of Amex Gold cardholders put $25,000 spend on their card each year to max out the 4x earnings at grocery stores, so this offer effectively makes that 4.5x.
Something important to note is that once you’ve loaded the offer to your card, you only have 90 days in which to meet the spend requirements. There are different dates by which you have to load the offer; that Amex Gold offer had to be added by May 21, 2023, whereas the offer on my Business Platinum card has to be added by January 1, 2024. With most Amex Offers, you have until the expiry date to meet the spend requirements, but that’s not the case here. If I added the offer to my card today, I’d have to meet the spend requirement within 90 days rather than by January 1, 2024.
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I looked at my Amex Everday card and the offer is 3,000 points for $3,000 spend in 90 days and thought that wasn’t bad because it would serve as 2x points on purchases for that period!
I was targeted on my Amex Gold – Spend $1,000 and get 1,000 additional points up to 3 times ( 90 days period).
I received an offer of receiving $20 if I put $2,000 on my Amex Blue Cash Preferred within 90 days.
I’ve never gotten any of these and we have 7 cards between us that have MR
My business gold has a ludicrous spend $66,000 get 16,500 MR, up to 3x no love on any other cards
I got 2k on 2k spend on my BBP. Actually pretty nice. Easy to spend and effectively 3x on my non-category spend.
First saw this in 4th quarter 2022. 8k MR points after spending $16k in three months, repeatable three times, on Platinum. Hard pass. I’ve gotten so many excellent offers from AMEX that I found this one a bit insulting, but I’ve gotten a number of offers recently from others that kind of fall into the same category.
How does one spend $25k on groceries in a year? MS or just really hungry? If the former, aren’t you risking a shutdown?
No, I don’t think you’re risking a shutdown if you MS on the Amex Gold card at grocery stores. That’s the reason that Amex has the limit of $25k grocery store spend on the card – to limit how much people MS on the card – but they’re well aware that it happens. In fact, some people have numerous Amex Gold cards in order to earn 4x on $25k spend multiple times each year.
I got 5k for $19k spend on the two of my Biz Plats and one BBP.
P2 has 2,500 MR points on $10,000 spend on her Business Platinum card. Ordinarily I would view that as insulting (as in, “How dare you offer my P2 points that way!”) except that she had just upgraded this card from Business Gold and has about $9,950 more to spend for the upgrade bonus.
So we’re just going to swallow our pride on this one and take these extra 2,500 MR points.
My wife’s Gold card has spend $1,500 for 1,000 MR points, up to 3 times. I’d say that’s much better since you can spend 1,500 easily between restaurants and grocery in 3 months.