The Offer
- American Express is offering the following spend offer to select American Express Business Platinum cardholders:
- Earn 250,000 Membership Rewards points after $1,150,000 in qualifying purchases by October 6th, 2017
- Earn an additional 75,000 points after you spend an additional $300,000
The Fine Print
- Enroll by June 6th, 2017
- Must make purchase by October 6th, 2017
Our Verdict
To understand if this is a good deal, we need to look at the base rates this card earns at:
- 5x points on all flights and prepaid hotels on amextravel.com
- 1x points on all other purchases
- 50% more points on business purchases of $5,000 or more (this is on the base rate, so 1.5x for all other purchases and 5.5x on amextravel).
The first spend bonus is basically an extra 0.217 points per dollar spent. It’s unlikely that much of the spend will be in the 5x categories, but if the purchases are all over $5,000 then you’d be earning 1.717 per point. The second spend bonus is an extra 0.25 points per $1 spent, so 1.725 per point. Better than the 1.5x on the AmEx Everyday preferred, but personally I’d prefer one of the other cash back cards that earn up to 3% cash back.
Hat tip to /r/churning
Well, I’m tallying up our final numbers and I think we made it! I don’t love this card, but it’s the best fit for our business. Getting the extra 250k points was something fun to work towards.
Hey, to reach first tier, I just have to buy 2273 $500 VGCs.
2273 x 6.95 = 15797.35 out of pocket as well. 250k probably isn’t even worth the amount of money spent on out of pocket cost of VGCs lol
First Tier: Earn 250,000 Membership Rewards points after you use your enrolled Card to spend at least $1,150,000 (the “First Tier Spend Requirement”) on qualifying purchases* between the date you enrolled and October 6, 2017. (the“Offer Period”);
Second Tier: Earn an additional 75,000 Membership Rewards points after you use your enrolled Card to spend at least an additional $300,000 (the “Second Tier Spend Requirement”) on qualifying purchases* during the Offer Period.
must be kidding.
Is this a some kind of late April Fool’s joke?
I would have enrolled but there is no free toaster 🙁
+1
What a genrous signup bonus LOL
For $216,667 less, you can get the same number of Membership Rewards points with the Everyday Preferred.
Did I miss something? How the hell does this make sense?
Pathetic bonus rate. C’mon Amex, you can do much better than that…
I am pretty sure the target here is an actual small business that has high spend but does not fit into the Amex corporate card program. After all, if you are going to spend $1+ million on the card, would you rather get the public offer of 75K or this offer for 250K 🙂
Something tells me this is a ploy by Amex to catch any HH MS stragglers out there. It’s almost like Amex is issuing a challenge…
Most heavy hitters wouldn’t be interested in this IMO.
No. It’s a hook to get leads for their corporate products.
Is this a new card offering by Amex?
Is it something a sole-proprietor might acquire?
Assuming since it’s a biz product it wouldn’t report to personal CR and would bypass personal 4 card limit?
Ugh I didn’t realize this was a targeted offer. Blah. Never mind. =/