The Offers
American Express have been sending out some very targeted sign up bonuses to their personal Costco cardholders and it looks like they’ve started targeting their TrueEarnings Business Card from Costco and American Express as well. Recently people have been receiving two separate offers (you can view the offer, but clicking apply will not work, if anybody gets the link to work let me know please)
- Receive a sign up bonus of $300 when you spend $1,000 or more within the first three months
- Receive a sign up bonus of $500 when you spend $5,000 or more within the first three months
Card Details
- 5% cash back at office supply stores and on wireless telephone services purchased directly from US service providers
- 3% cash back on your choice of the following categories: Airfare purchased directly from US airlines, hotel rooms purchased directly from hotels, car rentals purchased directly from select car rental companies, U.S gas stations, U.S restaurants, U.S purchases for advertising in select media, U.S purchases for shipping. This category can only be changed once annually.
- 1% cash back on all other purchases
- You only earn  5% on a maximum of $25,000 per year (total rewards maximum = $1,250), after that you’ll earn 1%
- You only earn 3%  on a maximum of $25,000 per year (total rewards maximum = $750), after that you’ll earn 1%
- Can be enrolled in the American Express OPEN savings program
Our Verdict
Normally this card does not come with a sign up bonus, although they frequently offer a bonus of $250 after $5,000 in spending within three months (this offer is currently available) so both of these offers are significantly better than that.
If you have a TrueEarnings business card and weren’t targeted, it might be worth calling American Express to see if they can extend this deal to you or not, although I doubt they will. Hopefully somebody will be able to get the application links to work, as a $500 sign up bonus on a card that also has 5% categories would be very useful indeed.
- American Express business cards are churnable, you can get the the bonus again after twelve months.
- Check to see if you have any targeted bonuses with American Express
- American Express does combine multiple credit pulls into one, learn more here
- American Express usually does not match higher sign up bonuses, but it’s always worth asking.
- American Express will expedite some cards
- It’s possible to get American Express to increase your credit limit by three times it’s starting amount, found out how to do it here.
- If you don’t get approved automatically, make sure you call the reconsideration number.
- Learn how to re-allocate your credit limits with American Express
Hat tip to woxni1 on Slickdeals
My dad’s offer claimed to be valid until September 21, 2015, but “expired” despite using Incognito and a proxy server, so maybe AMEX is getting more takeup than expected.
Did your email/internet offer expire September 21? I only ask because my email offer expired August 16th whereas I received an additional mail offer for Simplycash that expires September 21. You either have to send back the mailer or call Amex to get the offer.
Overall, I am still banking on Amex becoming even more aggressive in retaining Costco TrueEarnings customers as April 2016 approaches. They don’t want to see much of the 8% of their overall portfolio go out the door.
I also have been targeted by three $300 mailers and one $500 email for this card. I may just wait it out and see how high the bonus can go. After all, their agreement with Costco doesn’t end until April 2016. $500 is pretty good, especially for a no fee card, but I am going to take my chances that it may go up to $600 or higher.
So I was slightly right from my comment before about escalating sign up offers. I received an email for 75,000 points on the AmEx Business Gold card with no annual fee for the first year. What do you think? Simplycash with $500 bonus or Business Gold with 75000 point signup bonus?
TrueEarnings personal card holder, targeted for both: $300 offer @ account login, $500 offer by email. FYI, $300 offer good until 10/31. I’m working through three min spends right now, so not sure which of these I may go for.
Went for the $500/$5000 spend, instant approval. One unexpected bonus: my new card is backdated to my oldest AmEx card, a TrueEarnings (Costco) AmEx. This was a surprise with the recent trend against backdating, but perhaps mine was due to being targeted via my Costco card?
Amex has been really pushing me to get this card – two mailings and one email so far 🙂 The money is great but since I already have the similar Ink Business Plus and with the fact that I might be getting a mortgage soon, I’m hesitant.
this is a great offer for a no-AF card with 5% cats, comparable to Ink Cash which also had an increased public bonus offer recently. but yeah, gotta love AMEX, just wish they would target me too :/ lol I rarely ever get these juicy offers that are super-targeted.
anyways, it’d be great if someone could figure out how regular folks can apply for this as well.
Appears to me for these applications you need an RSVP code and zip code from your mailer (you can mess with the url to see that input page)
https://www262.americanexpress.com/business-card-application/rsvp/simplycash-business-credit-card/cmpreapprovedrsvp/0-0
Correction: in one of your bullet points you mention that this card has an annual fee but in reality it does not.
Fixed
There is no fee on this card. You may want to update that note at the bottom about canceling.
Question. If I already have one of these for about 8 years. Can I get a second one and a new bonus?