The Offer
- Signup for the Amex Premier Rewards Gold card and get 40,000 Membership Rewards points after you spend $2,000 or more within  three months
- Get another 25,000 Membership Rewards points after spending another $2,000 next year between July 15 and October 15, 2017
The card also offers $100 airline incidental credit each calendar year. If you apply now, you can get it twice within your first year of membership before any annual fee hits.
How to Get the Offer
This offer is showing intermittently when you search for the Premier Rewards Gold card on the Amex website using incognito browsing.
I got the 50k offer on my first try and this 65k offer on my second try using Chrome. With Chrome, I’m able to get it repeatedly after a few attempts, yet with Safari and Firefox, I’m having a much harder time. These details might also vary based on location or IP address.
You can also try using our Delta trick outlined in this post since it gets you better offers (seems to still be working, at least partially). No guarantees that it will pull up the 65k offer though, it might get you the 50k offer.
The Fine Print
- Welcome bonus offer not available to applicants who have or have had this product
- $0 annual fee for the first year of Card Membership, after that it’s $195 annual fee; up to 5 authorized user cards with no additional annual fee
- 3x points on Airfare charged directly with passenger airlines
Our Verdict
Interesting to see what Amex is doing here. First they announced that they won’t prorate annual fees starting September, and now they’re using split-tier signup bonuses to keep people on in the second year. By the time you get the extra 25k in the second year, you’ll be locked in having paid the $195 fee without a prorate option.
If you are getting this card as a Keeper Card for the 3x airfare, this offer could make sense. You’ll net the extra 15k points for spend you’d have done anyway on airfare.
If you’re like me that you want it mainly for the signup bonus (along with the $100 airline credit for 2016 and $100 for 2017), I’m going to give this offer a miss. You’d do better taking the other 50k offer which shows up sometimes incognito since you won’t have to pay the $195 fee the second year.
Looking at it another way: by keeping the card a second year, you’ll get another $100 incidental credit for 2018, bringing down the annual fee to just ~$95. So basically, you’re paying an extra $95 for 15k MR points (65k versus 50k) which is a pretty good deal. Still, I’m hoping to get a 75k PRG offer sometime, plus the hassle of dealing with the split-year bonus (with $4k spend instead of $2k) isn’t worth it for me.
Before applying for an Amex card, it’s worth reading 19 Things Everybody Should Know About American Express.
Hat tip to Uscreditcardguide
