American Express has a new card called the American Express Premier Rewards Gold Card, which offers these primary perks:
- Earn 10,000 Membership Rewards bonus points when you spend $1,000 in your first 3 months of Card membership. MR points are very versatile, and can be converted to 15,000 frequent flier miles in a number of programs (or 10 Southwest credits), or you can simply get $150 in gift cards at several stores like Home Depot, Crate & Barrel, or Macy’s. I think you can also get cash equivalents at a reduced ratio.
- Offers 3X points on airfare, 2X points on gas and groceries, and 1X points on everything else.
- Earn 15,000 Membership Rewards bonus points when you spend $30,000 per calendar year.
- No annual fee for your first year. After that it is $175.
There are two ways to maximize this offer. The easy way is to simply sign-up, grab the 15,000 MR points bonus, and then cancel anytime within the first year, that’s a quick $150+ bonus which is rare these days. The only other scenario is that you are a big spender and purchase a lot of airfare, because triple MR points is pretty rare and you’ll have to reach that $30,000 spending target to offset the $175 annual fee after the first year.
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I’ve been working my way through the credit card offers thanks to this blog and others, and I just signed up for this one 3 days ago. $1000 in 3 months is more than most require, but I can put my yearly home owners insurance on here and that will work.
My system of getting my money back is somewhat elaborate. My problem is all I want is cash, and I don’t frequent the stores it offers most of the time. So I’ve been getting Gap cards as rewards, and turning around and selling them on ebay. You can get pretty close to full value (90%+ if you are smart) although ebay and paypal take a cut too. It’s still a better deal than just taking the cash, which when offered is always a terrible percentage of your $100 you start with.
so this card is different from the member rewards gold card?
I recently received my sign up bonus for MR gold card, though it took a few calls to AmEx.
I usually get the Home Despot card and buy gardening supplies/CFL lightbulbs or 1 gpm aerators – little ways to save money, or just something I need like batteries. I guess with Dave’s idea, it’d be almost better to get 90% cash and buy batteries somewhere cheaper…
I also like to receive free gift cards and then gift them to people. I feel so generous, and they don’t know I didn’t spend anything on them. My girlfriend really likes when I give her the gap cards. Sometimes they are good at all gap brand stores (Banana, Ol’ Navy)
Avoid eBay. E-Bay charges too much for a $100 gift card! Plus, there’s the added risk that the customer can dispute the charge with both e-Bay and/or (as last resort) their credit card company for “unsatisfied purchase” or “not as described”. Customer can lie by saying the gift card was not $100 at the time when s/he received it. Then, you the seller, is out of the earned gift-card and e-Bay ripoff fees, and a chargeback fee!
Why does is say upto $150 in gift cards? “Up to” is always suspicious.
best,
Eugene
Eugune – Part of it may be that you can also redeem for an AmEx “Gift Card” which works at any place that accepts American Express. These are more flexible and cost more points-wise. I would just visit Membershiprewards.com and browse the catalog for the stores that you’re interested in, you don’t have to be a cardholder to see the rewards. I like Home Depot the best as well, and a $25 card is 2,500 MR points, and so on, $100 = 10,000 points, etc.
I used to want to save up enough MR points to get 100 SW credits in one year, which gets you a free companion pass good for free companion tickets for one entire year so a couple could travel all around the US for half off.
A 100 dollar card should sell for about 90 dollars on ebay. If you list is correctly ebay will take about 5 dollars, and paypal 1 or 2 more.
It’s obviously worse than just taking the 100 dollar gift card to home depot, but if you just want cash, it’s better than the other options where you’ll get maybe 65% back. I don’t regularily shop at any of the choices on their list, and forcing myself to go somewhere defeats the purpose of doing these credit card signups.
Ebay is pretty safe too. You know the reputation of the person buying your card, so if the winning bidder is suspicious there are steps you can do to protect yourself. I’ve never had a problem though.
Anyone have any luck signing up for multiple Amex Cards? I signed up for 9 cards the last go round when they were giving $250 + $50 for employees. I got stuck with a financial review but I passed and got all my points.. all $3,000 of it.. but of course you got the points for making just one purchase… maybe we could buy the coins and return them to the bank a few times? (or maybe buy something from yourself on paypal?)
Seems interesting, but what exactly can you get for those 15k points? That would be interesting to know.
I find that Amex membership rewards points take a Lot of points to transfer to say a airline or a hotel. I think you can accumulate points for specific purposes on an airline or hotel affinity card.
If you are looking for a versatile card, Amex Reward Points can be use a lot of places. I just do not like the exchange rate as you have to have lots of points for really good transfers which means you have to spend lots of money!
Does anyone know if you can use 25k points for an airline ticket in the USA with this card?
If I purchase AMEX gift cards and cheques for presents, do I earn reward points on them?