$100 and 5,000 Bonus Points Received From American Express
I just got my first statement, and it looks like I have received all the free bonuses promised from the American Express Business Gold Card. I am going to put this $100 and $50 gift card towards holiday gifts 
For all the details, I have organized this and other free $100 bonuses into one central post.
Find more in Deals & Offers | 11/17/06, 12:47pm | Trackback
November 18th, 2006 at 6:56 am
Would you be able to go into the pros and cons of signing up for all these bonus cards? I remember you having a section on this in the past but browsing your site I just could not find it.
I know that these cards do a hard credit check and when you close a card it sticks on your credit report for ever. What does this cause the creditors to do? Does it look strange? Decrease your score?
November 18th, 2006 at 9:48 am
These credit card promotions seem to be pretty good. But how many you should you really get? Lets say you get 5 new credit cards that each give a 100$ valued reward after first use. Then you get the 25,000 miles for a frequent flier credit card. Eventually I would want to cancel them. Too much hassle to deal with so many statements. How many credit cards do you have. After receiving the $100 do you just lock them up and wait for them to expire? Also doesn’t it affect your credit rating?
November 18th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Good questions, I thought I had a post about this but I can’t find it right now.
See here for information about the credit checks themselves. I try to apply to about 4-5 credit applications every rolling six-month period. This keeps my credit score good while still getting hundreds of dollars of free stuff.
As for the effect on an extra credit line on your credit score, that is really hard to determine. It depends on your current credit history. An extra line does two things - it increases the amount of available credit you have (decreases your utilization %, somewhat good), and it decreases the average age of your credit accounts (somewhat bad). In my experience, these two pretty much cancel out and don’t make too much difference either way.
See the FICO Score estimator for more. Even if I put in 5+ total cards, 6+ new cards in the last year, and opened in the last 3 months, low utilization, I get an estimate score of 735-785 as long as I’ve had no late payments.
This is pretty close to my credit score of 750+ when I’m not borrowing 0% APR money.
The nice thing is that if there is no activity on a credit card, they don’t send you a statement. I have 20 cards but only get a few statements a month.
November 18th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
Oh, and if you close your credit card, it just shows up as “card closed by consumer” on your report, which is fine. What you don’t want to see is “card closed by creditor”.
And for business cards like this one - the card doesn’t even show up on your personal credit report, just the credit check. So for this card I don’t even have to worry about the effect of canceling later to avoid fees (which is a small part of why I did it).
November 21st, 2006 at 12:05 pm
In the case of this particular credit card, it is not a revolving debt card, is it? Is it a classic, pay off every month AMEX?
November 21st, 2006 at 1:02 pm
It’s one of their classic charge cards with “no pre-set limit”, but you can elect to pay over time (and get charged interest) if you need to.
November 21st, 2006 at 1:39 pm
My AMEX Blue Cash card felt the tinge of credit overworking a couple weeks ago. They lowered my credit limit about $2300 due to too many new credit cards, high use ratio due to BTs, etc. Hopefully that will be the worst that happens.
I got 2 chase, 3 citis, and one Discover at one time so it was a gamble that is ok so far. The AT&T card is giving me MAJOR grief about the 10,000 signup bonus points. They only gave me 5,600 and are not wanting to budge. I sent them a letter with an ad print-out verifying the 10,000 bonus, but no word back yet about it.
November 22nd, 2006 at 4:07 am
Thanks for the information on this credit card offer. I applied and have been approved. I will, of course, be closing this card down before I have to pay the yearly fee.
November 23rd, 2006 at 5:51 pm
As I was planning for a week vacation in the pacific NW, I decided to apply for three credits cards - marriott visa, ichoice mastercard (visa?), and starwood amex in order to get the free nights. Do you recall how long after your first purchase it took for the 10,000 points to appear in your starwood account?
November 28th, 2006 at 5:21 am
Jonathan,
When did the 100.00 show up for you? After you paid off your first balance?
November 28th, 2006 at 11:40 am
This card - I got the $100 credit right after my first purchase, even before my first statement closed. The $100 was already included on my first statement.
Starwood - Sorry, I don’t remember. I got the Starwood card a while ago myself.
December 14th, 2006 at 8:33 am
i applied for the Business Reward card and got the card day before yesterday, when i called to confirm about the $100 statement credit since i did not see anything on the welcome kit, i was placed on hold for more than 5 mins and the CSR didn’t seem to know what the promo is.. after a few she stated that it’s on my account and i would need to call in after i made the purchase and she gave me a promotion code.
I thought this is a little strange but i hope things will work out.
December 14th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
al - I’d make your $100 purchase as soon as possible (before the close of your first statement). It is linked to your first purchase, and the $100 credit showed up immediately afterwards, you shouldn’t need to even call in.
December 14th, 2006 at 3:58 pm
That’s what happened for me. I made a $120.00 purchase and I was credited back $100.00. My first bill from AMEX was for $20.00.
December 15th, 2006 at 9:29 pm
Jonathan,
Yes i got the Tomtom Go 700 from Amex’s Wishlist for $324 hopefully after the 100 credit this will be a 224 GPS Unit
December 16th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
[...] $100 Cash + 5,000 Points/Miles Cards: American Express Business Gold Rewards Card (I got my bonuses already!) [...]
December 18th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
Hey guys i got my $100 welcome bonus.
Sweet!
January 14th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
i made over 100 in purchases my first statement but did not receive credit. I called and they told me i have to make a SINGLE purchase for 100 or more not 2 or 3 seperate that add up. Anyone have a problem like mines?
February 14th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
[...] Also For Big Spenders: American Express Business Gold Rewards Card I forgot about the American Express Business Gold Rewards Card (which I also got for the rewards), that also offers a good deal of Membership Rewards points during the first year. [...]
May 9th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Well I got the bonus points, first year annual fee waived, but I was denied for the $100 statement credit. After numerous phonecalls with customer service was still no good, saying “I was not eligible for this offer” with no reason given.
October 5th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Okay here is one. I have had my Business Costco card for 2 months now. Recently went to do a check to see how much I was going to be getting back from my fuel charges. I was told it was going to be 5%. When I did the calculations they were wrong. A call to AMEX, caused me to become a little upset. They are telling me that one gas station is not equal to another gas station. For example, a TA (Travel America) is not deemed a gas station, but a Shell is. Likewise a Valero is a gas station, but the investment company that is running the charges is not called Valero so I only get 1% back. However if you look into the details it says Valero and gives their TX address.
When I questioned this I was told that they are going to need to investigate to see if the gas station is on their list of partners. I asked if I could see this list and was told NO.
The thing that gets me really upset is that we as card holders try to use our card to the best that we can and we also try to save where ever we can, but AMEX is telling me that this is a gas station and this is not. How am I suppose to know who is on their list and who isn’t and what catergory they fall under?
Any ideas?
November 26th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
Do you need to enroll in the rewards program once you’ve got online access to your account, or is it automatically enrolled? I made my first purchase about a month ago and just received my first statement (with the purchase on there), but haven’t seen anything regarding points yet.
Also, do you know if the points can be redeemed for miles on Frontier Airlines?