Deals & Offers Updates: 25,000 Points From AmEx Gold, $25 From TextPayMe/OboPay, and $50 From TradeKing Received
Here are some updates on my list of Deals & Offers that I chose to participate in:
25,000 Points (25,000 Miles/Free Ticket or $250 Gift Cards) From AmEx (Update: Now expired)
The New Business Gold Rewards Card® from American Express is offering 3X points on airfare, 2X points on advertising, gas, and shipping and 1X points on everything else. Although there was the usual inconsistent information from some customer service reps, I was very happy to notice that my points have shown up in my account:
It took just under 9 weeks from my first purchase. I recommend messaging them via their online system if you haven’t seen yours yet.
$10 From OboPay and $5 From TextPayMe
The two start-ups in the pay-by-cellphone arena are still offering sign-up bonuses to try them out.
$10 Sign-up Bonus from OboPay as prepaid debit card (or cash). Originally $15, then $10, then $5, and now a commenter noticed that OboPay is now back at offering $10, while another one mentioned that you may be able to get another $5 from sending money to another user?
$5 Sign-up Bonus from TextPayMe. You must also send money to someone to get your $5. People with access to two phone numbers can get $15 total by referring each other ($5 signup +$5 signup +$5 referral)
For both of these sites, I have already withdrawn the free bonuses safely into my bank account with no problems besides the fact that the transfers were slow (5-7 days). I know some people were also concerned about spam, but I haven’t received any unsolicited text messages at all before or after signing up for both of these programs two months ago.
$50 Referral From TradeKing
TradeKing brokerage was offering $50 for both people if you were referred by a friend and completed one trade. Although this deal is now over, I wanted to update because I noticed that referrals were only starting to be processed in early September. I have gotten a few payouts, but many of the people who asked for a referral didn’t complete it according to TradeKing, and I just wanted to make sure that everyone who did satisfy all the requirements got their $50.
Find more in Deals & Offers | 9/18/07, 9:13am | Trackback
September 18th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Last Friday was a biggun for Amex. It looks like they shelled out a ton of points for all the people backlogged on the Gold card deal.
September 18th, 2007 at 9:40 am
I noticed on OBOpay that ask for my social security number–do they do a hard pull on my credit? Do you know? Have you actually gotten the $10 card from them?
September 18th, 2007 at 9:44 am
With the AMEX card, was there a minimum purchase amount? I only spent $3.26.
September 18th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Joe,
I called and asked to be credited my points. The next day they were on there.
September 18th, 2007 at 11:23 am
I got my Amex points as well a couple days ago. It has been almost two months. I think its two statements. well, thanks Jonathan for the Deals.
September 18th, 2007 at 11:27 am
I’ve had the $10 of Obopay on my phone for some time now…what, exactly, is it good for? (Assuming, of course, that as an adult I need not zing things off to friends, but rather wish to hand money over to vendors and such…)
September 18th, 2007 at 11:31 am
Jonathan
Don’t mean to deprive you of the $50, but I opted not to go with TradeKing. I did the app online and I got tons of spam with subject headings resembling my passwords and e-mail. This did not happen when I signed on to use Scottrade. Sorry, I’d rather steer clear of the TradeKing deal for now for the sake of security.
September 18th, 2007 at 11:35 am
My 25,000 points showed up without asking, even though I was originally told I was getting the different offer: only 5,000 and 20,000 after thousands in purchases (I only made one small purchase). Anybody know any way to convert this to cash or card credit instead of airline miles?
September 18th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Too bad i took the deal with AMEX Gold card last year with the 10k bonus points. I doubt that they will lemme churn out this bonus.
September 18th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
I got my $50.00 from TradeKing…thanks!
September 18th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Rob — There is an option to cash in the points for an American Express Gift card valued at up to $100. It’ll cost you 18,000 points, however. It’s not quite the best conversion rate, but I think that’s as close to cash as you can get with trading in points on this credit card. The gift cards are also available for $25 (4,500 points) and $50 (9,000). Hope that helps.
September 18th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Mine showed up on it’s own. Thanks for the heads up.
September 18th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Dan – Good to know. I’m sure they had to have noticed all the people clamoring for them to fulfill the deal!
MsMom – I never gave my SSN. See old OboPay post and comments. You don’t need to request the $10 card, you can simply withdraw the cash back into your bank account, which is what I did. I also used a seldom used bank account, just in case.
Joe – I don’t think so… but I did make mine over $100 just in case.
Anonymous Bosh – You can either request a prepaid debit card and use it that way, or like I mentioned above link a bank account and withdraw it.
Ron – No worries. In this case I didn’t have a limited number of referrals anyways. I would only be concerned if you did open the account and didn’t get the $50.
September 18th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Rob – Like I said before, misinformed CSRs
You can get a variety of gift cards, like Home Depot and such. They even have things like Southwest points, which be converted to free tickets and also be sold for money, albeit against Southwest’s rules (but not illegal).
It may be better to sell a gift card on eBay, than convert directly to cash, but it’s also more of a bother. I’m keeping the points for miles since they can be converted to any carrier, and I like that flexibility.
September 18th, 2007 at 8:40 pm
On the topic of deals and offers, I just wanted to let you know I got my $70 Costco card from Sharetrade a couple days ago. Thanks for the great blog.
September 19th, 2007 at 2:08 am
Jonathan,
I got the points and am interested in airline miles. It looked to me that only selected carriers were available to redeem points with (like Southwest, which I’m tempted to go with). You said that the points can be converted to any carrier? I recently got the Chase United Miles card, which came with 21,000 bonus miles. Can I get more miles on there using these Amex points?
Thanks much for any light you can shed on airline miles stuff… I also have that Amex Starwood card — is that useful for United miles and membership rewards points?
September 19th, 2007 at 4:43 am
Jonathan, thanks for bring this up. I just checked and my 25000 points were there.
September 19th, 2007 at 6:37 am
Thanks for the heads up, I just checked my account and the points were credited! It took about 2 months though, but I didn’t have to contact them or anything.
September 19th, 2007 at 10:44 am
Jonathan,
How is this a good deal with the AMEX points especially if you have to start paying the $125 per year fee after the first year? Do you just cancel the card before the year ends ? (I know they’ll waive the fee the first year) If you do cancel the card, doesn’t that hurt your credit score then…please tell me what I’m missing here. Thanks for the blog!
September 19th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
Yes, I would definitely cancel before the year is up unless there is another reason why you want to keep this card. Applying for a credit card will ding your credit score slightly, but after about 6 months your score goes back to zero. Canceling this card won’t hurt your score anymore than that, I don’t think it even has a credit limit.
September 20th, 2007 at 10:27 am
The last time I checked, my AMEX business card didn’t even show up on my credit. Maybe because it is a business card?
September 20th, 2007 at 11:05 am
Got my 25k amex points and so did my fiancee. We’re also hitting up Continental for their Chase 20k cards. Amex also has a gold personal with 10k points. We hope to amass over 100k FFM for free by next year so we can fly for free to europe. Starwood points will hook us up with free hotel stays while there.
September 20th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Jeffrey – Thanks, you are correct, I totally forgot that this was a business card. My AmEx business card don’t show up on my personal credit report either. So the initial credit check will occur, but after that canceling or not won’t change anything.
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:59 am
Thanks Jonathan. Got my 25000 points! I had almost forgotten about this promo, because it has taken so long…Redeemed for 250.00 of Home Depot cards.
Your blog is great, keep the promo ideas coming!!
September 23rd, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Thanks Jonathan-I got my Amex 25K, which I used on Expedia to purchase a roundtrip ticket from NY to TX for wedding. The uncovered ticket costs came to $66 because I had very few points on the card over the 25K bonus, but still a great deal.
September 26th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
I got my $50 after I sent an email. Response was very fast from TradeKing – on a Sunday even! Thanks Jonathan.
October 16th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
The link to the Amex website no longer has the 25,000 point offer, but I just got the offer via the phone at 800-223-2670. However, phone rep could not find anything about converting 25,000 points to $250 Home Depot gift card, but he did mention that 20,000 points could be converted to $100 cash. I’m hoping he was just unfamiliar with the gift card promo and that I’ll be able to convert points to Home Depot gift card.