This news is making the rounds today as the CardMatch Tool from creditcards.com is showing some amazing American Express offers for targeted individuals. Some of the offers being mentioned are 100,000 Membership Reward points with the Amex Plat, 50,000 Membership Reward points with the Amex Premier Rewards Gold, and 30,000 Membership Reward points with the Amex Everyday Preferred card.
Are You Targeted?
To find out if you are targeted, head on over to the CardMatch Tool to plugin your name, address, and last four of your social security number. This is just a soft pull for identity purposes – this will not show as a credit check on your credit report. I ran a few different people on the list (family members) and none of us were targeted. With me and my wife, I am not surprised as we have already had/have those cards. But, I thought my dad would have been eligible for the Platinum as he has not had that yet, but he was not targeted either.
Are You Eligible?
While all of these offers are great, remember that American Express has changed their policy for personal card offers – namely, if you have had one of those cards ever before, you will not be eligible for the bonus on that same card again now. But, if you have had a different American Express card, you should still be fine. Also, business American Express cards do not count with that (so, if you held a business Amex Plat, you can still get the Amex Plat offer here).
Card Offers
From reports, the American Express Platinum offer looks like this:
- 100,000 Membership Reward points after spending $3,000 in 3 months
- $450 Annual Fee not waived
The American Express Premier Rewards Gold offer looks like this:
- 50,000 Membership Reward points after spending $1,000 in 3 months
- $175 Annual Fee waived for the first year
The American Express Everyday Preferred offer looks like this:
- 30,000 Membership Reward points after spending $2,000 in 3 months
- $95 Annual Fee not waived
Which Offer?
If you have your pick of the above three offers, I would definitely go for the American Express Platinum offer. Yes, you will need to pay the annual fee of $450 up front, but it is so easy to get that back. The Platinum card offers $200 per calendar year towards airline incidentals. To see the list and possibilities with that, check out this post. Since you would receive the card right now, you would get the $200 this year and next year before you have to pay the annual fee again! That way, you will get $400 of the $450 fee back just like that.
In addition, you will also receive Global Entry fee reimbursement ($100). When you combine that with the airline incidentals, that is $500 back for the $450 annual fee – and that is not even taking into account the 100,000 points! That many points is unbelievable for value!
For instance, right now American Express and British Airways have a 40% transfer bonus to British Airways through the end of January. If you were to transfer all 100,000 points, it would give you 140,000 British Airways Avios. With short-haul American Airline and US Airway flights costing only 4,500 Avios one way, that is like 31 trips for free!
Read More: Avios – The King of Spontaneous Travel
You could also transfer them to Delta for 4 free domestic tickets and many other possibilities. There are a variety of partners with the Membership Rewards program, so you will have no problem extracting huge value from your 100K point bonus!
HT: The Points Guy and View From the Wing
I gave this a shot for both my wife and myself. We each have excellent credit and we each received output of basically the exact same 12 worst cards I’ve seen in some time (and no Amex for either of us). Example: BoA “$100 cash back”.
Am I missing something? I try not to be skeptical but this “reputable site” doesn’t feel like something that was ever going to make an effort at pointing me towards a high-earning card…
Too bad you did not get targeted!
This site – creditcards.com – is a very big, well-known credit card site for various products. American Express uses them at times to disseminate very good, targeted deals. They were the host of the big 100K offer two years ago that EVERYONE seemed to be “targeted” for. After that, they put the SS# slot in – to make sure that the targeted offers were really reaching the right people.
As you saw, not only does Amex use them but BoA uses them (and CapOne) – and those offers are not nearly as good. 🙂 Skip the cash back card and get the BoA Alaska Air card instead!
This is just a marketing scam to get the newbies. Do not waste your time, as NO ONE is receiving the offer. Giving it to bloggers does not count either.