Good afternoon everyone, I hope you had a great weekend. Yesterday, I was reviewing my recent American Express statements and saw a few upcoming changes that I wanted you to be aware of. Thankfully, none of these changes are huge. Without further ado, here are the 3 changes.
Bye bye AMEX MR Redemptions at Newegg.com and Staples.com
Effective March 31, 2025, Card Members will no longer be able to redeem Membership Rewards points on www.newegg.com and www.staples.com.
I have made several purchases at Newegg.com and Staples.com over the years, but have never used my AMEX MR Points to pay for my orders since I assumed it was a bad deal. My assumption was correct! On both websites, you can redeem 14,286 AMEX MR Points to offset $100, which is a terrible redemption at 0.7 CPP. Good riddance to this redemption option!
Bye Bye ShopRunner Card Benefit
Effective March 31, 2025, ShopRunner membership will no longer be a Card benefit. Card Members currently enrolled through American Express will continue to receive their complimentary ShopRunner membership for the remainder of their ShopRunner membership year and two years thereafter, subject to ShopRunner’s policies and terms and conditions.
ShopRunner is a service that competes with Amazon’s Prime shipping, Walmart’s free 2 day shipping, and Target’s free 2 day shipping. I think I signed up for ShopRunner a few years ago, but have never used the service. If you do a lot of online shopping, I am sure you have seen the ShopRunner logos during checkout. According to the terms, once this benefit is discontinued, you will still have 2+ years left on your ShopRunner membership.
Bye Bye American Express Auto Purchasing Program with TrueCar
Effective April 28, 2025, the American Express Auto Purchasing Program will be decommissioned and no longer available as a benefit for Card Members. Any offers, including any upfront price offers, available through the American Express Auto Purchasing Program will expire on their stated end date.
I have never used (or remember hearing about) this service. I believe TrueCar is a service that will negotiate with various dealerships on your behalf to get you the best deal on a car. In exchange for those savings, I believe you pay TrueCar a small service fee. Based on the homepage, it looks like the main benefit was the ability to pay at least $2,000 toward your next car purchase with your AMEX credit card. I always assumed most dealerships would allow you to put some portion of the car purchase on a credit card, but I haven’t bought a car is a long time.
There you have it, the 3 upcoming American Express changes. The end of Newegg and Staples redemptions, ShopRunner, and the Auto Purchasing Program should have minimal impact, but if those benefits are important to you, you still have a few more months to use them before they are gone. If you have any questions about these changes, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone!
TrueCar was really useful years ago. Over the years, dealers have exited the program, and it’s not as transparent as it used to be. With one car we couldn’t get exactly what we wanted, but we could preview the add-ons to determine what might be a fair price; the last time I couldn’t view the fair price for the options.
We ended up buying Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) for our last two vehicles. (both vehicles had under 8k miles, so they were not abused vehicles, but a great deal)
Thank you for sharing your experience with TrueCar. It seems like a good concept, but it is sad to hear that the service has gone down over time and the number of participating dealers have decreased. A CPO car with 8K miles sounds like a great deal!