Tag Archives: American Express Membership Rewards Points

a blue rectangular sign with white text

2,000 Membership Reward Points Post Quickly for AT&T Small Business Wireless AMEX Offer

Good morning everyone, happy Friday!  A few days ago, there was a great AMEX Offer that came out from AT&T Small Business Wireless where you could earn 2,000 Membership Reward Points for making a qualifying purchase of $200 or more.  To make the AMEX Offer even better, you could use that AMEX Offer up to 3 times per enrolled card and get up to 6,000 Membership Reward Points.  Frequent Miler and Doctor of Credit were the first I saw to cover the AMEX Offer.  Even though the AMEX Offer was only targeted to American Express business cards and supposed to be for business wireless purchases, I decided to see what would happen when I made a $200 payment to my AT&T Wireless account (I do use AT&T service for my blog).  If you are interested, here are the full AMEX Offer terms:

a screenshot of a credit card

Continue reading

green text on a white background

What is “5 X TLS” American Express Membership Reward Points?

Good morning everyone.  I was looking at my American Express account and noticed that I just received 2,736 bonus American Express Membership Reward Points with the description of “5 X TLS”.  Maybe I am dumb, but I had never heard of TLS before and was confused why I received the bonus points (confused, but not ungrateful).  I reached out to a few of my travel hacking friends and I was told that TLS stands for “Travel & Lifestyle Services” and is related to booking paid flights and hotels through AMEXTravel.com with an American Express Business Platinum Charge Card.

a screenshot of a computer

Continue reading

a silver credit card with a picture of a man

PSA: Check your American Express OPEN Small Business Savings Preferences (5% Cash Back vs. 2 Membership Reward Points)

Buenos dias everyone. A few months ago, I purchased some items from HP.com using my American Express Business Platinum Charge Card, which offers the choice between 5% cash back or 2 bonus Membership Reward Points per dollar spent on purchases from HP and other select merchants through the American Express OPEN Small Business Savings program.  All American Express issued business cards are part of OPEN – Membership Rewards-earning cards offer a choice between the two, while others like the American Express Starwood Preferred Guest Business Credit Card only offer the 5% cash back option.

5% cash back is clearly worth more than 2x Membership Reward Points, so I was disappointed when I realized that the card defaulted to 2x Membership Reward Points and I had never changed my savings preferences. I chalked it up to experience and switched the settings in my OPEN preferences so I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Amex OPEN Savings preference selection screen Continue reading

a blue and white logo

Book One Way Award Flights to Hawaii on Delta for 15,000 KLM / Air France Flying Blue Miles

Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well.  A few nights ago, I was helping a friend find and book award tickets from the Bay Area to Kauai, Hawaii (LIH – Lihue, Hawaii).  She is a teacher and wanted to travel over Spring Break next year. Her Spring Break is the first week of April and Easter is on April 1, 2018, so she wanted to leave right after Easter.  I went to Google Flights to see what flight options were available but their flight calendar doesn’t show any flights past April 1, 2018 (if you are reading this post after May 8, then it should show you later dates).

Google Flights SFO-LIH Map No 4-2-2017

Continue reading

a blue rectangular sign with white text

Are your AMEX Offer Statement Credits Posting Slower than Usual?

(Hat tip to Miles per Day post and Tom’s comments in that post)

Good morning everyone, happy Star Wars Days (“May the Force be with you” = May the Fourth = May 4th) – that was painful to explain.  Anyway, I was reading Miles per Day and there were a few comments on that blog post AMEX Offer statement credits posting very slowly that stuck out to me.  Commenter Tom said the following:

Are your AMEX offer credits even posting lately? Within the past 2 or 3 weeks, I’ve used about 12 offers or so and only 2 of the credits actually posted (the boxed offer, but the same offer also DIDN’T post on 2 of my other cards)…. I’m starting to get a bit worried…

Later, Tom said:

No, I only received the email on the 2 credits that actually did post, the others received nothing (although I’m 100% certain that I met the terms and conditions of the offer). There are also quite a few datapoints coming in on the AMEX offers thread on Flyertalk, but I’m shocked that none of the bloggers have picked up on this issue yet, something is definitely going on with AMEX…. ordinarily I would just dismiss it and wait a while, but considering all of the other recent negative changes, especially the recently announced delay with the Biz Plat 50% rebate, I’m really starting to worry about AMEX offers… I hope they don’t make us wait 90 days until after the offer ends…

I have noticed the same with my AMEX Offers – the statement credits seem to be posting erratically and slower than usual.  As part of my manufactured spending routine, I buy and sell gift cards and a big portion of the gifts cards that I buy are with AMEX Offers.  I keep pretty detailed records of when I buy the gift cards, when they arrive (via email or mail), and when the AMEX Offer statement credits post to my American Express cards.  Here are my AMEX Offer statement credit findings from mid January through early May:

AMEX Old Blue Cash (OBC); Blue Cash Everyday (BCE); Everyday (ED GT); Everyday authorized user card from my dad (ED ST); Business Platinum (Plat); Business Platinum employee card for me (Plat GT); SPG Business (SPG B); SPG Business employee card for me (SPG GT)

Continue reading