Tag Archives: American Express

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American Express Changes: No Cash Advance Fee for Precious Metal Coins, Bullion, and Digital Precious Metals Products

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Good evening everyone, I hope your weekend is going well.  I was just reviewing my recent American Express statements and saw a few changes regarding cash advance fees, earning bonus points on meal-kit delivery services, losing points when you close an account, late payment fees and the Centurion Lounge Guest Access Policy.  The most interesting change is regarding cash advance fees.  Effective October 1, 2021 (aka now), “precious metal coins or bullion and digital precious metals products” are no longer considered as a cash advance, so those purchases should earn points, miles, and cash back.  This is great news if you buy coins from the US Mint (to keep or resell).  As you might remember, American Express added precious metal coins or bullion and digital precious metals products to their definition of cash advance effective January 15, 2021.  It is good to see American Express changing their mind regarding precious metal coins and bullion.

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$179 CLEAR Credit Posts Quickly on American Express Business Platinum Card

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Good morning everyone.  A few months ago, I wrote American Express Business Platinum Card Changes: $179 CLEAR Credit & Centurion Lounge Guest Access Policy when AMEX introduced the $179 CLEAR Credit on their personal and business Platinum Cards.  Last month, I wrote My CLEAR Experience: Reactivating Membership, Adding Family Member, & Airport Biometric Process where I explained the issues regarding reactivating my old/dormant CLEAR membership and my wife’s experience with the airport biometric process (it was pretty easy at the Seattle airport).  CLEAR gave me a 2 month trial period in order to get our CLEAR accounts set up and my charge finally went through last week.  I wanted to document the process and show how quickly the CLEAR credit posted on my American Express Business Platinum Card.  The $179 CLEAR Credit shows up in the benefits section of your personal or business Platinum Card and does not require activation.  The benefit says that the statement credit will appear 2-4 weeks after your CLEAR membership is charged to your card.

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My CLEAR Experience: Reactivating Membership, Adding Family Member, & Airport Biometric Process

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Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well.  A month ago, American Express added a $179 CLEAR credit to AMEX Platinum Cards.  I had an old / dormant CLEAR account that I signed up for and used a few years ago, so I figured I would reactive my CLEAR membership.  Frequent Miler has a great resource on 5 ways to get CLEAR for less and one of the ways is to be an AMEX Delta credit card holder and add a family member for less than the cost of a single membership.  In this post, I will cover my experience reactivating my CLEAR membership, adding Laura as a family member to my CLEAR account, and her experience with the airport biometric process (getting her fingerprints and eyes scanned).

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My AMEX Offer, Chase Offer, and BofA BankAmeriDeals Loading Strategy & Thoughts

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Good afternoon everyone.  I’m a big fan of good AMEX Offers and Chase Offers, but I have received a ton of bad offers lately, so I wanted to share my loading strategy and thoughts.  I will also briefly cover Bank of America BankAmeriDeals at the end of this post.  Let’s get started with AMEX Offers.  I created this chart to divide up AMEX Offers into 4 separate buckets:

  • Good offers on all cards
  • Good offers on 1 card
  • Bad offers on all cards
  • Bad offers on 1 card

Unfortunately, most of the recent AMEX Offers fall into the “Bad offers on all cards” and “Bad offers on 1 card” buckets.  You will have to decide for yourself what you consider a good AMEX Offer vs. a bad AMEX Offer.  A good AMEX Offer is an offer that I don’t need to go out of my way to research or use.  A bad AMEX Offer requires a lot of research to look up the store or service, see what they sell, and figure out if it is worth the price.  I don’t spend much time with bad AMEX Offers.

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How I Messed up the $20 Dining Credit on my AMEX Hilton Aspire

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Good morning everyone, I hope your week is going well.  One of the current card benefits of the American Express Hilton Honors Aspire Credit Card is the $20 monthly dining credit.  Unfortunately I ran into an issue using this card benefit in April on 2 restaurant purchases (In N Out Burger and Panera Bread).  As you can see, I never received the $20 dining credit for my April purchases, but I did receive the credit automatically in May, June, and July.  Based on my transactions, the $20 dining credit posts ~3 days after the restaurant charge posts to your account.  I contacted AMEX on May 1 and again on July 13 to check on the status of the dining credit and received conflicting answers.  Here is what I was told and what I learned…

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