Tag Archives: American Express

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Amazing Retention Offer on my American Express Business Platinum Charge Card

Buenos dias everyone. The annual fee posted on my American Express Business Platinum Charge Card on April 26, and since I hate making phone calls, I waited until the very last minute to call about canceling the card. American Express will only refund your annual fee if you cancel or downgrade within 30 days of when the annual fee posts to your card.

Once I finally resigned myself to getting on the phone, I told the representative that I wanted to speak with someone about closing my account because of the recent changes to the Membership Rewards Pay with Points rebate. She mentioned the fact that the card now earns 5 points per dollar spent on amextravel.com, then placed me on hold for several minutes and then handed me off to someone from their OPEN Membership Consulting team.

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Best Credit Card for Restaurants: US Bank Cash Plus or FlexPerks Gold AMEX?

Good afternoon everyone, I hope you are having a great weekend. I am currently in Miami on my way back home to San Francisco after my week-long vacation to Saint Kitts and Nevis and my stay at the Marriott Saint Kitts Beach Club timeshare property (2 trip reports coming later this week, or next week, or never – let’s see if I can get these posted before I forget). Enough about me, let’s talk about credit card rewards.

A long time ago, my go to credit card for all restaurant purchases was my beloved Citi Forward Credit Card. I used to earn 5x Citi Thank You Points for all restaurant purchases, from fast food to fine dining. Unfortunately, Citi changed the card earnings on restaurant purchases from 5x to 2x, so I looked for a suitable replacement. The obvious choice was Chase Sapphire Preferred with 2x on restaurants, then along came the Chase Sapphire Reserve with 3x on restaurants. I tried to apply for the Chase Sapphire Reserve (twice!), and got declined (twice!) due to 5/24.  I don’t have any other Chase credit cards that I want to convert / product change to a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Sapphire Reserve either.  With those sad facts, my search for a suitable restaurant credit card continued.

I was pretty happy using my US Bank Cash Plus Credit Card for restaurant purchases – earning 2% cash back at restaurants and 5% cash back at fast food restaurants.  That was good enough for a few months until I got an email from US Bank that changed everything…

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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:

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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.

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My March App-O-Rama Credit Card Sign Up Bonuses Post

Good morning everyone, I hope you are all having a great week.  By the time you read this post, I will be ATVing around the island of St. Kitts (I know, tough life).  Anyway, I wanted to talk about one of my favorite topics – credit card sign up bonuses.  In March, I discussed Which 10 Credit Cards am I Considering for my March App-O-Rama and then in early April, I wrote about my March App-O-Rama Results.  In this post, I will share with you my plans (if any) for redeeming my miles and points.  If you have any better suggestions than the ones I share in this post, please let me know in the comments.  Thank you!

To get started, I was approved for the Bank of America Alaska Airlines Visa Signature Credit Card and the Bank of America Alaska Airlines Business Credit Card.  Both credit cards offered 30,000 Alaska Airlines miles after spending $1,000 in 3 months along with an Alaska Airlines Companion Ticket (which can now be used on Virgin America).  I have a few other Alaska Airlines Companion Tickets in my Alaska Airlines account, so I will probably not use them all.  60,000 Alaska Airlines miles is worth ~$900 to me (valuing Alaska Airlines miles at 1.5 CPP).  I don’t have an exact use in mind, but I like flying on Virgin America first class when I fly from SFO to JFK.

Alaska Airlines Personal Business 30,000 Mile Bonuses Posted

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