I was ready to cancel my AmEx Premier Rewards Gold card. No real need for it lately and the points I’m earning through other cards are more useful to me in general. So the email I received this week announcing the new benefits caught me a bit by surprise. Mostly because the changes are very, very useful.
Double points at restaurants and removing the foreign transaction fees brings the card up in benefits comparable to the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, my typical choice for spend (most of my spend is hotels, airlines & restaurants). And the $100 airline credit, similar to the $200 version on the Platinum cards, is a great addition to those benefits. I wouldn’t rush out to grab one now unless you’re getting a great sign-up bonus, but if you were considering cutting the card from your wallet this is a very, very nice new set of features which should have you reconsidering.
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Any idea if this applies to Business Gold Reward Cards as well?
This is great! I don’t have this card, but my partner does, and the new bonus on restaurants will definitely be beneficial for us. And, the foreign transaction fee elimination is great, too. He might even get a little use out of the $100 airline credit, although he’s got status on AS and UA, and most of his flights in Y are DCA-DTW runs on DL, where he’s got some benefit from his AS status. Still, it might be useful from time to time.
Now, if Amex would just eliminate the foreign transaction fee on their SPG card.
The annual fee is also going up to $195 beginning June 1, but these are still positive changes.
Try for a retention bonus anyways. I asked to cancel, cited the loss of the annual 15k points bonus for $30k spend and got a retention offer of 15k points for $3k spend in 3 mos.