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Rob over at HeadForPoints has flagged a potentially very interesting new redemption option for Amex Platinum personal cardholders. With no fanfare whatsoever (yet), Amex has doubled the value of Membership Rewards Points when you use them to pay off transactions on your account.
Ordinarily, you can only get a rather miserly 0.45p per point, but right now it is possible to get 0.9p per point instead. All you have to do is log in to your account, click on “Use points for purchases” on the right hand side of the screen, and then select which transactions you want to pay off using points:
It seems like all personal UK Platinum cardholders have the new option, but look closely to make sure that it says “1000 Points = £9”.
A friend with a Euro denominated (but UK issued) Amex Platinum sent me a screenshot showing that they are also being offered double the usual rate:
Good deal?
In normal times, 0.9p per point in cash would be a slightly tricky decision. I regularly get considerably more than that by transferring to hotel/airline partners and exploiting redemptions sweetspots, but right now I think 0.9p in cash is superb.
The fallout from COVID-19 is hard to predict, but at the moment travel is off the table, and it may be for quite a while longer. Even once restrictions have been lifted, I think it will be difficult to argue that the value of points/miles isn’t lower in the new reality than it was a few months ago. Demand for travel will inevitably be lower and I would imagine that we will see some truly extraordinary hotel and flight deals.
Bottom line
We don’t yet know how long the offer will last (hopefully Amex will confirm the terms and conditions soon), but the new 0.9p per point cash rate is excellent. If you have stash of points, I would give serious thought to cashing them in while this offer is available.
I was already planning on writing an article explaining why I have (in the very short-term) decided to keep my Amex Platinum, and this adds another aspect I need to consider.
Why is this a good deal? Just get 1.25p cashback.
If you don’t already have a Plat (and are eligible for the sign up bonus) you can basically bag ~£300+ in cash here and then cancel the card for full refund of annual fee.
If you already have a Plat, this is a great way of cashing out your balance before cancelling and getting a pro rata refund.
For long term spend, you’re right.
I thought our “new normal” was that we were nobody has been able to get Amex subs at all since they added the two year cool down 😉
Stange that it’s Platinum only and not the other MR cards too.
Data point : Here in France, my AMEX Platinum is offering 10 Euros for every 1,000 MR points