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I love Amex Offers, and they love me.
A couple of months ago I was targeted with an offer from Intermedia= Spend $200 get 20k bonus Membership Rewards. Pretty sweet deal, right? Effectively, this is straight up buying points for a penny each if you discard the product altogether. As soon as I saw the offer I immediately went to Intermedia to get in on the deal. The problem? It was email, and it was billed monthly. I initially thought I’d purchase full year plans assuming that they would bill for the entire year upfront. Wrong. They discount the monthly billing by a $1, but continue to bill you monthly for a year. HMPH!
This would mean I’d need a lot of accounts.
Matters were made worst when I discovered they prorated the first month’s fee, which meant I’d either have to purchase MORE accounts if I were to buy late in the month and still crack $200 needed to greenlight the offer, or wait until the next month started. I figured if they were pro-rating the first month, it meant billing occurred on the 1st of the month, and if I bought late in the month I wouldn’t have a lot of time to cancel all of those accounts before getting billed again.
Honestly, this was beginning to be more work than I’d really wanted.
But I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to buy Membership Rewards so cheaply. I decided if I was going to do it, I’d do it at the beginning of July, August, or September. I totally forgot about it in July, but for whatever reason, a few days ago, the deal popped into my head and I went for it. Here’s how I (hopefully) bought 20k Amex Membership Rewards for $201.16
Here’s the offer:
And the various email plans offered by Intermedia
As I’d mentioned above, Intermedia pro-rates the monthly billing. Since I was looking on August 4th it would only bill me for the remaining days of the month. I punched the numbers and found 15 Cloud Email + Backup accounts to be the best.
I also presume this means that my next month’s bill will hit the card on the first day of the month, and I’d need to cancel the account before then to avoid double the cost of my points.
You’ll go through some brief setup stuff and then you’ll proceed to Review & Checkout. The Pro-rated bill is factored in, and it totaled $201.16
You want to make sure you setup your own account, otherwise you won’t get billed until your email is setup, and you’ll be contacted by Intermedia.
You can see in the terms and conditions that you are able to cancel the service, and do it online. Great!
If this wasn’t explicitly stated…there wouldn’t be any reason to execute this offer without a need for a lot of email.
That was enough for me. I bought.
Right now I have a pending purchase for $1.
Per a reader on FrequentMiler this seems to be normal and after a few days the pending charge falls off and the bill goes through, Amex points get credited.
May 31st was a business day, so I’m hoping mine fall off early this week after a few business days have passed.
I’ll keep you guys updated. But fingers crossed it works and I just bought 20k Amex Membership Rewards for $201.16
The Chase Sapphire Preferred is a great starter card that earns Premium Ultimate Rewards that can be transferred into over a dozen partners many of which are US based.
Welcome Offer
60k Points after $4k spend in 3 months
80k offer in branch currently – I think this should be online soon
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
Super solid welcome offer.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex℠and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash , Ink Business Unlimited you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
- 3x on dining
- including eligible delivery services for takeout
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Ultimate Rewards – Chase Travel Portal
- $50 Annual Credit on hotel stays purchased via Ultimate Rewards/Chase Travel
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred® continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel Portal and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including primary rental car insurance, purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 13 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in the Chase Travel center for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Primary rental car coverage is my favorite
There is currently an 80k offer after $4k spend in 3 months available in branch, and up to 90k after $6k spend in 6 months. I suspect some version of this will be online soon if you don’t want the hassle of going into a branch.
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 60k is a very, very good offer. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back. .
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
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