Today, American Express announced that Premier Rewards Gold cardholders will loose the annual 15,000 Membership Rewards points bonus for spending 30,000 in a calendar year effective in 2015.
In a statement from American Express:
We are eliminating this because the majority of Premier Rewards Gold Card Members did not meet the annual spending threshold of $30,000 and did not get the point bonus. Instead, we are evaluating other benefits and services that we believe may provide value to more of our Premier Rewards Gold Card Members.
For those of you still completing the $30,000 spend in 2014, you will still receive your 15,000 point bonus. However, effective January, this benefit will go away.
While American Express hasn’t announced the other benefits and services it may be providing to compensate for this loss, I do consider this a major loss to this card type, because before it effectively waived the annual fee. The card comes with a $175 annual fee, and earns 3x on airfares purchased directly with the airline, 2x on gas and groceries and 1x on everything else.
I currently have this card, but with the removal of the annual point bonus, I will be canceling this card at the end of the month.
This will still leave me with multiple Amex cards to choose from, however:
- Platinum Card
- “Old” Blue Cash
- Starwood Preferred Guest
- Delta Reserve
- Amex Everyday Preferred
Do you have the American Express Premier Rewards Gold Card? Will you be canceling it because of the annual point loss?
Jamie Larounis is an avid traveler, blogger and miles/points educator. Traveling well over 100,000 miles a year and staying in hotels for over 100 nights, he leverages miles, points and other deals to fly in first class cabins, and stay in 5-star hotels. The Forward Cabin shares his experiences, musings, reviews, tips, tricks, resources and industry news with you, the fellow traveler.
I canceled this card a few months ago but wasn’t really very close to the $30,000 spend target anyways. I don’t think that it was a particularly good place to put that much spend anyways
I fly a lot and normally use this card to pay for domestic air travel and use the Amex Travel site to travel on foreign carriers on international itineraries (where I’d earn 3x on airfare + an extra point for using the Amextravel site… so total of 4x.)
I just hit the 30k threshold so I’ll be getting the 15k bonus points soon. I’ll miss this card. It really depends on what the retention offer will be in order for me to keep it.