American Express Membership Rewards - Concurrent Gold and Platinum Invitations - Combine Points?

Hi,

I apologize if this has been covered already, and I apologize for its length. :) I received an invitation for a Rewards Plus Gold Card, which waived the $150 annual fee for the first year and offered 50,000 membership rewards bonus points after spending $500 on that card by July 31st. The application had an RSVP number that said: "Your Pre-approved Membership Status is Valid Until: June 19, 2007." Initially, I didn't respond to the invitation, and received another invitation, this time for a Platinum (Charge) Card with 100,000 membership rewards points if I spend $1,000 on the card by August 31st -- the $450 annual fee wasn't waived. The deadline for replying to that invitation is July 20th.

So the Rewards Plus Gold invitation expired, but I called AMEX customer service, and was told if I sent in the completed application for that card with the offers on it, the offers would be honored. I faxed the application, was approved, and am waiting for delivery of the card. After all that, my question is: Can I apply for the Platinum Card before July 20th and would AMEX honor the points from that offer, too? I'd think AMEX would only allow one of two cards, so perhaps my dream of 150,000 points for a $450 AF is unrealistic. :) I'd rather spend nothing for an AF and get 50,000 points than $450 and get 100,000 points. My wife also received the Plat offer, so we could just use that one.

Thanks for any information you have about this, and again, sorry for its length!

If they approve you for both cards, and meet both spending targets, you get both bonuses. And if you have a chance of making all three on spending, get all three. The points are worth way more than you're paying for them.

Thanks for the reply, sbm! My wife and I also took advantage and received cards for the Business Gold w/25K of points after 1st purchase and waived 1st year fee, Finally we received invitations, were approved and are waiting for the Delta Gold Skymiles credit cards w/25K miles points after first purchase, 7.5K miles with additional cardholder, and waived 1st year fees.

As you can imagine, we are each probably going to cancel most, if not all of our AMEX and Skymiles cards before the next year's card fees start.

I believe each of us can link our AMEX charge cards together in order to consolidate the points. Could you please tell me if we did this, and we each kept one charge card but cancelled the others, whether we'd lose the points that originated from the cancelled cards? I believe I've read in the case of an individual card, you have 30 days to redeem the points after cancelling the card. Thanks again for your help!

As long as you have an active Membership Rewards account, the points in it remain active. The 25K SkyMiles are going straight to DL, but the others should be fine. You should be able to let them know that you already have an MR account as the new ones are opened. Or they'll open a whole bunch and then you just have to call in and combine all of them. No big deal either way. The only caveat is that you and your wife will have two different accounts; you can't combine those together. So you'll actually maintain two accounts, not just one. If you cancel all the MR accounts you have 30 days to cash out - that bit is accurate. Finally, make sure that the account you keep is a charge card account with the "real" MR program, not the MR Express or whatever the new bottom tier is called.

S.

PS - Welcome to FlyerTalk! Enjoy your stay.

Thanks again for your help and your kind welcome to FlyerTalk. I'm really impressed with the courtesy and helpfulness of the FlyerTalk community. Some other forums -- which shall remain nameless :) -- have valuable information, but sometimes threads get very contentious. I really don't see that here.