American Express Membership Rewards - BonusPointsMall Extends 4x MR Deal for Plats

In case you haven't seen this yet, Amex Platinum's BonusPointsMall.com has extended its 4x Membership Rewards deal until February 29, 2008. After that, purchases through the mall go back to the standard 3x.

Cheers,

Andrea

Good to know, is there a link showing this? I'm guessing not too many folks are taking advantage of bonus points mall, thus the extension?

If you go to the homepage (http://www.bonuspointsmall.com), you'll see the announcement at the top of the page. "4x" is also listed under each retailer's name.

I originally noticed it when I logged in to pay this month's bill online. A notice popped up on the statement page.

I bought the majority of my holiday gifts at the Bonus Points Mall this season so I could snag the extra MRs. I borrowed MRs earlier this year and the extra bonus will help me repay the loan a bit quicker.

Andrea

I just logged in and have the same promo extension message ^

Since I've got both a Biz Gold and Personal Green, I'm not sure what made me qualify.

fwiw, i didn't use bonuspointsmall as often as i would've like due to the restriction against also using retailer promos. :(

I am still confused about the bonus points mall from Amex. When it says earn triple points on all purchases is it (1 MR point from the credit card and 2 points for shopping through the Membership Rewards Mall) or is it (1 MR point from the credit card and 3 points for shopping through the Membership Rewards Mall)? If it is the latter then this is not half bad but if it is the former then it is quite terrible. Also, the fact that one cannot use coupons when shopping through the Bonus Points mall is also a strong deterrent for me since my other credit cards online shopping portals and the various airline shopping portals usually allow the use of some coupons.

For anyone who purchased items through Amex's BonusPointsMall.com between 1/1/08 and 2/29/08, watch your statements carefully. Amex extended their holiday promotion to 4x through 2/29/08 but now they are not honoring their own promotion.

I sent two emails about this to customer service and both reps said the promotion ended on 12/31/07. That's absolutely not true since the new 2/29/08 deadline was splashed on the Mall's homepage and "4x" was listed under the name of each retailer in the mall.

I'm going to call Amex next but I'm completely aggravated that I have to police their own promotions. Check your statements!

Andrea

Had the same experiance. Didnt bother calling just emailed them and they still didnt get it until a couple of reponses............eventually they fixed it for quad points. Truly frustrating:td:


For anyone who purchased items through Amex's BonusPointsMall.com between 1/1/08 and 2/29/08, watch your statements carefully. Amex extended their holiday promotion to 4x through 2/29/08 but now they are not honoring their own promotion.

I sent two emails about this to customer service and both reps said the promotion ended on 12/31/07. That's absolutely not true since the new 2/29/08 deadline was splashed on the Mall's homepage and "4x" was listed under the name of each retailer in the mall.

I'm going to call Amex next but I'm completely aggravated that I have to police their own promotions. Check your statements!

Andrea

[/QUOTE]watch your statements carefully. Amex extended their holiday promotion to 4x through 2/29/08 but now they are not honoring their own promotion.
I'm going to call Amex next but I'm completely aggravated that I have to police their own promotions. Check your statements!
Andrea[/QUOTE]


I had the same problem myself and did not get off the phone until I made sure I was rewarded with a couple of thousand MR points for having to call and police their own promotion.

P.S and for having to deal with a rep who barely spoke english

I had the same problem myself and did not get off the phone until I made sure I was rewarded with a couple of thousand MR points for having to call and police their own promotion.

P.S and for having to deal with a rep who barely spoke english

Were they genuine earned points or compensation for "policing" them?

After seeing this thread, I checked my statements for the last 3 months and sure enough, the additional holiday bonus point had not been credited. It was fairly easy to spot because I purchased 5 big ticket items during this period.

I just spent 40 minutes on the phone with a rep who also told me the promotion ended on 12-31-07, and I would need to supply them with the bonus code ID to "prove" that the promo had been extended to 2-29-08. ...? How is it even possible that something like this could be on the site for so long and the MR folks be unaware? Doesn't anyone in the department even look at the site?

I was put on hold twice so the rep could confer with a supervisor, and at the end of it all was told they would open an "inquiry" to try to establish my claim about the extension and someone would get back to me in 48 hours. No offer of anything for my trouble. Just a polite, "we'll get back to you."

Those of you who were successful in convincing them this promo actually existed, can you tell me how you did it? I've had a Plat for 3 years, and a Gold for 20. This is perhaps the second time I've called about anything since 1988. Very discouraging.

if you are accumulating MR points in order to transfer to your favorite airline, forget about the bonus points mall and try the airlines shopping sites. They usually give much more bang for your buck. here's the continental onepass shopping mall

http://www.continental.com/web/en-US/content/onepass/earn/shopping/default.aspx?SID=B7D44381872F4058AC5BA1F09E949133

check it out !

... forget about the bonus points mall and try the airlines shopping sites. They usually give much more bang for your buck....

The key word is usually.

When American Express says "3x" they really mean two additional points per dollar because they are counting the point you will earn for the card transaction, which has nothing to do with their portal. This means you are better off using the Amex portal if the same merchant awards only one mile per dollar through an airline site. (During the promotion which was the subject of this thread you were better off using the Amex portal if the merchant offered one or two miles per dollar.)

I have not looked recently, but a unique feature of the Amex portal is that the same rate applies to all merchants. Airline and other credit card portals allow each merchant to set an individual rate. This makes it easy to compare. If your airline portal shows one mile per dollar, order through BonusPointsMall.

invalid argument. shopping thru the airline site will still get you the amex points b/c you are using your amex card for check out and you are getting up to 5 miles/$1 at some retailers compared to 3 points/$1 for plat cards. Another big plus is that you can use your manufacturers coupons which you cannot do at the bonus points mall. this is huge vis-a-vis "shipping & handling" most of the time.

....shopping thru the airline site will still get you the amex points b/c you are using your amex card...

Sorry if my post was unclear. When I wrote "they are counting the point you will earn for the card transaction, which has nothing to do with their portal" I meant that you would earn one Membership Rewards point per dollar even if you use the card to shop through another portal. Nonetheless it is not true that you will always earn more by shopping through an airline portal, it depends on the merchant.

The Continental shopping portal is immature, there are only about 50 partners. Some of these offer only two miles per dollar, which is exactly the same as BonusPointsMall if you are a Platinum cardholder. However, I would rather have Membership Rewards points than OnePass miles because of the flexibility to transfer to airlines other than CO, including airlines such as VS which do not have their own shopping portal, or airlines which have superior award availability.

I don't find OnePass miles useful, but I do accumulate American Airlines AAdvantage miles. AA lists two dozen shopping partners here...

http://www.aa.com/aa/i18nForward.do?p=/AAdvantage/partners/retailGifts/main.jsp

...plus another 200 here...

http://www.aa.com/aa/i18nForward.do?p=/AAdvantage/partners/retailGifts/eShopping.jsp

If you have time to look you will see that some of these merchants offer only one mile per dollar, and these are the instances where we would do better to shop through BonusPointsMall.

Of course there are also shopping portals operated by ThankYou Network, and Chase Freedom. If contemplating a major purchase it's worth checking several.

Wish I could remember who had originally posted this, but before you go to www.acme.com to buy widgets, go to www.evreward.com to see which network (ThankYou, Amex, AAdvantage, etc.) is offering the highest ratio for spend on acme.com.

Highest I've seen on www.advantageeshopping.com is 10 points/$ for proflowers.com...you can't beat that with a stick. They've also got REI, where I shop a lot, which BPM.com does not.

(A nifty Ponzi scheme of sorts: Back in December I bought $1000 worth of gift cards from GiftCertificates.com - through AAdvantageEshop to get the holiday spend bonus...spent the cards on certs from REI. Now I can go through AAdvantageEshop again to REI.com, then use the cert to pay for merchandise and score another 3x or so per $...This all thanks to folks smarter than I who originally posted the idea on the AAdvantage forum back in December...)