AMEX Membership Rewards - Best Use
 

I just received the targeted offer for an AMEX Gold card. 50K Membership Rewards points after 2K in spend. Additional 25k bonus points per year with $50K in spend. No annual fee for first year.

I'm collecting AA, CO and SPG points.

What is the best use/value for redeeming Membership Rewards points?

Transfer to an airline and redeem for long-haul premium cabin travel. Unfortunately, 50K isn't enough for a full ticket and they don't transfer at a reasonable rate into AA or SPG, but they do go into CO quite nicely.

They transfer into US 1:1.

This is an excellent post about using Amex MR.

Frugal Travel Guy

Funny. I received almost the same offer, only for spending $5,000. Nothing too terrible since I have time until November, but still...

US is not an Amex MR partner.

Anyone able to transfer points to an airline partner as a Blue member?

There are occassionally good bonus promotions for transfers to some airlines like I think Delta and Continental.

Beware, because Delta has horrible redempetion rates. For ex, they may give you a 20% bonus, but inflate the award rate 50% from what they advertise. Not a good deal IMO. However, Delta is good for partner redemption, which are all at the "low" advertised level.

Continental hasn't run a transfer promo in a long time and its speculated they may leave Amex MR once the merger with United goes through.

Neither AA nor US are Amex transfer partners.

Of the airlines OP mentions, only CO is. And they're a perfectly reasonable transfer partner.

But the answer is that it depends on what kind of rewards the OP is interested in --- ANA is a transfer partner, just 63k for Virgin Upper Class JFK-LHR-JFK for instance. Air Canada Aeroplan offers unreal value in their first class mini-round the worlds to South Asia (as far South as Singapore) for 120k.

Avoid transferring to Delta...

+1

American Express Blue and the new Zync card participate in Membership Rewards Express, a diluted version which does not offer transfers. The solution is to apply for a Green, Gold or Platinum card. When multiple card accounts are linked to the same Membership Rewards account all of the points are classified based on the highest card and become transferrable.

Unsurprisingly, these questions are frequently asked and already answered in the American Express Membership Rewards section of Flyertalk:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...p-rewards-410/

Not easily, but there are ways.

CO has not had a transfer promo in nearly 5 years and they are unlikely to have another.

DL has them all the time and it is barely enough to keep up with the ridiculous inflation seen on the redemption side of the equation.

Thanks for the input. CO may be my best use, although the 63K Virgin is intriguing.

I'm really trying to decide it this is a good enough offer to use an inquiry on.

Over the last year I have participated in all the major CC deals. I have a handful of AA Citi cards, Chase Continental Debit cards, Chase UA Visa, Chase BA, and personal and business SPG AMEX cards. Is this offer in the same "no-brainer" category as those?

I would say this is a true statement, unless you already have found an award you like. For example, I am using DL miles to basically fly from MSP to Europe and Anchorage in F/J for 100K miles. That is a really good deal, assuming you are flexible and you already know the low-level award exists.

I am also using DL miles to fly between EWR/ANC/MSP/EWR with stops en route in coach for 25K miles (with the hopes of DL upgrades for PM members in the fall). One main attraction to DL miles is that they allow free domestic stopovers on their award tickets. No other domestic airline mileage program allows that, as far as I am aware.