The Offer
Direct link to offer (might not show for everybody, this is an ‘incognito mode offer’)
The American Express Blue Cash Preferred is currently offering a sign up bonus of up to $450, broken down as follows:
- $250 back after $1,000 in spend within the first three months
- 10% cash back on U.S. restaurants up to $2,000 in spend ($200 cash back) for the first six months
Card Details
- $95 annual fee
- Card earns at the following rates:
- 6% cash back at U.S. supermarkets (up to $6,000 in spend annually, then 1%)
- 3% cash back at U.S. gas stations and select U.S. department stores
- 1% back on all other purchases
- You can only get the sign up bonus on American Express cards once
- Valid until May 3rd, 2017
Our Verdict
I can’t get it to show for me, but it’s working for some. You can also try these tips for getting Amex increased offers to show, although those didn’t work for me today either. As noted in the previous post, Amex is also offering $100 referral bonus on both BCP and BCE. If you have a spouse to refer you, the standard offer is the same as this special incognito offer for BCP ($250+$200 vs $150+$200+$100). You can’t get the referral credit on the incognito offer.
American Express are rotating what you earn 10% (or sometimes 5%) in for that extra $200. Previous offers have been as follows:
- 10% on amazon up to $2,000 in purchases
- 5% on travel up to $4,000 in purchases
- 10% on wireless up to $2,000 in purchases
Make sure you read through these things everybody should know about American Express before applying. There is also the same offer on the Blue Cash Everyday card as well.
Hi, can I apply the second Blue Cash Perferred while I am having one? Thank s.
I’m not sure (you certainly won’t get any bonus). Best bet might be to signup for a Blue Cash Everyday and then try and see if they’ll let you product change to Blue Cash Preferred.
Hey DoC. We applied for this card back in May and have been using it for the signup bonus including the awesome 10% cash back at restaurants until the fall. Now, my wife and I have a trip planned to Austria and Hungary in August (using Delta, UR, United, and SPG/Marriott points) and I’m wondering if the European restaurants would code as restaurants because even with the 2.7% foreign transaction fee I believe we’d still be getting 7.3% cash back (10%-2.7%). Do you think this strategy would work / make sense? Thanks as always for your help.
Usually with American Express it’s U.S merchants/restaurants only. Not sure if that is the case with this offer sorry.
thanks so much. that’s really good to know. appreciate it.
DP: Incognito didn’t work for Amex BCP on CHROME but worked just fine on Internet Explorer’s InPrivate mode
Do military commissaries count as a supermarket for the 6%? Thanks.
No idea, any military members know? If so, add it to the payments workshop please: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/payments-workshop/
I can get the Blue Cash Preferred at $250 cash + $200 restaurants, but can only get $150 cash + $200 restaurants on the Blue Cash Everyday. I can get these by simply deleting absolutely all history, cache, stored passwords, etc in IE and opening an inPrivate/incognito window.
I used a private browser and saw only $150 plus the $200 max for restaurants. Still would like clarification that those of us with the no-fee version would be eligible for this card and bonus. Also aware from other blogs that AMEX has in certain situations tightened or clawed back on MS, a reason not to jump too quickly for the 6% back on groceries reward.
P.S. I don’t feel misled, have gotten so much benefit from DoC many many times. Those who are so nitpicky are free at any time to instead use their energies productively by doing all of the work and starting their own blog.
Yes, cards are considered separate so you can get both.
I was able to get the $250 offer first try when I got home from work and tried my own wifi. When I was trying from work and via mobile internet earlier it was only showing $150 offwr
Try in mozilla, it works. applied green as well, approved. this is like 4th amex card within 3 months. Love Amex!!
Best way i find for doing the ‘Incongnito’ method is on a web browser while not on wifi.
The ip address on a mobile phone is dynamic, which means amex doesn’t have and prior info on it and therefor it is not black listed.
When i go on wifi i never get the offers which leads me to think amex keeps a log of all ip’s that are finishing for offers and doesn’t display it to anyone who searched for offers prior on the specific ip address.
Going to just be honest here and say it. Calling this a $450 offer is completely misleading.
With this logic we should see the Discover IT card with a $700 sign up bonus offer. $100 bonus, $600 in rotating categories.
I love you and DoC and everything you do but these kinds of posts and titles are a major pet peeve of mine.
I agree with you. I love this site because they avoid the click-bait headlines others post, but this one is straddling the line.
+1
Yup. Considering the first year’s annual fee is NOT waived, this is basically a $150 cash offer and a few bucks more if you happen to do a LOT of your eating in restaurants.
Nothing to get excited about here.
Its just any easy way to see the total value of the offer. There are many versions of BCE/BCP offers, 450 is the best and there’s no reason to entertain the other offers so this prevents any confusion that might occur when comparing 250 vs 250+200.
I mean I understand they only have so many characters when creating the title to get their message across but all you have to do is look at a few posts down and see how the other one was written:
“Public Signup Offer on Amex Blue Cash Cards: 10% Back on Restaurants (up to $200) + $150/100”
When I saw $450 pop up on my tweetcast I handed my 3 month old to my wife and moved swiftly to my computer to apply just in case this was a leaked link and may die a quick death. Note: I didn’t think for one minute this was intentional and an attempt to gain clicks.
DoC is by far the best resource for deals (other than maybe DansDeals). I always recommend it to anyone I know who doesn’t know anything but is curious about what I do. Definitely not trying to bash them.
As far as other offers, I’m personally going to hold out until later in the year when I’d imagine a better offer pops up, probably Amazon again. I know this is very YMMV but in my case we rarely eat out at restaurants but spend way too much at Amazon (2 young kids). Add in the increased $95 AF (which isn’t waived in the first year) and the lifetime bonus limitation and you have reason to believe offers will only get better.
I’ll fix the title, thanks for the feedback. Like you said it’s definitely not intentional, we just assume that most people know what these offers are (e.g $250 + 10% back somewhere) but your right it should be clearer where the 10% back is.
If one has CSR and values UR points at 1.5, s/he would get 4.5% back at restaurants already, so the 10% is really worth “just” 5.5% back = $110. Still a great offer though.
By the way, is the 10% in addition to the 1% cashback you’d normally get at restaurants with this card?
Just to be clear, it’s $x + 10% on restaurants, with that 10% capped at $y.
Updated post to make it clearer