The Offer
There’s a new signup bonus offer for the American Express Business Platinum card:
- Get 120,000 points after $15,000 in spend within the first three months of card membership.
- Plus, earn 10X Membership Rewards points during your first 3 months of Card Membership on your first $7,500 combined in the following U.S. purchases:
- for advertising in select media
- at office supply stores
- for shipping services
- with wireless telephone service providers
- with materials and hardware suppliers
Note: we don’t know the source of this offer and whether it’s meant for everyone. Use at your own risk.
Card Details
- Annual fee of $695 is not waived the first year
- Card earns at the following rates:
- 5x points per $1 spent on purchases made with airlines or hotels booked directly from AmericanExpress Travel website
- 1.5x points on qualifying purchases of $5,000 or more
- 1x points on all other purchases
- $200 airline incidental credit per calendar year
- Lounge access:
- Centurion lounge access
- International American Express lounge access
- Delta SkyClub lounge access
- Priority pass select membership
- Airspace lounge access
- Marriott gold status
- Hilton gold status
- Fee Credit for Global Entry or TSA Pre✓
- No foreign transaction fees
- View these other hidden benefits
- SoulCycle benefits
Our Verdict
We’ve seen massive targeted offers of 260,000 or 230,000, but for the regular folk 150,000 or 160,000 or 170,000 have been the best offers available.
With this new offer, you can spend $7,500 in the bonus category (office supply, etc) and another $7,500 anywhere, and you’ll end up with 187,5000 bonus points. (It’s a total of 202,500 points: 120,000 bonus + 75,000 office supply + 7,500 regular spend points.)
For someone who has an easy time maxing out the category bonus, this offer might be superior to the 150k-170k offers. Also note, if you friend/spouse has a high Amex referral bonus, you might prefer signing up there if you can get 150k bonus + 25k referral bonus (just note the tax implications on the referral bonus side).
Just note, Amex has been known to make issues with manufacturing spend toward a minimum spend requirement. I’m not sure if gift cards from Staples or Office Depot in large quantities would be an issue for this type of bonus.
Personally I’d go for a simpler 150k-170k offer. You can read about my own recent Amex Business Platinum card signup bonus here.
Hat tip to Y50-70
It’s a legit offer from AMEX. Not sure about the direct link, but you can pull up this offer if you click around the 150K-170K links enough times. I was able to get this offer back in December, but didn’t pull the trigger then as I was hoping the bonus categories would roll out to the 170K offer (spoiler: it did not).
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/targeted-american-express-business-platinum-100000-point-offer-no-lifetime-language/#comment-1507383
Oh interesting. Yeah, it looks to me like a normal offer, just since this is the post-landing page I didn’t know if it was maybe somehow targeted or otherwise not a standard offer, so it’s good to know that you found it with organic search.
I just had a weird experience with AMEX on membership rewards points.. I booked a flight via amex travel and paid most of it with my points (say ticket was $2000.. I used $1900 worth of credit). One would think that 1) my points goes to zero (because I used it all toward the purchase) and 2) I would earn points on the difference that I paid for (on $100 multiplied by 5 as the purchase was made on amex travel)… Instead, they put me into a negative rewards credit balance. Their math was I used $1900 worth of the credit then since $1900 is posted as a “credit” in my account, this created another negative adjustment of 1,900. and since I used points (even partially to offset the cost of the flight), I would not earn any points on dollars that I have spent…
How does this make any sense? So basically if you use points, not only you get penalized by not earning any points on the purchase, even if you actually paid for the difference, you also get penalized again by having adjustment for the portion that I paid with points? I kept explaining that if they are going to put the negative adjustment on $1900, then they should also honor points for $2000 purchase so that they net to $100… I talked to 3 different membership rewards reps… somehow this is not a common sense to them..
Anyone else experienced an issue like this with AMEX?
Did you try to use an airline that is your “selected” airline to be able to use 35% of points back? At least looking in AmEx Travel it doesn’t seem to account for the 35% when showing amount of points needed….
Any tips on how to get out of the Amex pop-up jail quickly? I want a new card asap as I have some large spending coming in early-April.
This offer HAS lifetime language.
I see the offer but I don’t spend $15k in a single card and I have no place that sells VGCs and no way to liquidate VGCs anyway.
Plus Amex doesn’t like gift cards anyway
Just buy a fully refundable airline ticket with Delta or United for 15k. Then return it once the points post. That’s what I do.
Isn’t this RATbat for an Amex clawback?
I am assuming Amex won’t give you the 10X points for buying Visa / Mastercards at Staples or OD.
Have there been reports of Amex not giving points for VGC? I suppose if there are eyes on the account it could be worrisome if there is too much MS purchases. I’ll add a note. https://www.doctorofcredit.com/is-it-safe-to-manufacture-spend-to-meet-the-signup-bonus-spend-requirement/
I think it depends on whether the store provides L3 data to AmEx. I bought about $3k of grocery store gift cards towards my Biz Plat SUB few months ago and did receive bonus just fine, but the specific grocery store chain (regional) does NOT provide L3 data to AmEx.
I once had AMEX claw back rewards on a single purchase of $1,000 (two $500 Visa Gift Cards). I know it’s only a single data point, but I’d be very gunshy to do it, especially during a SUB.
It was a local grocery store, unsure about L3 data. No, the total wasn’t exact. I mixed in about $30 worth of actual groceries. Somehow they knew (so I’m guessing they did get L3 data).
Thanks so much for sharing the additional information. It does sound like there must have been L3 data transmitted. FWIW, I’ve never bought more than a single $500 gift card in one transaction, but I doubt that is in any way related, as most people don’t spend $500 in a single trip to the grocery store.
Here is my experience with this card, *which neither P1 or P2 had before*:
We called in and got the offer for 170K+10K points sent to us by E-mail (with Lifetime language).
If we logged in before applying, we got the message “Currently our system is not responding”.
If we applied w/o logging in, we both got the message “Based on your history with American Express… … you are not eligible for this welcome offer”.
We tried the previous 15K+10K link w/o Lifetime Language, which forced us to log in. We then got the message “This offer is no longer available”.
We considered applying with BSN EIN instead of SSN for the still available 170K + 10K offer, hoping that this may avoid the history message. However, that option is not available for Sole Prop (only for Partnerships & Corporations).
Did anyone try to apply as partnership and enter the EIN even though the company is Sole Prop? The sales rep stated that they usually don’t ask for documentation. I am just concerned about any later ramifications if approved…..?
That’s weird, I just got approved for a 2nd NLL business w/sole prop 170k + 10k offer last week. Previous one was in Nov. Never heard of it being sole prop or not
Care to share the link of this offer with NLL? The highest NLL sub I know of is 150K
Sounds like you are in popup jail
I don’t normally believe in Amex RAT traps, but now I am starting to think they are real… 45,000 points isn’t worth it anyway.
You scared me with 187,5000 bonus points
I see that the NLL terms is there?? So can’t apply if already got itin the past?
They’re really pushing biz plat. I’ve been legit spammed by this card, like they threw the NLL out the window with this one.
Same here. I already have three and they still send me both mailers and emails offering me more Biz Plats.