FAQ - Different ways to use American Express MR Points V2

Different ways to use Amex Membership Rewards (MR) Points

Updated to factor in changes to the various flavors of the personal Amex Platinum. Critiques are welcome and let me know if the table formatting is too confusing. Thanks to u/lumpylump76 for the last update.

Many people in this sub spends hours figuring how and where to earn the most points/miles, but the more complicated, and oftentimes frustrating, part of this hobby is the redemption of those points. We even have a spin-off sub r/awardtravel, the Trip Report, Frustration, and Storytime weekly threads dedicated to it.

This short guide describes some of the ways you can use Amex MR points. If you have been reading this sub/visited other churning related blogs you know of the popularity of the program and hopefully after reading this you have a good idea of whether Amex MR points are worthwhile for you.

You can earn Amex MR points via the following cards:

| Platinum/Schwab Platinum/Morgan Stanley Platinum/Ameriprise Platinum/Business Platinum| Premier Rewards Gold/Business Gold Rewards| Everyday| Everyday Preferred | Green/Business Green| Gold/Ameriprise Gold ---|---|----|----|----|----|---- Publicly available bonus | 60,000 (100,000 targeted)/60,000/60,000/None/75,000 (100,000 or 150,000 targeted)| 25,000 (50,000 incognito/targeted)/50,000 (75,000 incognito/targeted)| 10,000 (15,000 incognito/targeted)| 15,000 (30,000 incognito/targeted | N/A (25,000 incognito/targeted)/5,000| N/A (25,000 incognito/targeted)/25,000 Minimum spend in 3 months | $5,000/$5,000/$5,000/NA/$10,000 first 50K and additional $10,000 for 25K| $2,000/$5,000| $1,000 | $1,000| N/A ($1,000 targeted)/first purchase| $1,000 Additional bonus | N/A| N/A| N/A| N/A| N/A| N/A Bonus categories | 5x flights booked with airline/Amextravel.com and 5x hotels booked with Amextravel.com (Business Platinum 5x flights/hotels have to be booked on Amextravel.com) | 3x flights booked with airline/Amex, 2x US restaurants, 2x US gas stations, and 2x US supermarkets (Business 3x on airline or advertising or gas or shipping or computer related purchases, 2x on the remaining bonus categories)| 2x US supermarkets (up to $6,000 per year in purchases) and 2x travel booked with Amextravel.com | 3x US supermarkets (up to $6,000 per year in purchases), 2x US gas stations, and 2x travel booked with Amextravel.com| 2x travel booked with Amextravel.com| 2x flights booked with airline, 2x travel booked with Amextravel.com, and 2x US restaurants Transfer ability | Yes| Yes| Yes| Yes| Yes| Yes Additional benefits | Amex offers, $15 Uber credit per month ($20 for December), $200 airline fee credit (selected airline), GE/TSA reimbursement, SPG/Marriott/Hilton Gold Status, Priority Pass, and Centurion Lounge Access. Business Platinum gets 50% more points on $5K+ purchases and 50% points back when used to book first/business class and any class with selected airline | Amex offers and $100 airline fee credit (selected airline) [personal only]| Amex offers and 20% more points when the card is used 20+ times in a billing period| Amex offers and 50% more points when the card is used 30+ times in a billing period| Amex offers| Amex offers Annual fee | $550/$550//$550/$550 (Ameriprise waived first year)/$450| $195 (waived first year)/$175 (waived first year)| $0 | $95| $95 (waived first year)| $160 (waived first year)

Keep in mind that Amex considers all the different Platinum cards as different products, so that signing up for the Platinum bonus does not exclude you from receiving the Schwab Platinum bonus. However people who signed up for the Platinum 100,000 offer using the leaked links from May/October 2016 have been denied the bonus if they have/had the Schwab/Ameriprise Platinum cards.

Under 1 cent per point value

These redemption options can be good if you have a small amount of MR points, and it doesn't look like you will earn more for a major redemption.

Shop with Points

On the Amex website, you can purchase goods directly using points. A Dell XPS 13 will cost you $1,299 or 259,800 points, which puts you at 0.5 cents per point.

Use Points as Statement Credit

You can directly use MR points to pay off charges on your card. The value is around 0.6 cents per point, so you will get less than 1 cent per point when you use points this way.

Transfer Points to Plenti

Plenti is the new Retail loyalty program Amex is pushing along with a number of large retailers. Amex MR points can be converted to Plenti points at a 1:1 ratio. Plenti points can be used at various retailers for discounts.

1 cent per point value

These redemption options can be good if you have a small amount of MR points, and it doesn't look like you will earn more for a major redemption. Or, when you feel that 1 cent/point is a good enough value for your purpose.

Using Points for Gift Cards

You can order various gift card from the Amex MR website at the value of 1 cent/point. There are GCs for shopping, Dining, Travel, Retail, Theme parks, and much more.

Pay with Points for Taxi/Uber

You can pay your Taxi or Uber using your MR Points at the value of 1 cent/point.

Pay with Points on Amex Travel

You can search for flights/cars/hotels/vacations/cruises on the Amex travel website. You can choose to pay some or all or your travel with points at the value of approximately 1 cent/point for flights only. A quick look shows that the prices are comparable as shopping directly with the airlines, so Amex travel is just a online travel agent, except you can pay part of the price with points. The advantage with purchasing tickets through AmEx portal is twofold: You can get a seat as long a ticket is being sold, and you can earn additional frequent flyer miles for the ticket. For all intents and purposes, you are buying a ticket using your points as cash.

Greater than 1 cent per point

Transfer Points to Frequent Customer Programs

This is where the good stuff happens with plenty of caveats. Note that these redemptions will likely require a lot of MR points, and quite a bit of planning and research.

Amex partners with a number of airlines and hotels, and you can transfer MR points into the program for those airlines/hotels. When you have miles in an airline program, you can now redeem the miles using the airlines price. This can lead to some really good values, but also a lot of limitations. You have to study various airline award charts to find the best values, and then you also need to find availability of awards.

For example: (The following example is real, search done on 3/30/2017 using Google Flights/ANA)

Lets say on June 3, 2017 I want to fly on ANA from New York to Tokyo. ANA sells a ticket for $1,618.15 (NH 9, NH 10), but if I were to use ANA Miles, it would cost me only 50,000 miles + $85.14. My 50,00 MR points is now worth 3 cents/point. The caveat here is that is you want to fly on June 2 there isn't any award availability.

Transfer Partners

The following is a list of airline transfer partners for the Amex MR points program.

• Delta SkyMiles (1000:1000)
• Aero Mexico Club Premier (1000:1000)
• Air Canada Aeroplan (1000:1000)
• Air France/KLM Flying Blue (1000:1000)
• Aitalia Mille Miglia (1000:1000)
• ANA (1000:1000)
• Asia Miles (1000:1000)
• British Airways Avios (1000:800)
• El Al (1000:20)
• Emirates (1000:1000)
• Hawaiian Airlines (1000:1000)
• Iberia (1000:800)
• JetBlue (1000:800)
• Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer (1000:1000)
• Virgin American Elevate (1000:500)
• Virgin Atlantic Flying Club (1000:1000)

Amex periodically has transfer bonus offers (in 2016 there was a 50% offer to transfer to British Airways), but don't wait on it if you have a specific redemption in mind.

The following is a list of hotel transfer partners for the Amex MR points program (it can be a bit more difficult to get good value out of these partners due to lower value of Hilton and the poor transfer ratio of the SPG. There are some exceptions and it's a decent way to top up points if you're just short for a redemption):

• Choice Privileges (1000:1000)
• Hilton HHonors (1000:1500)
• Starwood Preferred Guest (1000:333) => SPG can be transferred to Marriott at a 1:3 rate, so MR is 1:1 to Marriott

Note: There are literally thousands of possibilities to redeem MR points using a partner transfer. It is beyond the scope of a post to list out all the best deals. Keep in mind that Amex charges a $10ish fee to transfer over points to domestic airlines). They are the only transferable program that does this.

Business Platinum 50% back on AmexTravel.com MR redemption

You can use MR points to pay for any flight on the airline you chose for the $200 credit and business/first class for any other airline to receive 50% back.

Lets say you on June 3rd, 2017 I want to fly on Lufthansa first class from NYC to Zurich. Lufthansa sells a ticket for $10,901.49 (Lufthansa 403, Lufthansa 402). You can use 1,091,896 MR points to pay for the flight. You will receive 50% (545,948) MR back, for a value of 2CPP.

Amex will be lowering the 50% back to 35%. You have to sign up for a Business Platinum before May 31st and you will continue to have the 50% back benefit for 1 full year.

Cash out using Charles Schwab Platinum

You can use MR points for deposits by Schwab to your eligible account. The rate is 1 point = 1.25 cents, so 10,000 points = $125. Solid value if you want to liquidate your points if you don't have any plans for them or have a low balance. One such account you can deposit to is the Schwab Investor Checking + Individual Brokerage. It comes highly recommended for anybody who plans on traveling since you can use any ATM and they will reimburse you the typically ATM fee.