30% Rebate on Amex to Delta Transfers

This fall Membership Rewards has been pretty quiet with transfer bonuses and up until recently Delta didn't have one at all, which is pretty rare considering they had multiple promos in September.

However, they just announced a promotion where you get a rebate of 15,000 points for every 50,000 transferred to Delta. This is a 30% rebate, or a 43% bonus since depending on how you look at it (for those wondering how I got 43%, in the end you are only using 35,000 Amex points to get 50,000 Delta miles so a 15,000 point bonus 35,000 points used = 43%.

In the scheme of transfer bonuses this one is pretty decent. It means you can get a transatlantic business class award (with a stopover and open jaw) on SkyTeam partners for 70,000 Amex points (100,000 SkyMiles). One of my favorite Delta redemptions is 120,000 miles to go to Africa with a stopover in Europe. This summer I did Mauritius and Madrid and last summer I did Seychelles and Paris. Next summer I am thinking of doing Reunion and Greece. While I have enough SkyMiles, someone could get the 120,000 needed by transferring 120,000 Amex points and getting 30,000 back - in the end using 90,000 Amex points for a business class trip to Africa and Europe - not bad!

Of course there are some drawbacks to this promotion:
1) The rebated points will be assued as electronic certificates and will be sent by email 6-8 weeks following registration in promotion. So if you need those points back soon, I wouldn't count on it.
2) You are cashing out flexible Amex points for Delta SkyMiles. While SkyMiles can be... challenging to use, it's not impossible. I've written a lot of posts on how to maximize them, so educate yourself before making the transfer.

Related posts:
Maximizing Stopovers, Transfers and Open Jaw Ticketing on Delta Awards
How to Book a Delta SkyMiles Award
10 Tips on Using Delta SkyMiles
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