How much do Amex Offers differ between cards?

May 20, 2020

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5 min read

How much do Amex Offers differ between cards?

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Reader Questions are answered twice a week by TPG Senior Points & Miles Contributor Ethan Steinberg.

American Express has quite a diverse credit card portfolio, with options ranging from no-annual-fee cash-back cards all the way up to the exclusive invite-only Amex Centurion card. The one thing that these cards all have in common is that they come with access to money-saving Amex Offers. TPG reader Clara wants to know how much these offers differ from one Amex card to the next ...

[pullquote source="TPG READER CLARA"]Do Amex Offers vary significantly from card to card? I'm thinking of downgrading my Amex Gold but want to make sure I have a card that will provide access to a similar set of offers[/pullquote]

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When we talk about justifying the annual fee on a credit card, we usually focus primarily on statement credits or perks that offer value. The truth is, most of my Amex cards pay for themselves year after year as long as I can utilize three or four Amex Offers. If you're not yet familiar with this program, you should start by reading our comprehensive guide to Amex Offers at the link below.

Eligibility for Amex Offers is limited. Enrollment is required in the Amex Offers section of your account before redeeming.

First off, it's important to note that Amex Offers are usually targeted not just to an individual person but to an individual card account. The easiest way to see this is by logging onto your Amex account and looking at how many offers you have available on each card. While my Marriott Bonvoy Business® American Express® Card has 71 offers available, my American Express® Gold Card has 100 offers on it.

Amex doesn't release any information about how they choose which accounts to target, but over the years I've noticed the following (unsurprising) trends: Core American Express Membership Rewards earning cards seem to have more offers than cobranded airline or hotel cards, and more premium cards have more offers than no-annual fee-cards. That's not a hard rule or a guarantee, just what I've observed in the over five years that I've been an Amex customer. In fact, here's the number of offers available one each of my different Amex cards at the moment:

American Express® Gold Card: 100 Amex Offers
The Business Platinum Card® from American Express: 100 Amex Offers
The American Express Platinum® Card for Schwab: 100 Amex Offers
The Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express: 98 Amex Offers
Delta SkyMiles® Reserve Business American Express Card: 86 Amex Offers
Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant™ American Express® Card: 84 Amex Offerrs
Marriott Bonvoy Amex Card: 83 Amex Offers
Marriott Bonvoy Business® American Express® Card: 71 Amex Offers

It's not just about the quantity of offers, quality matters as well. Of course, quality is very much in the eye of the beholder and very dependent on where you shop, but I think we can agree that an offer for bonus points at Amazon is going to be more valuable and sought after than a discount at Rover (especially if you don't have a pet). Again, in my experience, the best offers tend to appear on my Platinum and Gold cards, and occasionally on other Membership Rewards earning cards as well, but rarely on my cobranded Amex cards.

Now back to Clara's question. If she's looking to downgrade her Amex Gold card, there's really only one option. You can't product change between a personal and a business card, or between a core card and a cobranded card in a different product family. This leaves just one option, the American Express® Green Card. While it's impossible to say what offers Clara would get targeted for with that card, the fact that it's still a Membership Rewards earning card bodes well for her.

The information for the Amex Green Card has been collected independently by The Points Guy. The card details on this page have not been reviewed or provided by the card issuer.

Bottom line

There's no way to predict which Amex Offers you will or won't be targeted for, or which cards they'll appear on. The general rule of thumb in my experience is that Amex rewards its more premium customers (i.e. Platinum and Gold) first, and those cards tend to get the most offers and the highest-quality ones as well.

Thanks for the question, Clara, and if you’re a TPG reader who’d like us to answer a question of your own, tweet us @thepointsguy, message us on Facebook or email us at info@thepointsguy.com.

Featured image by (Photo by Wyatt Smith/The Points Guy)

Editorial disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, airline or hotel chain, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.