Over the last few years, American Express has been on a spree, making constant changes to many of their card products. I’ve written frequently over the last few months about how changes to some of my favorite Amex cards have left me flustered. I noticed one thing when I logged into my account today and had a look at my Amex Everyday Preferred Card.
More Amex cards to be revamped?
A few months back, Amex had revamped the designs on the Everyday cards. When I logged into my account today, I saw that my Everyday Preferred Card was showing a new option for referrals.
Usually, the card shows a referral bonus of 15,000 Membership Rewards points. In this case, it was now showing a referral bonus of $100 per referral. This got me thinking about a few possibilities:
- First: This could just be a glitch which will be fixed. Ideally, the card is not a cash back card but a card that earns Membership Rewards points.
- Second: Amex is about to make changes to the card and changing the card design and the referral bonus just parts of their overall revamp strategy
As I was scrolling through my feed on X, I came across this post by DannytheDealGuru. As per DDG, Amex’s website is no longer showing a couple of cards on their website:
- Amex Everyday (regular and preferred versions)
- Cash Magnet Card
I checked and was not able to find the cards on Amex’s website either.
The Pundit’s Mantra
As per DDG, here’s what an Amex rep told him when asked: “One Amex rep says that these cards “aren’t available for new applications indefinitely” and they don’t know why. Could all three cards be discontinued?”.
If this is indeed true, then we may see another ‘card refresh’ being announced in the coming weeks or months. I find this pretty annoying. It will pretty much mean that Amex will increase the annual fees on these products. To ‘offset’ the fee increase, they’ll offer ‘credits’ which will be split into monthly, quarterly and annual time frames.
The Amex Everyday card has a strong value proposition. Firstly, it carries no annual fee. Secondly, it allows you to keep you Membership Rewards points account active by simply keeping the card open. If Amex converts the Amex Everyday card into a fee carrying card, then it will effectively mean that you have a pay an annual fee to Amex each year to keep your Membership Rewards points active.
Are you seeing the same changes when you log into your Amex account? Tell us in the comments section.
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With these limited time offers on Amex’s credit cards, you can earn 185,000 Marriott Bonvoy points, 110,000 Delta SkyMiles or 175,000 Hilton Honors points.
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