$400 in Amex credits posted!

A few days ago we wrote about an amazing offer that made the rounds in the late hours of the night about 100,000 Membership Reward points for getting the American Express Platinum card. This card is fantastic because it comes with a bunch of great benefits in addition to the signing bonus. However, the $450 annual fee turns a lot of people off. It is a lot of money. What most people don’t know is that there is a way to make $400 of it back, keeping the total cost down to $50. Here’s how:

This card comes with a $200 annual reimbursement credit that you can get for expenses with your favorite airline. There is a handful of airlines that participate, and you have to pick one ahead of time and stay with it for the entire year. We picked American Airlines. The card reimburses you for certain qualifying expenses, such as baggage fees, ticket exchange fees, drinks and meals on board, etc. Gift cards do not qualify for reimbursement, but most users report getting successfully reimbursed for them, and this was our goal. We first selected American as our airline of choice, and then went to aa.com and bought a $50 gift card to try the system (you shouldn’t purchase more than $50 to $100 at a time to avoid being flagged):

We bought an e-card, since buying a physical card requires a shipping fee. Three days later, I went and checked my Amex statement, and sure enough, the credit was there! So I went ahead and purchased the remaining $150 in 3 additional gift cards, and another 4 with my wife’s card for a total of 8 cards, and 3 days later, those credits posted as well!

Since you are eligible for the credits on an annual basis, as soon as January 1st hits next year, you can do this again for another $200 per card before the annual fee hits, so you can get a total of $400 in credits per person out of a $450 annual fee. Between us two we will get $800 in gift cards that we can then use to fly AA on one of our trips without using miles, and we will earn additional miles for those flights since they would be paid tickets. It’s the gift that keeps on giving!