That Whole Free Point.me AmEx Thing

Sometimes there’s a news story that sends travel bloggers to the word vomit factory to write pages and pages when there’s really just one thing to say, and this week’s factory tour is courtesy of American Express and that they’re now offering a free, limited-partner Point.me search for cardholders by visiting amex.point.me. And yes, I’m writing about it too so I’m no better, welcome to the word vomit factory my friends!

Anyway, there are a few reasons you probably shouldn’t care much about this new development, and I say this as a paid Point.me user with full access (not just a normie with specific access to Membership Rewards transfer partners):

• Point.me is really slow and inflexible, and the AmEx version has poor coverage
• PointsYeah is a free alternative that’s more flexible and much, much faster
• Seats.aero will cache award results for quick lookup and is a great compliment to PointsYeah

Of course, there’s always more to the story, so let’s visit caveat city:

• American Express’s point.me version has no coverage beyond Membership Rewards partners
• PointsYeah has better coverage than the AmEx point.me
• Point.me with a paid subscription has the best coverage, notably including Aeroplan and Southwest
• Neither Point.me nor PointsYeah will show you Delta 15% off award discounts
• Neither Point.me, Seats.aero, nor PointsYeah will show United XN expanded access and discounts
• None of the tools will show you cheaper FlyingBlue awards found by searching different partners
• PointsYeah easily lets you filter for things like maximum fuel surcharge or maximum trip duration
• Award alerts in PointsYeah and Seats.aero are top notch
• Award alerts in point.me are, uhh, non-existent

So yes, we have another tool to use courtesy of AmEx, but also it’s like having a Fisher Price hammer when you’re building a cabinet.

Happy Tuesday!

American Express tools to help with award searches: present and future.