Wednesday Updates: More AmEx Heightened Offers, Rakuten’s Recurring Cost-Center, and a Fare Sale

1. There have been spotty reports for a couple of weeks of increased American Express Delta offers but I could never personally verify them. That changed yesterday when I found them via this link, and was also able to find them by trying different browsers and search engines to get to an offer page. If that link doesn’t work and searches are fruitless, you can possibly find them in the Delta mobile app (More → Delta Amex Cards) or potentially at this link that’s been floating around elsewhere. The offers:
   
   – Personal Gold: 70,000 SkyMiles after $3,000 spend in six months, waived annual fee
   – Personal Platinum: 90,000 SkyMiles after $4,000 spend in six months
   – Personal Reserve: 100,000 SkyMiles after $6,000 spend in six months
   – Business Gold: 80,000 SkyMiles after $6,000 spend in six months, waived annual fee
   – Business Platinum: 100,000 SkyMiles after $8,000 spend in six months
   – Business Reserve : 110,000 SkyMiles after $12,000 spend in six months
   
   The Gold cards with their waived annual fee are the stand-out winners here.
   
2. The American Express Blue Business Cash has a targeted, heightened sign-up bonus of $750 after $6,000 spend in four months, effectively matching the Blue Business Plus offer from Monday.
   
3. Rakuten has a new referral bonus of $40 or 4,000 Membership Rewards for both the referrer and the referred. It’s probably not gameable, why would you say otherwise? Duh.
   
4. American Express offers has an offer for $250 off of $2,500 in airfare booked directly through AmEx Travel through June 17. This is limited to USD transactions which is ever-so-slightly annoying, but there are always games to play. (UPDATE: the offer is valid “once converted to USD”, thanks to Churrently)
   
5. Southwest has a fare sale for travel between May 13 and October 2, booked by tomorrow night, there are blackout dates though not as many as they usually have.
   
   Flights booked before May 28 still get free lost checked bags.
   

Southwest delivers a lost bag.