{"id":2040,"date":"2021-07-21T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-21T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=2040"},"modified":"2023-04-18T12:25:36","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T18:25:36","slug":"shopping-small-with-american-express-platinum-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2021\/07\/21\/shopping-small-with-american-express-platinum-cards\/","title":{"rendered":"Shopping Small with American Express Platinum Cards"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By now, I think you all know how I feel about the <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2021\/07\/07\/platinum-amex-a-haiku-review-for-you-also-how-i-feel\/\">American Express Platinum changes<\/a>, but in case you don\u2019t the short overview is: \u201cgreat for sign-up bonuses, awful for ongoing value.\u201d Along with that mantra, there are a few things you should know about the American Express Platinum cards and maybe it\u2019s time for you to consider going for a few of them for the sign-up bonuses or for the spend bonuses:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Personal Platinum card has a <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/resy.com\/amex-offers?date=2021-07-20&amp;seats=2\">125,000 points offer with another 15x<\/a> at restaurants or small businesses up to $25,000 in spend. I\u2019d definitely use the <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.americanexpress.com\/en-us\/maps\">AmEx Shop Small lookup tool<\/a> to explore how to take advantage of this. Obviously if you can buy gift cards at a local \u201csmall business\u201d grocery store you can easily make this a multiple thousand dollar card after maxing out your 15x capacity.<\/li>\n<li>The Business Platinum card has a <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.americanexpress.com\/en-us\/campaigns\/small-business\/credit-cards\/business-platinum\/explore-now\/\">generic 150,000 points targeted offer<\/a> that shows up sometimes in your \u201coffers\u201d section of the card. Login to American Express first, then click the link so you don\u2019t have to hunt for the offer, it\u2019ll tell you if you\u2019re targeted or not.<\/li>\n<li>The Brokerage Platinum cards from <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www262.americanexpress.com\/dapply\/partner\/msb\/msb-ms-1\/cshop\/cshome#\/cshop\">Morgan Stanley<\/a> and <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.schwab.com\/credit-cards\">Schwab<\/a> both offer 100,000 Membership Rewards and 10x at restaurants and small businesses up to $25,000 in spend, in case you\u2019re not eligible for the 15x offer you may still be eligible for one of these.<\/li>\n<li>If none of those work for you, referring a friend or a P2 to a Platinum card will get you 5x at restaurants and small businesses up to $25,000 in spend, so there\u2019s still a way to maximize the shop small ecosystem.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now, how do you know if you\u2019re eligible? Try and apply, and before submitting your final application you may get a pop-up window telling you that you may not be eligible because you\u2019ve already had or you have the card. Or, you may get a pop-up telling you that due to your past relationship with American Express, you\u2019re not eligible for the card. Here\u2019s the thing though: If you get the first type of pop-up, you may still be eligible for the bonus. I\u2019m not suggesting that you should do this, but recently people have been getting their bonuses despite getting the first type of pop-up during application (definitely only the first type). If you\u2019re gutsy and you want that 5x\/10x\/15x shop small spend really badly like me, you may consider it worth the risk to try anyway.<\/p>\n<p><em>Unrelated<\/em>: Yesterday my table showing <a class=\"ek-link\" href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2021\/07\/20\/tuesday-bonus-miles\/\">cost per points for portal bonuses<\/a> didn\u2019t take shipping into account. I\u2019ve updated that so please take another look, and thanks again to Miles for letting me know. The punchline is that Southwest miles can be had for 0.777 cents per mile, United for 0.639 cents per mile, and Alaska for 0.816 cents per mile. I\u2019m a buyer for Southwest and Alaska at those prices, I have too many United miles though to care.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-editorskit-rounded\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt='A framed blackboard displaying the words \"Small Business\".' class=\"wp-image-2041\" height=\"234\" loading=\"lazy\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 420px) 100vw, 420px\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Small-Business-copy.png\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Small-Business-copy.png 420w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Small-Business-copy-300x167.png 300w\" width=\"420\"\/><figcaption>If I put one of these signs up by the register, will it count?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By now, I think you all know how I feel about the American Express Platinum changes, but in case you don\u2019t the short overview is:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":2,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[54,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-credit-cards","category-shenanigans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2040"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7245,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2040\/revisions\/7245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}