American Express Gold Card Review
Attention! This card is AmEx Gold Card Old Version which is already discontinued, the new AmEx Gold Card (formerly known as AmEx Premier Rewards Gold (PRG)) is here: AmEx Gold Card.
Contents
Application Link
- This card no longer accepts new applications.
Benefits
- Earn 25,000 Membership Rewards (MR) Points after spending $1000 in first 3 months! This credit card usually doesn’t have a sign-up bonus, and this is the best offer in recent years.
- We estimate that Membership Rewards (MR) are worth about 1.6 cents/point, see below for a brief introduction. So the 25k highest sign-up bonus is worth about $400!
- Earn 2 Membership Rewards Points per $1 spent directly at airlines and at US restaurants; 1 Membership Rewards Point per $1 spent on other purchases.
- With this card, you can get access to Amex Offer, which usually offers very good discounts at some stores, such as: spend $15 or more and get $5 back at Walmart; spend $75 or more and get $25 back on Amazon.com.
- No foreign transaction fee.
- This card is very easy to get approved, because it is a Charge Card, not a Credit Card. Charge card means that you don’t have an option to pay only minimum payment, you have to pay your balance in full on the due dates. Note that Charge Card applications will also result in a Hard Pull, same as Credit Card applications.
- Charge Cards have no pre-set spending limit.
Disadvantages
- $160 annual fee, but waived for the first year.
- There is no annual fee for up to 5 Additional Cards. But the annual fee for 6 or more Additional Cards is $35 for each Card
- The 2x bonus categories are limited within the United States.
Introduction to MR Points
- You can earn MR points with AmEx ED, AmEx EDP, AmEx Green, AmEx Gold, AmEx Platinum, AmEx Platinum for Schwab, AmEx Platinum for Morgan Stanley, AmEx Blue Business Plus, AmEx Business Green, AmEx Business Gold, AmEx Business Platinum, etc.
- The MR points you earn on different MR cards will automatically go to the same MR account.
- MR points never expire. You will not lose the MR points on one card if you close the account, but you will lose all of the MR points if you close all of the MR cards. In order to avoid losing your MR points, we recommend to keep the no annual fee AmEx ED.
- If you have any of the MR cards, MR points can be transferred to some airline miles. One of the most common and best way to use MR points is to 1:1 transfer them to All Nippon Airways (ANA, NH) miles (Star Alliance). Other good options are: Air Canada (AC) (Star Alliance), Delta Air Lines (DL) (SkyTeam), British Airways (BA) (Oneworld), Asia Miles (Oneworld), Singapore Airlines (SQ) (Star Alliance), Flying Blue (SkyTeam), Virgin Atlantic (VS) (Non-alliance), etc. If you use MR in this way, the value is about 1.6 cents/point.
- If you have any of the MR cards, you can redeem your MR points at a fixed rate about 1 cent/point towards air tickets on AmEx travel portal.
- If you have AmEx Platinum for Schwab, you can redeem your MR points at a fixed rate 1.1 cents/point towards cash. If you don't want to spend time studying airline miles, this is a pretty good way to cash out the points. If you don't have this card, you can only redeem your MR points at a fixed rate 0.6 cents/point towards cash.
- In summary, we estimate that MR points are worth about 1.6 cents/point.
- For more information about MR points, see Maximize the Credit Card Points Values (overview), and Introduction to MR: How to Earn and Introduction to MR: How to Use (very detailed).
Recommended Application Time
- You can only get the welcome bonus once in a lifetime, so be sure to apply when the historical highest offer appears.
- AmEx doesn’t care about the number of hard pulls.
- You can try to apply for it when you have a credit history of 6 months.
Summary
The reward rate is not good at all. But its highest sign-up bonus 25k MR points is worth $400, so it deserves a consideration for people need a lot of MR points. Considering you can combine Hard Pull when apply for AmEx cards in one day, and charge cards are not restricted by the application interval restriction, so you can apply for this card as you apply for another AmEx credit card. If one day you don’t want to keep this card any more, while still have some remaining MR points, you can apply for AmEx EveryDay (ED) (no annual fee) to keep the MR points and use them in the future.
Related Credit Cards
Note that, although the look and benefits of the following cards are almost the same, they are different products, and they don’t affect each other’s sign-up bonus:
- AmEx Gold Card (formerly known as AmEx Premier Rewards Gold (PRG))
- AmEx Gold Card Old Version (this post)
- AmEx Gold Card for Ameriprise
Recommended Downgrade Options
- You can not downgrade this card to any card with no annual fee, so I suggest you close it when you don’t want to keep it any longer.
After Applying
- Click here to check AmEx application status.
- AmEx reconsideration backdoor number: 877-399-3083. The “real” backdoor number of Amex is well protected. Different from Chase, the representatives from this AmEx reconsideration backdoor number only have the right to help you submit requests.
Historical Offers Chart
This card is discontinued on 2017.06.19.
Application Link
- This card no longer accepts new applications.
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