Comments on: American Express Membership Rewards Points Can Be Used to Pay Taxes

By: Frank J Ferrara

Frank J Ferrara — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 17:41:41 +0000

I called and was told that my $100.00 credit to Morton’s Steaklhouse would be mailed to me. IT WAS NOT.!!!. I called again and was told to go to http://www.ecerts.@american express.com AND there is absolutely nothing I see that will give my MORTON’S CREDIT.
i SPENT TOO MUCH TIME PLAYING YOUR GAME, NOW EMAIL THE THING TO ME AT
hamp77@optonline.net
Frank J Ferrara

By: Warren Dew

Warren Dew — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 20:10:00 +0000

My exchange rate is also $0.007 per point.

American express used to pretty regularly give an average of $0.01 per point on travel and merchandise rewards in their catalogs, though cash equivalents were never quite that good. They used to have occasional special deals, especially on travel, that were much better. Recently their membership rewards points seem far less useful.

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 19:36:28 +0000

To Steve – I’ve also found that the best use of my Amex points is the gift cards which give you the full value of your points.

Besides Home Depot, I’ve also used my points for Dell.com e-certs, Zappos.com, Banana Republic, etc. Seems like they added some new ones like Old Navy and Victoria’s Secret.

By: Craig

Craig — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:10:33 +0000

I’m new to the Amex rewards system so don’t know how it fairs against other cards. Seems interesting to pay towards taxes, guess I can see it being useful. I figure I’m just going to let mine grow until I need to put money towards an expensive flight.

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:22:31 +0000

I’ve found that Visa generally gives more rewards regarding cards that issue points. However, these are usually for airfares and not much else. The ones that give cash back do not offer much at all, but it would be nice to have points directly applied to a certain bill instead of redeeming them for a gift card later.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:35:44 +0000

Amex points are not worth what they used to be. The primary use of them used to be transferring them to airlines, where you could get 2 to 3 cents per point worth of airfare (especially for first class tickets, assuming you value such tickets at list price.) Nowadays airlines have sold zillions of miles to credit card issuing banks, pudding manufacturers, and whatnot; and furthermore said airlines are not close to, but in fact beyond the razor’s edge of profitability. As such they have been systematically devaluing the miles, raising the price (in miles) of awards while simultaneously reducing the availability of those awards. Meanwhile Membership Rewards offers various physical objects (from headphones to a set of pots and pans to GPS devices) at anywhere from 1.8 to 3 or more points per cent of street value.

Amex gave me a bunch of points almost a year ago as a sign-on bonus, and the only thing i’ve found so far that gets anywhere near 1 cent per mile is Home Depot gift cards. Assuming that you spend that much at home depot or are willing to sell them on ebay or craigslist.