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I’m always checking to see if American Express has targeted me for any special welcome offers or special deals to upgrade (it’s how I got a 150,000 point bonus when I upgraded to the Hilton Honors Surpass credit card) and, as things stand, there appear to be improved offers available on the American Express Gold Card and the Business Gold Card for anyone fortunate enough to have been targeted.
Neither of these offers appeared when I was logged in to my American Express account nor did they appear when I was in normal browsing mode but as soon as I used private browsing/incognito mode, both improve offers showed up straight away.
American Express Gold Card
This is the current standard offer that comes with the American Express Gold Card…
…while this is the offer that I see in incognito mode:
Essentially, the improved offer allows a new cardholder to earn back the cost of the Gold Card’s annual fee while they’re on the way to earning the 35,000 bonus points that come with the standard and the improved offer. If you prefer to look at things entirely from a Membership Rewards point of view, I value Membership Rewards Points at 1.5 cents each so, by my calculations, the $250 cash back is effectively worth an additional 16,666 points.
Unfortunately, the terms and conditions of the improved offer haven’t had the lifetime language removed so, per Amex:
“Welcome offer not available to applicants who have or have had this Card or the Premier Rewards Gold Card.”
That’s going to make this improved offer accessible to fewer people but there should still be a good number of readers for whom this will be attractive.
American Express Business Gold Card
This is the current standard offer that comes with the American Express Business Gold Card…
…while this is the offer that I see in incognito mode:
I value the extra 15,000 Membership Rewards Points that are on offer in incognito mode at $225 so the added bonus isn’t quite enough to cover the cards annual fee…but this is still a considerably better welcome offer than the standard one that most people are probably seeing.
Unfortunately, as is the case with the personal Gold Card, the terms and conditions of the improved offer haven’t had the lifetime language removed so, per Amex:
“Welcome offer not available to applicants who have or have had this Card.”
That’s going to make this improved offer accessible to fewer people and the fact that I only managed to get this offer to come up when using Firefox as my browser (it didn’t appear in Chrome or Safari) will make it even less accessible…but a 50,000 point welcome offer is still a very nice points haul if you can get this offer to appear.
Bottom Line
If you’re interested in applying for the Amex Gold or Amex Business Gold Card (and you haven’t had either of those cards before), make sure you use incognito/private browsing mode (and possibly a variety of browsers) when accessing the American Express website as there are some targeted welcome offers available that are considerably better than the standard offers.
