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UPDATE – The offers mentioned below have now expired
Last week Amex announced a significant improvement to one of the benefits that come with its $250/year Gold Card when it confirmed that the 4 points/dollar that the card earns on restaurant purchases in the US will be extended to restaurants worldwide. Alongside that announcement Amex quietly made a couple of other changes that some readers may find interesting.
Amex Adds ‘Boxed’ To Its Gold Card Offering
The American Express Gold Card offers cardholders a $10/month dining credit which, since the card was rebooted back in October last year, has only been useable at the following dining partners:
- Participating Shake Shack locations
- The Cheesecake Factory
- Ruth’s Chris Steak House
- GrubHub/Seamless.
Now you can add Boxed.com to that list of participants.
Boxed.com is an online and mobile membership-free wholesale retailer that offers direct delivery of bulk-sized packages that can be ordered through the Boxed app or the Boxed website.
What’s interesting is that Boxed isn’t really a dining establishment like the existing partners (if anything it’s much more like an online grocery store) so it will be interesting to see if Amex treats spending at Boxed as ‘dining spend’ or ‘U.S supermarket spend’.
In both cases the spending would earn 4 points/dollar but while restaurant spending at 4 points/dollar is uncapped, spending at U.S. supermarkets (at 4 points/dollar) is capped at $25,000/year. All further U.S. supermarket spend earns just 1 point/dollar.
In further good news, Boxed regularly features within the various Amex offers that American Express cardholders get targeted for…and there are two running right now (ending very soon):
With Boxed as an American Express Gold Card partner the $10/month ‘dining credit’ just got a whole lot more useful.
Not everyone may want to eat at Shake Shack, Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse or the Cheesecake Factory every month and not everyone may want to use GrubHub/Seamless either…but ordering groceries online is something that a lot of people do quite regularly so using up the monthly $10 credit should be pretty effortless from now on.
The Rose Gold Card Is Making A Brief Return
When the American Express Gold Card got its makeover last year it was re-released in its traditional Gold color…
…and in a limited edition Rose Gold color:
American Express says that more than 65% of new Card Members requesting the Rose Gold design during the limited time the color was available (between 4 October 2018 and 9 January 2019) so now the design is making a (limited) comeback.
Per Amex:
[T]he limited edition Rose Gold metal Card will be available for new Card Members through the American Express Refer a Friend program through July 17.
Eligible American Express Card Members can share the rose gold love by referring family and friends.
Existing Card Members can receive up to 55,000 Membership Rewards points per year for referring new approved Card Members.
New Gold or Rose Gold Card Members who are referred are also eligible to receive 40,000 Membership Rewards points when they spend $2,000 in the first 3 months of their Membership.* (OFFER EXPIRED)
*This is 5,000 points more than the currently available public offer.
If you already have the American Express Gold card but don’t have the Rose Gold version there doesn’t appear to be an avenue through which you can now get the limited edition card…although you can always try calling up Amex and begging 🙂
Bottom Line
I’ve said in the past that I don’t really like the American Express Gold card because of the hoops you have to jump through to make the most of some of the benefits and the restrictions that Amex imposes on some of the card’s features….but recent changes have definitely improved the card overall.
Being able to earn 4 Membership Rewards points per dollar spent on dining worldwide is a nice improvement (although the Citi Prestige card is still better in that category) and making the monthly $10 dining credit a lot easier to spend economically (by incorporating Boxed) is a nice improvement too….now if only the airline fee was usable for flight bookings the Gold Card would be a real contender for a ‘must have credit card’.
